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Novels 1936–1940: Absalom, Absalom! / The Unvanquished / If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem / The Hamlet
The four novels in this Library of America collection show Faulkner at the height of his powers and fully demonstrate the range of his genius. They explore the tragic and comic aspects of a South haunted by its past and uncertain of its future.
In the intricate, spellbinding masterpiece Absalom, Absalom! (1936), Quentin Compson descends into a vortex of images, voices, passions, and doomed desires as he and his Harvard roommate re-create the story of Thomas Sutpen and the insane ambitions, romantic hopes, and distortions of honor and conscience that trap Sutpen and those around him, until their grief and pride and fate become the inescapable and unbearable legacy of a past that is not dead and not even past.
In seven episodes, The Unvanquished (1938) recounts the ordeals and triumphs of the Sartoris family during and after the Civil War as seen through the maturing consciousness of young Bayard Sartoris. The indomitable Granny Millard, the honor-driven patriarch Colonel Sartoris, the quick-witted and inventive Ringo, the ferociously heroic Drusilla, and the scheming, mendacious Ab Snopes embody the inheritance that Bayard must reconcile with a new, but diminished, South.
If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem (published in 1939 as The Wild Palms) tells of desperate lovers fleeing convention and of a convict escaping the chaos of passion. In “The Wild Palms,” an emotional and geographic odyssey ends in a Mississippi coastal town. In counterpoint, “Old Man” recounts the adventures of an inarticulate “tall convict” swept to freedom by a raging Mississippi flood, but who then fights to return to his simple prison life.
In The Hamlet (1940), the first book of the great Snopes family trilogy, the outrageous scheming energy of Flem Snopes and his relatives is vividly and hilariously juxtaposed with the fragile communal customs of Frenchman’s Bend. Here are Ike Snopes, in love with a cow, the sexual adventures of Eula Varner Snopes, and the wild saturnalia of the spotted horses auction, a comic masterpiece.
The Library of America edition of Faulkner’s work publishes for the first time new, corrected texts of The Unvanquished, If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem, and The Hamlet. (The corrected text of Absalom, Absalom! was published by Random House in 1986.) Manuscripts, typescripts, galleys, and published editions have been collated to produce versions that are faithful to Faulkner’s intentions and free of the changes introduced by subsequent editors.
In the intricate, spellbinding masterpiece Absalom, Absalom! (1936), Quentin Compson descends into a vortex of images, voices, passions, and doomed desires as he and his Harvard roommate re-create the story of Thomas Sutpen and the insane ambitions, romantic hopes, and distortions of honor and conscience that trap Sutpen and those around him, until their grief and pride and fate become the inescapable and unbearable legacy of a past that is not dead and not even past.
In seven episodes, The Unvanquished (1938) recounts the ordeals and triumphs of the Sartoris family during and after the Civil War as seen through the maturing consciousness of young Bayard Sartoris. The indomitable Granny Millard, the honor-driven patriarch Colonel Sartoris, the quick-witted and inventive Ringo, the ferociously heroic Drusilla, and the scheming, mendacious Ab Snopes embody the inheritance that Bayard must reconcile with a new, but diminished, South.
If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem (published in 1939 as The Wild Palms) tells of desperate lovers fleeing convention and of a convict escaping the chaos of passion. In “The Wild Palms,” an emotional and geographic odyssey ends in a Mississippi coastal town. In counterpoint, “Old Man” recounts the adventures of an inarticulate “tall convict” swept to freedom by a raging Mississippi flood, but who then fights to return to his simple prison life.
In The Hamlet (1940), the first book of the great Snopes family trilogy, the outrageous scheming energy of Flem Snopes and his relatives is vividly and hilariously juxtaposed with the fragile communal customs of Frenchman’s Bend. Here are Ike Snopes, in love with a cow, the sexual adventures of Eula Varner Snopes, and the wild saturnalia of the spotted horses auction, a comic masterpiece.
The Library of America edition of Faulkner’s work publishes for the first time new, corrected texts of The Unvanquished, If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem, and The Hamlet. (The corrected text of Absalom, Absalom! was published by Random House in 1986.) Manuscripts, typescripts, galleys, and published editions have been collated to produce versions that are faithful to Faulkner’s intentions and free of the changes introduced by subsequent editors.
1148 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 1990
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About the author
William Faulkner
1,383 books10.7k followersWilliam Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer. He is best known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, a stand-in for Lafayette County where he spent most of his life. A Nobel laureate, Faulkner is one of the most celebrated writers of American literature and often is considered the greatest writer of Southern literature.
Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, and raised in Oxford, Mississippi. During World War I, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, but did not serve in combat. Returning to Oxford, he attended the University of Mississippi for three semesters before dropping out. He moved to New Orleans, where he wrote his first novel Soldiers' Pay (1925). He went back to Oxford and wrote Sartoris (1927), his first work set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County. In 1929, he published The Sound and the Fury. The following year, he wrote As I Lay Dying. Later that decade, he wrote Light in August, Absalom, Absalom! and The Wild Palms. He also worked as a screenwriter, contributing to Howard Hawks's To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep, adapted from Raymond Chandler's novel. The former film, adapted from Ernest Hemingway's novel, is the only film with contributions by two Nobel laureates.
Faulkner's reputation grew following publication of Malcolm Cowley's The Portable Faulkner, and he was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his powerful and unique contribution to the modern American novel." He is the only Mississippi-born Nobel laureate. Two of his works, A Fable (1954) and The Reivers (1962), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Faulkner died from a heart attack on July 6, 1962, following a fall from his horse the month before. Ralph Ellison called him "the greatest artist the South has produced".
Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, and raised in Oxford, Mississippi. During World War I, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, but did not serve in combat. Returning to Oxford, he attended the University of Mississippi for three semesters before dropping out. He moved to New Orleans, where he wrote his first novel Soldiers' Pay (1925). He went back to Oxford and wrote Sartoris (1927), his first work set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County. In 1929, he published The Sound and the Fury. The following year, he wrote As I Lay Dying. Later that decade, he wrote Light in August, Absalom, Absalom! and The Wild Palms. He also worked as a screenwriter, contributing to Howard Hawks's To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep, adapted from Raymond Chandler's novel. The former film, adapted from Ernest Hemingway's novel, is the only film with contributions by two Nobel laureates.
Faulkner's reputation grew following publication of Malcolm Cowley's The Portable Faulkner, and he was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his powerful and unique contribution to the modern American novel." He is the only Mississippi-born Nobel laureate. Two of his works, A Fable (1954) and The Reivers (1962), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Faulkner died from a heart attack on July 6, 1962, following a fall from his horse the month before. Ralph Ellison called him "the greatest artist the South has produced".
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
January 6, 2019
It seems almost pointless to review this volume because one of the novels here is a classic beyond too much praise, and the remainder astonishing and worthy comic masterpieces in their own right. The lovely Library of America series has been bestowing canonical status on authors for some time now, and grouping works in volumes such as this one. If the allure of collection or Absalom, Absalom! draws folks attention to less well-known works by Faulkner, great. And the edition is sumptuous. What of the books? The Unvanquished is a collection of mostly comic linked stories about Col. John Sartoris and his son Bayard. The heroic early tales cover the soldier's epic exploits in the Civil War and his son's comic efforts at thwarting and outwitting Yankees during same. As the chapters / stories move forward chronologically, the narrative takes on a darker hue as Bayard becomes a man and has to revenge a couple of deaths in his family. The entirety is filled with wonderful writing and largely centered on Bayard's point of view. If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem used to be known as two separate paired novels, The Old Man and Wild Palms. They are intertwined here—both narratives gaining strength by the juxtaposition. The former tells the story of a convict during a flood of the Mississippi, his extended misadventures involving a boat and an extremely pregnant woman. The latter tells the doomed romance between a medical student and a married woman. Pregnancies feature in both stories and in some ways the convict's narrative is the comic inversion of the medical student's tragedy. Wild Palms always got on my nerves as a standalone narrative; pairing and intertwining it with The Old Man makes so much sense. And of course The Hamlet is the first installment in the Snopes trilogy, the long narrative about how the corrupt, fecund Snopes clan makes their way from the back hills of Yoknapatawpha county to the very heart of Jefferson's power centers. The Hamlet shows the first steps of this amazingly funny clan, as they scheme their way into Frenchman's Bend. It contains the story of the wild ponies Flem Snopes brings back to the Bend, which is one of the funniest stories Faulkner ever penned. As a whole the novel has a dozen laugh out loud moments. And really, there is nothing to say about Absalom, Absalom except that it is the best novel written by an American yet. It is a monumental achievement and the apex of Faulkner's powers. He wrote five stone cold masterpieces over the length of his career (Light in August, Go Down Moses, The Sound and the Fury, and As I Lay Dying being the other four), but this one is the highest peak of the Himalayas of his achievement. It alone makes the volume worth the candle.
