A mended regret

My war with As I Lay Dying began at least a decade ago. I can hardly remember my exact age at the time. I remember that it was the first Faulkner book I'd attempted. I was encouraged by my then voracious biblophile boyfriend who had long since digested that great book and has since read tomes I might never be able to pry open.

I remember reading the first few chapters. I remember not understanding what was going on. And then I put the book down.

I encountered Faulkner again in the supportive environs of a writing class in pursuit of my degree in writing. The book was Go Down Moses and it came with a geneology printout, a list of vocabulary and a stern warning from my teacher. Apparently, the word had gotten around that Faulkner was "difficult to read." Our teacher assured us that we would take things slow and answer lots of questions. But read it we did. And I found that Faulkner was not so bad to read. And that I had lived a little helped immensely.

And so, I went to a bookstore to rescue that forgotten title, but again it was too much to bear. After just ten pages, I could not understand it, so it went onto one of my many bookshelves and languished there, forgotten again.

When I moved in with Eric the first time, I had to pare down many of my belongings into a category I will call Things I Cannot Fathom Never Seeing Again. So I parted ways with that book once more.

Last summer I was successfully reading Faulkner (as you may well remember) and I made the purchase of that same book again. This time I vowed I would read it no matter what. In fact, I devised an elaborate plan to read it in a supported way, this time with my own little writing group. Because neither of my companions had no interest whatsoever in that book at all, it floundered in my world once more.

I attempted to read it in the travel time I have to and from work, a tactic that has served me well with many many many other books, but this book could not be treated that way. It demanded a detail of attention and a focus that I simply could not give it on a crowded bus in the middle of summer.

I left it sitting out to guilt me into reading it; it sat in my hallway near the door for two months. So I finally picked it up again one night. I discovered that I had read nearly half of it and did want to keep reading. I think it was the word "moiling" that really intrigued me. It took another couple of weeks, but I have finally finished this book that has haunted me for years.

It is funny. I had a similar, though not as lengthy, experience with Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino. And other books that I have really loved were wrestling matches as well. I rallied through East of Eden because I knew from experience with Steinbeck that something good would come out of it. And now I have wiped away the burden of my deepest book regret and finished that book.

It left me the way many of Faulkner's books do: envious, humbled and exhilarated. And if Oprah can read it, well then so can anyone.