Peter has to read Faulkner's As I Lay Dying this year for class (it is a very weird mix, this class -- other set texts include Madame Bovary and Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem). I can't imagine what he'll make of it. I plan on letting him know large parts of it are meant to be funny (and are, if you read them right), but that may not be enough to get him through. Fortunately at least it's short (and the stylistic tricks mean there isn't much text on some of the pages). It might actually be a fantastic audio book, now that I think about it. Must look into that. (Apparently there's a recording of Faulkner himself reading an excerpt.)

Re the victorious dust: nothing wrong with the connotations you see, but in context the image is of something being recreated after having previously gone to dust. Obviously if you're dead and have turned to dust, the dust has been victorious over you. And Foster has no excuse for not seeing that, given that he's got the context in front of his eyeballs.