December 2, 2015
Editor is sitting at his desk with an ashtray full of stubs, a yellowish manuscript in his pale hands when a man enters the door, the sound of his voice full of fury:
“You’ve placed a period in the middle of that sentence.”
Editor: “Oh, Bill, good to see you, pal. I’m afraid I don’t…”
Bill: “Yew kilt my book. You cant do that. You just cant interrupt a sentence and destroy its meaning with a period out of thin air.”
Editor: “Look Bill, I am not following you here. What are we talking about?”
Bill: “You know too well what I am talking about: Chapter Six. You’ve inserted a period in the middle of the sentence even if it must be absolutely clear to everyone the sentence is not finished.”
Editor looking at the ashtray: “I see, THAT chapter. Look Bill, let’s talk about it. I thought maybe, just maybe, it would be easier for people to read it if there would be two two-pages long sentences instead of the one four pages long.”
Bill: “What people?”
Editor: “Readers?”
Bill: “Readers? Well, let me tell you what your readers will see. They will see a writer who is not capable to finish his sentence correctly. Who inconceivably interrupts logical structure of the crucial part of the story. Everyone will see it. Them fokes will reckon Faulkner's a durn feller who aint no good.”
Editor carefully lighting his cigarette: “A writer who is not capable to finish his sentence… Look Bill, we are getting somewhere here at last. Some people think it might be a good idea to finish a sentence while reader still remembers its beginning and (Bill waving his hands)… please, do not interrupt me here…”
Bill: “Ah, I believe you dont mind interrupting others in the middle of their sentence.”
Editor: “…and some people think it’s even possible to use like ten sentences instead of one, you know.”
Bill: “Gol darn it! What fokes again?”
Editor: “Other writers, like Mr. Hemingway and…”
Bill: “Mr Hemingway, you say? Mr Hemingway who cant handle enough vocabulary to need comma in his books? That rascal?”
Editor looking at the ashtray more resolutely: “Well at least he knows how to sell books and earn money for his publisher.”
Bill: “Oh, bless yore heart, I reckon we atalkin bidnis hyere? Using English for varmints as the way to get rich, really? Now, drop that period and use a semi-colon just as I did and as any decent writer would do.”
“You’ve placed a period in the middle of that sentence.”
Editor: “Oh, Bill, good to see you, pal. I’m afraid I don’t…”
Bill: “Yew kilt my book. You cant do that. You just cant interrupt a sentence and destroy its meaning with a period out of thin air.”
Editor: “Look Bill, I am not following you here. What are we talking about?”
Bill: “You know too well what I am talking about: Chapter Six. You’ve inserted a period in the middle of the sentence even if it must be absolutely clear to everyone the sentence is not finished.”
Editor looking at the ashtray: “I see, THAT chapter. Look Bill, let’s talk about it. I thought maybe, just maybe, it would be easier for people to read it if there would be two two-pages long sentences instead of the one four pages long.”
Bill: “What people?”
Editor: “Readers?”
Bill: “Readers? Well, let me tell you what your readers will see. They will see a writer who is not capable to finish his sentence correctly. Who inconceivably interrupts logical structure of the crucial part of the story. Everyone will see it. Them fokes will reckon Faulkner's a durn feller who aint no good.”
Editor carefully lighting his cigarette: “A writer who is not capable to finish his sentence… Look Bill, we are getting somewhere here at last. Some people think it might be a good idea to finish a sentence while reader still remembers its beginning and (Bill waving his hands)… please, do not interrupt me here…”
Bill: “Ah, I believe you dont mind interrupting others in the middle of their sentence.”
Editor: “…and some people think it’s even possible to use like ten sentences instead of one, you know.”
Bill: “Gol darn it! What fokes again?”
Editor: “Other writers, like Mr. Hemingway and…”
Bill: “Mr Hemingway, you say? Mr Hemingway who cant handle enough vocabulary to need comma in his books? That rascal?”
Editor looking at the ashtray more resolutely: “Well at least he knows how to sell books and earn money for his publisher.”
Bill: “Oh, bless yore heart, I reckon we atalkin bidnis hyere? Using English for varmints as the way to get rich, really? Now, drop that period and use a semi-colon just as I did and as any decent writer would do.”
June 22, 2020
El tercer tomo de la serie publicada por la Librería de America incluye 4 novelas que vieron la luz entre 1936 y 1940, en las que un
William FAULKNER
maduro y en pleno dominio de su prosa, continúa la exploración de ese Sur post-esclavista, todavía dominado por los fantasmas del pasado.
