We knew the river was rising, the rains swelling it to wash out the bridges, and the Bundren’s are in trouble crossing with the wagon loaded with Addie in her coffin. Two things detracted from the drama of the moment (for me).
First, a few years back I had watched the TV mini-series movie (not the show) Lonesome Dove. In it, the main character Gus had extracted the same type of promise from his friends; that he be brought to some distant place to be buried. The same thing happened, with the coffin caught up in a river crossing (only Gus fell out). So the reading of the Bundren’s struggles in Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying lost some of its punch.
Second, the multiple points of view that Faulkner uses could have been extremely powerful here, in this immediate dramatic situation, and yet the still slightly difficult to follow free thinking of the characters detracts by dragging the moment out and by not making it totally clear what is happening, as the views are broken up between those on the banks and Cash, Darl and Jewel in the river. Somehow, for me, the excitement was slow-paced, and all I wanted to do was see if the coffin would make it safely somehow to land.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology