Snopes: A Trilogy (Modern Library) Review

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(More customer reviews)The three novels that comprise the Snopes trilogy, The Hamlet, The Town, and The Mansion, were published over a thirty year span of Faulkner's career. For this reason these books, now published in a single Modern Library volume, provide an incedible insight to Faulkner's evoloution as a writer. At heart, these works are concerned with the rise to power and influence of the Snopes family in Faulkner's mythical town of Jefferson. The Snopes are complete embodiments of evil, and their unique brand of deviousness and complete lack of scruples allows them to overwhelm the inhabitants of the town. The reaction of these people against the tide of corruption, their resistance to this Snopish threat is central to this work. And at the base of all three is a changing attitude toward the Snopish absurdities and evils of the human condition, an attitude that evolves from fierce repudiation to cooperative antagonism. Perhaps these are not the greatest of all the great work that Faulkner produced in his career, but the depth of human understanding and characterizations that are the superlatives applied to Faulkner's work are here in force.

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Here, published in a single volume as Faulkner always hoped they would be, are the three novels that comprise the famous Snopes trilogy, a saga that stands as perhaps the greatest feat of Faulkner's imagination. The Hamlet, the first book of the series chronicling the advent and rise of the grasping Snopes family in mythical Yoknapatawpha County, is a work that Cleanth Brooks called "one of the richest novels in the Faulkner canon." It recounts how the wily, cunning Flem Snopes dominates the rural community of Frenchman's Bend—and claims the voluptuous Eula Varner as his bride. The Town, the second novel, records Flem's ruthless struggle to take over the county seat of Jefferson, Mississippi. Finally, The Mansion tells of Mink Snopes, whose archaic sense of honor brings about the downfall of his cousin Flem. "For all his concerns with the South, Faulkner was actually seeking out the nature of man," noted Ralph Ellison. "Thus we must turn to him for that continuity of moral purpose which made for the greatness of our classics."

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As I Lay Dying: The Corrected Text (Modern Library) Review

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(More customer reviews)To quote the briefest chapter, the one that would surely catch your eye if you picked it off a shelf and skimmed through it: "My mother is a fish."
As with his stunning _The_Sound_and_the_Fury_ and _Absalom_Absalom_, this book makes use of the author's masterful use of stream-of-conscious writing to render an entire reality with internal monologues. The story unfolds as you construct it from the observations and responses of the characters. Though briefer and less challenging than these other two books, it's as absorbing a read as they have been for decades. When you reach the end, you can imagine that you'll pick up the book again someday, sure there's more to explore.
The structure is simple once you get the hang of it. Each chapter is the name of a particular character in the story of the family of Addie Bundren, dead in the first few pages, and being transported by her clan to the land of her birth for burial-by wagon, in the heat and dust, over rivers, for weeks, before the vacuum seal... There is no "Once upon a time." Instead, whatever that character is thinking at the instant the chapter begins is what you're reading. Soon, you know who everyone is and what she thinks of everyone else. The effect of this structure is that you can inhabit the narrative as each of the players, can see how events are interpreted differently. It's also like a mystery-someone will have troubled thoughts about something you can't quite distinguish; then, twenty pages later, you figure out what they've been talking about and you flip backward in a frenzy to see how the early references to the issue flesh out the story. This is a terribly rewarding way of reading.
This is a great first Faulkner for everyone. You develop the ability to read his complex novels by virtue of the simplicity of the story and the mostly brief chapters, each from a fresh point of view. You learn to read on if you don't get something. (Important skill: Faulkner is one of my absolute favorite authors since high school, and one of my favorite things is that you have to trust the story to tell you what you need to know in time. Not only do you get the reward of context for the occasional non sequitur, but you have the thrill of anticipation when something weird happens. This book is a great example of how, unlike Hemingway, where you have to read a basically boring story over and over to understand all the juicy stuff, Faulkner gives you nibbles of fantastic plot to hold you through the ultimate analysis.

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