La novela que más me gustó es “Absalom, Absalom!” (1936), que se ocupa de la trágica historia de Thomas Sutpen, narrada desde varios puntos de vista, en particular, el del ya conocido Quentin Compson. “The Unvanquished” (1938) una colección de historias relacionadas sobre el coronel John Sartoris y su hijo Bayard, que me sorprendió por el tono humorístico, casi cómico, que no había notado antes en FAULKNER.
“If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem” (1939) me pareció bastante inverosímil, aunque tiene todos los elementos característicos del autor: la descripción precisa de los personajes usando una gran economía de palabras, los cambios de narración y la estructura inusual. Finalmente, “The Hamlet” (1940), la primera entrega de la trilogía de la familia Snopes, es una novela es relativamente accesible y magistralmente diseñada, que describe cómo el corrupto clan se abre paso desde las colinas del condado de Yoknapatawpha hasta el corazón de los centros de poder de Jefferson.
La novela que más me gustó es “Absalom, Absalom!” (1936), que se ocupa de la trágica historia de Thomas Sutpen, narrada desde varios puntos de vista, en particular, el del ya conocido Quentin Compson. “The Unvanquished” (1938) una colección de historias relacionadas sobre el coronel John Sartoris y su hijo Bayard, que me sorprendió por el tono humorístico, casi cómico, que no había notado antes en FAULKNER.
“If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem” (1939) me pareció bastante inverosímil, aunque tiene todos los elementos característicos del autor: la descripción precisa de los personajes usando una gran economía de palabras, los cambios de narración y la estructura inusual. Finalmente, “The Hamlet” (1940), la primera entrega de la trilogía de la familia Snopes, es una novela es relativamente accesible y magistralmente diseñada, que describe cómo el corrupto clan se abre paso desde las colinas del condado de Yoknapatawpha hasta el corazón de los centros de poder de Jefferson.
October 22, 2008
Unfortunately I only had time to read The Unvanquished before the library wanted this book back. I like William Faulkner a lot and enjoyed this book. Compared to the other books I've read by him, I thought that this one was the most linear and easy to read, which was a bit strange at first. I also thought that he presented some interesting ideas about the civil war, reconstruction, and gender.
September 26, 2020
Absalom! Absalom! is a masterpiece and the most enjoyable novel of the four. Faulkner tells the story of Thomas Sutpen, who stole 100 square miles of land from the Indians and set up a plantation in 1833. He brought with him enslaved people from Haiti and he and they raised a big house in which Sutpen lived until a few years past the Civil War. Sutpen also had a son (with an "octoroon") in Haiti who figures into later events.
Faulkner realizes how savage and horrible this shit is. Sutpen is not a hero, and this is not the genteel antebellum South. It is a South in which the biggest assholes -- the thieves, the confidence men and the enslavers -- are the one who have the biggest houses.
The story is told in tandem by two men, who are homoerotically talking together on a cold winter night in New Haven in 1909. Quentin Compson is the descendent of one of the side characters in the history, and he visited an old lady, Miss Coldfield, at the outset of the story. Miss Coldfield was a significant player in the 1830 - 1870 events. Her creepy, old-lady digs set the vibe for the whole story -- a South of secrets, in which the curtains are shut and light does not enter.
The next novel, The Unvanquished, is (mostly) about a crazy and badass Southern grandma and her famiy during the Civil War. She guards her chest of gold, her gold is plundered during the Northern occupation, and she walks right into the officer's tent and gets it back. She almost drowns while crossing a river with her family. Then she engages in an operation that makes her a lot of money -- she partners with Ab Snopes to steal horses and mules from Northern regiments and sell them back to other regiments.
The Unvanquished is a little too much of "the old lost cause" for me -- whether ironic or not. The grandmother is still an enslaver, mother of a Confederate general. And Faulkner gets a little cute with his message, overpraising the down-and-out Southerners who were so badly affected by the Civil War -- "By God," a Northern lieutenant says, "I'd rather engage Forrest's whole brigade every morning for six months than spend that same length of time trying to protect United States property from defenseless Southern women and niggers and children."
The next novel is If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem, which is a page-turner. It's two stories that are mixed into one. One is the story of a tall convict sent from Parchman to work on a levee during the 1927 flood of the lower Mississippi -- the most damaging flood of the century. The other is a story of love, desperation, being incredibly short-sighted and impractical, and a gathering sense of doom (no spoilers there -- the first scene is of a rainy night in which Charlotte is hurt and Harry has run to the doctor for help). The Charlotte-Harry story takes place about 10 years after the flood.
