book data
496 ratings, 3.93 average rating, 31 reviews
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published
March 12th 1956
by Vintage
binding
Paperback
isbn
0394701399
(isbn13: 9780394701394)
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 706)
Read in March, 2008
Kind of like a smoother Sound and the Fury, where the smoothness is productive of something new, and not just a step back from a more high-modernist impulse. The way this story presents the economics of the business takeover of Frenchman's Bend by the Snopes family is fascinating--so much of it told in a kind of collective retrospection, where the plot is (at least in the first third) being delivered as a "we didn't know what was happening to us while it was happening, but now that it's obv...more
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Read in August, 2008
A truly magnificent book...i enjoyed every word...
however, i can see why some readers didn't care for it...
i made a comment somewhere else that it was a mystery to me why faulkner all but abandoned his early experimental high modernist style...after finishing this book i can confidently say this is hogwash...
there are portions of this novel that could have come right out of 'absalom! absalom!'...all the faulknerian linguistic mannerisms are there...if possible in even more a p...more
however, i can see why some readers didn't care for it...
i made a comment somewhere else that it was a mystery to me why faulkner all but abandoned his early experimental high modernist style...after finishing this book i can confidently say this is hogwash...
there are portions of this novel that could have come right out of 'absalom! absalom!'...all the faulknerian linguistic mannerisms are there...if possible in even more a p...more
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11 comments
Read in September, 2007
It's a long life; I like trilogies. Nestling down into a world I know will sustain me for hours. This is the first of Faulkner's famous Snopes trilogy, about a family, the Snopes, who takes over a small Mississippi town called Frenchman's Bend. Faulkner is a master of characterization. Flem Snopes, the wily, ambitious son (whose father burns barns to intimidate his landlords), his wife Eula Snopes, the lazy, beautiful daughter of the rich, landed Will Varner, and Ratliff, the traveling sewin...more
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A towering book about a teeny tiny community...
You can tell from reading that guy just had a better time writing than most people have doing anything...I like to picture him scribbling away with a bottle of whiskey on the desk...every ten pages or so there tend to be clumps of word repetitions and mispellings (gotta love how the newer editions retain them all), which I figure occurred in cycles whenever the level of that bottle started getting low...
You can tell from reading that guy just had a better time writing than most people have doing anything...I like to picture him scribbling away with a bottle of whiskey on the desk...every ten pages or so there tend to be clumps of word repetitions and mispellings (gotta love how the newer editions retain them all), which I figure occurred in cycles whenever the level of that bottle started getting low...
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Read in November, 2008
This is the first of the Snopes books and tells the story of how Flem Snopes and company came to Frenchman's Bend and became related to the Varners. It is painfully beautiful. Each massive sentence invites the reader to examine the placement and meaning of every phrase, every word, and in so doing, unravels some small part of the universe.
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Aaarghh - just finished the second section (Eula), which ends with that Flem Snopes / devil / soul scene. Huh?! Need a Cliff's Notes - anyone got one???
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I am still fairly entrenched in the beginning of the book and I know it's a "sequel" in the loosest sense of the word to Faulkner's short story "Barn Burning" in that it further chronicles the Snopes saga. I am curious as to why Faulkner chose to follow the lives of the Snopes family who are represented as being completely degenerate, but I guess everyone in Jefferson County in Faulkner's mind is. More to come...
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Read in December, 2007
I find this book challenging what I remember of Faulkner from my college classes. There's more dry wit in here than I expected to find. I'm also not used to thinking of Faulkner as creating characters who are so totally defined by one characteristic that they become almost parodies of themselves. And was that Benjy Compson dragging his feet down the road in Flem's part of town?
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Read in June, 1992
Good ole' Flem Snopes. I read this story while in a Southern Lit class my sophomore year of college. I was a science major who refused to take 'World Masterpieces' as my literature requirement...stupid me. Regardless, I remember enjoying the book while in class, but since I haven't been pulled back to it since..it only gets a 3.
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I am astonished by the power of this novel in Faulkner's staggering list of great novels. Each character is breathtaking in their development and Faulkner is already predicting the destruction of rural America even before Eisenhower was building roads and the Toll Brothers started destroying 150 year-old farms.
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Read in February, 2008
I love Faulkner, which is why I was puzzled that I hadn't read this book yet. Apparently, I killed the brain cells that held that memory, because as soon Ike Snopes and his bovine love made an appearance, I had a deja vu moment. This book is funnier than other Faulkner novels. Definitely worth a read.
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Read in January, 2008
recommends it for:
someone who wants to read everything by Faulkner
Patchwork. Some ugly crisp chemically treated calico sewn onto fantastically faded and knee-stretched denim.
The good stuff is really good. The rest is not so really good. Sometimes a little embarassing, even.
The good stuff is really good. The rest is not so really good. Sometimes a little embarassing, even.
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This book is the mother document of truiy contemporary Southern fiction and contains one of the best lines in all Southern sarcasm--"They repealed that law making you play the cotton market."
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This is more great stuff from Faulkner. I'm only half way through as I write this, but I'm already prepared to rate this a five-star book. Can't get enough of that Snopes family.
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My favorite author Michael Malone said this was *his* favorite book. I couldn't get through the first five pages, it was so dense. I'll have to try again when I have more patience.
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Just saw "Long, Hot Summer" -- guessing it's a bit of a stretch from the original text, but worth a read even if it's somewhat close.
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Read in January, 2005
My first Faulkner. Very challenging read, but in the end well worth it. Such a rich world that I can still conjure up easily.
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Read in April, 1982
recommends it for:
Fans of Faulkner, and of tedious writing in general
I learned from this book that I like Hemingway a lot better. If Faulkner is an acquired taste, I've not yet acquired it.
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Read in April, 2008
I should really give him more credit, but I stopped reading after Eula's section because it repulsed me.
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Read in March, 2004
Sooooooooo boring. and essentially pointless. you hvae to skim large parts of it.
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