The Textual Coffin and the Narrative Corpse of As I Lay Dying

MICHAEL KAUFMANN The Textual Coffin and the Narrative Corpse of As Í Lay Dying Critics have recognized the division between the subject matter and the sophisticated narrative form in William Faulkner's As Í Lay Dying, but have failed to explore the division and the reasons behind it.1 The contradictory nature of the novel derives from Faulkner 's attempt to create a reality—as other modernist artists did—rather than simply represent one.2 Making a reality instead of representing it, as Wendy Steiner points out, creates a tension between the work as a representation and the materials used— in the case ofthe novel, printed language—to represent reality. Faulkner attempted to create a narrative in which the printed form of the narrative itself speaks. The iconic space of the novel (the physical form of print and paper) becomes almost simultaneous with its narrative space, the "place" of the narrative events.3 Paginal space coincides with the "parallel" space of the narrative as the text enacts or mirrors narrative events. Consequently, the novel continually exposes itself as a fabricated, print body, constructed of interchangeable stamped bits of language. Faulkner's modernist esthetic, however, conflicted with the subject matter of the tale, and he feared the effect that the literary, print form would have on his subject matter, coming as it did from the oral tradition and context of the South, the stories and tales heard from stableboys and cooks. As he wrote in the "Yale preface" to As Í Lay Dying, the novelist could only offer "a kernel or a leaf, to indicate a lost forest" or "the evocative skeleton of the desiccated leaf that was the world (quoted in Putzel 296). His figure attentuates from leaf to skeleton of the leaf, suggesting his concerns about what print would be able to Arizona Quarterly Volume 49 Number 1, Spring 1993 Copyright © 1993 by Arizona Board of Regents ISSN 0004-161 tooMichael Kaufmann show of his world. That he eventually turned away from such experiments shows the depth of his reservations. Oral tradition, from which Faulkner's tale arises, depends on repetition and tends toward the episodic and digressive. In the oral tradition, repetition and cliché, as Walter Ong notes, is a mnemonic necessity: that which is repeated is remembered and conserved (Orality 24). Oral tales, consequently, tend to be spliced together from smaller formulaic elements. In performance the work, though, is different each time, "depending on the audience reaction, the mood of the poet, or the occasion" (Orality 60). Print culture, on the other hand, ostensibly values originality. Authors ' rights to their own ideas and the words that express them—copyright —developed as a result of print. However, as the word copyright implies, repetition is inherent and basic to the process of printing. The very advantage of print lies in its ability to exactly reproduce thousands of copies. Repetition in print, unlike oral repetition, is exact. Printing constructs works out of "preexisting objects (types) . . . and stamps out on hundreds or thousands of surfaces exactly the same spatial arrangement ofwords" (Ong, Interface 281). Each work in any edition is exactly like the rest. Because each copy is alike, any one page of an edition will replace its counterpart in another copy of the same edition, just as any cast-metal piece of type can be interchanged with its like. Further, the advent ofmass-market fiction made formulaic repetition of plot and character much more apparent in print narrative. Massmarket books splice plots together from preexisting and formulaic elements , though in a manner different from oral tales and for different reasons.4 Mass-market works repeat not to conserve, but to sell more books. Print and mass production made language into a commodity, something Faulkner was certainly aware of in writing Sanctuary, "a cheap idea . . . deliberately conceived to make money" and first written just before As Í Lay Dying.5 Print could preserve a tale but it also rendered the tale and that world into a commodity. Print changed its context and form. Like Addie, inverted to fit properly in her wooden box, the oral tale in As Í Lay Dying had to accommodate itselfto its textual space. Addie's indictment of language reflects Faulkner's...