The scenes of the flood in the convict part are incredibly vivid (the convict gets swept away in a skiff with a woman when he is sent to rescue her and somebody else). This is pre-flood management by the federal government, so the convict ends up floating over miles of farmland, into the swamps in Louisiana. There is no dry land that is not covered in snakes.
The final novel in the collection of four is The Hamlet. This is Faulkner at his most Twain-like. He tells the stories of these people in Yoknapatawpha County, which is close to Faulkner's home base of Oxford. He takes his time with the stories, not really worrying too much about connecting them. These are tales. They are connected because they take place over a limited amount of time (the 1890s) in a very limited geographical space, but one event doesn't necessarily follow from the previous. The main characters of The Hamlet are Ratliff, a sewing-machine seller across four counties who travels in a buckboard, and Flem Snopes (yes, the fact-checker Snopes named himself after the Snopes clan), son of Ab (who had been involved in the horse-stealing operation of The Unvanquished 30 years earlier -- this is the same universe).
I lived in Oxford for a short while and I visited Rowan Oak multiple times. Faulkner outlined the events of The Hamlet on his bedroom wall.
It was sometimes hard to read this book during the pandemic, when most of my family members are always around. Deep concentration is sometimes required, especially for passages of Absalom and If I Forget Thee. But it is good work, rewarding work in the end. And it is better to read it now, at age ~50, than it would have been to read it earlier.
Faulkner realizes how savage and horrible this shit is. Sutpen is not a hero, and this is not the genteel antebellum South. It is a South in which the biggest assholes -- the thieves, the confidence men and the enslavers -- are the one who have the biggest houses.
The story is told in tandem by two men, who are homoerotically talking together on a cold winter night in New Haven in 1909. Quentin Compson is the descendent of one of the side characters in the history, and he visited an old lady, Miss Coldfield, at the outset of the story. Miss Coldfield was a significant player in the 1830 - 1870 events. Her creepy, old-lady digs set the vibe for the whole story -- a South of secrets, in which the curtains are shut and light does not enter.
The next novel, The Unvanquished, is (mostly) about a crazy and badass Southern grandma and her famiy during the Civil War. She guards her chest of gold, her gold is plundered during the Northern occupation, and she walks right into the officer's tent and gets it back. She almost drowns while crossing a river with her family. Then she engages in an operation that makes her a lot of money -- she partners with Ab Snopes to steal horses and mules from Northern regiments and sell them back to other regiments.
The Unvanquished is a little too much of "the old lost cause" for me -- whether ironic or not. The grandmother is still an enslaver, mother of a Confederate general. And Faulkner gets a little cute with his message, overpraising the down-and-out Southerners who were so badly affected by the Civil War -- "By God," a Northern lieutenant says, "I'd rather engage Forrest's whole brigade every morning for six months than spend that same length of time trying to protect United States property from defenseless Southern women and niggers and children."
The next novel is If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem, which is a page-turner. It's two stories that are mixed into one. One is the story of a tall convict sent from Parchman to work on a levee during the 1927 flood of the lower Mississippi -- the most damaging flood of the century. The other is a story of love, desperation, being incredibly short-sighted and impractical, and a gathering sense of doom (no spoilers there -- the first scene is of a rainy night in which Charlotte is hurt and Harry has run to the doctor for help). The Charlotte-Harry story takes place about 10 years after the flood.
The scenes of the flood in the convict part are incredibly vivid (the convict gets swept away in a skiff with a woman when he is sent to rescue her and somebody else). This is pre-flood management by the federal government, so the convict ends up floating over miles of farmland, into the swamps in Louisiana. There is no dry land that is not covered in snakes.
The final novel in the collection of four is The Hamlet. This is Faulkner at his most Twain-like. He tells the stories of these people in Yoknapatawpha County, which is close to Faulkner's home base of Oxford. He takes his time with the stories, not really worrying too much about connecting them. These are tales. They are connected because they take place over a limited amount of time (the 1890s) in a very limited geographical space, but one event doesn't necessarily follow from the previous. The main characters of The Hamlet are Ratliff, a sewing-machine seller across four counties who travels in a buckboard, and Flem Snopes (yes, the fact-checker Snopes named himself after the Snopes clan), son of Ab (who had been involved in the horse-stealing operation of The Unvanquished 30 years earlier -- this is the same universe).
