Reading 1001 discussion

Rating: 4+ Stars
Read: Nov-Dec 2016

This is the first book in The Snopes Trilogy. This story takes place in the rural South around the turn of the 20th century. It takes place in Frenchman's Bend, a town populated by poor people, but controlled by the wealthy Varner family. Along comes tenant farmer Flem Snopes and his large extended family. It shows how the Snopes family gradually infiltrate and take over the power of this town from Varner. The book is told in "books", or basically, related stories.

The language in this book is amazing. Reading Faulkner is definitely a good vocabulary booster. The book is extremely well-written, but I think it lacks a bit in the cohesiveness and plotting of Absalom, Absalom! and The Sound and the Fury, the other two Faulkner books I have read.

The hamlet referred to in the title of this book is the small town of Frenchmen's Bend in Faulkner's imaginary yet very real rural Mississippi. The main character is Flem Snopes, who with an unyielding ambition and greed, rises from the son of a tenant farmer to take over the workings of the town. He often does this by cheating those who would cheat him, catching those who are equally greedy, selling dear to those who have something more important to purchase such as their pride or their manhood. Flem inhabits the string of stories in the book but is actually hardly ever an active part of the action. Instead Faulkner manages to tell us about Flem, to see and hear Flem largely through other characters. VK Ratliff plays the part of the town's moral hero and intelligent and humorous counterpart to Flem. Where Flem cheats the devil of his very soul, Ratliff would back down because cheating wouldn't be quite the gentlemanly thing to do.
The string of stories in the book carry Faulkner's consistent themes of the tragedy of the south and the way human beings consistently fail to live up to the higher angels of their nature. There is humor and there is mystery. Each story centers around what men will do for the one thing they can not have; enough money, enough pride, a beautiful woman, a cow, a horse.
The Hamlet is not the masterpiece of Light in August or The Sound and the Fury but Faulkner's language is masterful. One chokes on the cotton dust during harvest, is covered with mud running after a horse, and I felt the hair on the back of my neck rise up in goosebumps at the sound of a hound.
I am somewhat sad that I didn't read this book as my first Faulkner as it would have been a good introduction.

I agree with others here that his command of the language is remarkable and always something that makes me love his books, but also agree with Gail that it isn't the same level of masterpiece that many other of his books are.

I do love a Southern Gothic tale about slippery characters, though. The fact the barn burning is a consistent theme at the beginning was also great and kind of hilarious.

I gave it 4 stars.

Pre-2017 review:

***

This was my first encounter with Faulkner, an author which seems to garner polarised views. But I will be sitting on the fence after reading this novel. It depicts the slow and cunning rise to power and ownership of Flem Snopes in a backwater town in remote Mississippi at the turn of the 20th century, through eight vignettes focusing on some of the secondary characters. The constant shift between Deep South lingo and ornate and erudite language, especially in the first two chapters, makes reading arduous and tedious at times. Truly hilarious moments in the middle chapters (about Eula and Isaac Snopes) offer some compensation though. While I didn't dislike the book, I wouldn't be raving about it either.