I lived in Oxford for a short while and I visited Rowan Oak multiple times. Faulkner outlined the events of The Hamlet on his bedroom wall.
It was sometimes hard to read this book during the pandemic, when most of my family members are always around. Deep concentration is sometimes required, especially for passages of Absalom and If I Forget Thee. But it is good work, rewarding work in the end. And it is better to read it now, at age ~50, than it would have been to read it earlier.
July 3, 2017
Re-read Absalom, Absalom! prior to visiting the excellent "Faulkner: Life and Works" exhibit at the University of Virginia's Harrison Institute. Whenever I ask myself which Faulkner work I love the most, I'm always torn between Absalom and Faulkner's own favorite, The Sound and the Fury. Both are marvelous, of course, but Absalom seems to have a special place in my heart, perhaps because the defining event in the life of the central character, Thomas Sutpen, occurs during his teens in the Tidewater region of Virginia, where I was born and raised. It is the story of one man's driving, overwhelming ambition, and the terrible price he and his family pay for it. Along the way, the Civil War affects all the characters' lives. Frequently, the narrator is Quentin Compson, one of the four Compson children who are at the center of The Sound and the Fury. Love this novel!
March 14, 2021
I suppose I should feel bad that I could only read 10 pages before giving up, but this was just too much work. I think there were literally 12 sentences in those 10 pages. There were a total of 7 commas and 12 periods with a lot of parenthesis thrown in. The guy just didn't like to use punctuation. And the story itself was depressing and was going to stay that way. Time for me to move on.
October 17, 2018
Contains some of Faulkner's best writing, but I found the novels themselves a bit of a mixed bag. All contain some really compelling moments, but also some tedious stretches that were sometimes a struggle to get through. Not my favorite Faulkner, but still worth a read.
November 1, 2024
Some quick thoughts:
Absalom absalom - Considered his masterpiece and I mostly agree although the strucutre and style used despite being perfect for the story here was tedious to read at times.
The unvanquished and the Wild Palms- Well written as always but both suffer from the problem in that as a whole both don’t work as effectively compared to the individual parts. The unvanquished I would say better holds itself as a cohesive unit.
The hamlet -underrated, the slow formation of each individual story that forms into a larger narrative overtime is exemplary. It also achieves the same biblical feel equal to that of ‘Absalom Absalom’. This is worthy of being in the same league as ‘Absalom Absalom’ and ‘The sound and the Fury’.
Absalom absalom - Considered his masterpiece and I mostly agree although the strucutre and style used despite being perfect for the story here was tedious to read at times.
The unvanquished and the Wild Palms- Well written as always but both suffer from the problem in that as a whole both don’t work as effectively compared to the individual parts. The unvanquished I would say better holds itself as a cohesive unit.
The hamlet -underrated, the slow formation of each individual story that forms into a larger narrative overtime is exemplary. It also achieves the same biblical feel equal to that of ‘Absalom Absalom’. This is worthy of being in the same league as ‘Absalom Absalom’ and ‘The sound and the Fury’.
October 13, 2009
If I Forget Thee Jerusalem. This collection of Faulkner novels is one of Chester Stewart's collection of books.
It is the first time that I have read anything by Faulkner. I found the prose difficult at times, but the stories compelling and, in the end, depresssing.
It is the first time that I have read anything by Faulkner. I found the prose difficult at times, but the stories compelling and, in the end, depresssing.
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February 11, 2023I was once taught that Absalom, Absalom! was his greatest masterpiece and one of the greatest books ever written. Perhaps. It's difficult to compare Faulkner to Faulkner... or to anyone else for that matter. I still have a special place in my heart for If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem.
October 4, 2008
Another in a long list of classics or near clasics from America's greatest novelist.
May 15, 2011
This is going to be a very long summer...
February 16, 2012
You can't go wrong with reading the Dixie Express. The novels in this collection are some of his most important work.
December 30, 2012
From this collection read Absalom, Absalom! and If I Forget Thee, Jurusalem
May 10, 2013
See my reviews for the individual novels contained in this volume.
June 14, 2021
Absalom, Absalom!
The Unvanquished
If I Forget Thee Jerusalem
The Unvanquished
If I Forget Thee Jerusalem
April 13, 2017
Prime Faulkner once again. These four novels expand the scope of Yoknapatawphuh county even further, filling in blanks left from earlier works in his trademark idiom.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews