The Mansion

The Snopes Trilogy #3

by William Faulkner

The Mansion completes Faulkner’s great trilogy of the Snopes family in the mythical county of Yoknapatawpha, Mississippi, which also includes The Hamlet and The Town. Beginning with the murder of Jack Houston, and ending with the murder of Flem Snopes, it traces the downfall of this indomitable post-bellum family, who managed to seize control of the town of Jefferson within a generation.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Literature, American, Novels, Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction

496 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1959

About the author

William 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".

Reviews

[Luís · Rating 4 out of 5]

After "The Hamlet" and "The Town," this book closes the Snopes trilogy that spans fifty years. Flem is now at the top, president of the bank, owner of the French hamlet, and enjoys a certain notoriety. Eula, his wife, committed suicide, and his daughter Linda left for Spain to fight alongside the Republicans; everything is going well for him. But from the depths of his prison, Mink, the murderous farmer, has still not digested that his cousin Flem did not get him out of his hole. That was 38 years ago, but his resentment is tenacious. In this last volume, Faulkner reveals a few gray areas left here and there in the first two volumes; his words have calmed down. We do not find the same literary verve. The narrators are always the same: Gavin, in love with Eula, then with Linda, his daughter, and the ineffable Ratliff, a chatterbox who would undoubtedly have found his place in this group.
It took Faulkner 20 years to complete this cycle, after which he would only write The Reivers.
Reading the Snopes is an adventure of almost 1400 pages. For my part, I read them in the original editions of the 60s.

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite Faulkner novel, though I have re-read As I Lay Dying and a couple others more often, and taught them in Freshman Comp 2, the lit based course at my community college. For one thing, The Mansion is written from the perspective of a jailed psychopathic murderer, anxious to get out--so that he can murder again. How can we approve that?
By the end of the novel, the reader is with the psychopath, Mink Snopes, hoping he can kill his cousin Flem who has drained, one by one, all his relations' wealth and property to become the wealthiest landowner in Yoknapatawpha County.
Mink out of jail, preparing for killing Flem, reflects "Maybe it didn’t take even three years of freedom, immunity from it to learn that perhaps the entire dilemma of man’s condition is because of the ceaseless gabble with which he has surrounded himself, enclosed himself, insulated himself from the penalties of his own folly..."

The previous two novels reflect on politics more, but Mink thinks our national character rejects politics as "our national refuge for our incompetents who have failed at every other occupation by means of which they might make a living for themselves and their families..."
This last novel in the trilogy builds great irony. The Hamlet, the Town and The Mansion all include humor, especially The Town, where Ratliff the sewing-machine salesman can be a hoot.
He may also appear in As I Lay Dying, which is brilliantly teachable, perspectival from chapter to chapter, from different characters' viewpoints.

[Bill on GR Sabbatical · Rating 4 out of 5]

"There aren't any morals," Stevens said. "People just do the best they can."
"The pore sons of bitches," Ratliff said.

So conclude a quorum of the three-member Greek chorus of Faulkner's trilogy on the Snopes family, as the curtain comes down on this final act. Charles Mallison is home from World War II, but isn't riding in the car with his uncle, County Attorney Gavin Stevens, and salesman V.K. Ratliff, to take part in the conversation.

They are distilling this wisdom looking back after the death of Flem Snopes at the hands of family members whose lives he damaged in his lifelong struggle for money and respectability. Like Stevens and Ratliff, I found humanity in each of the major characters, including Flem, his stepdaughter Linda, and his cousin Mink.

I also found and enjoyed Faulkner's customary humor and insights on the changes the South was experiencing in the period of the novel, roughly the first half of the 20th century. Characters participate in the Spanish Civil War and World War II and, surprisingly to me, Faulkner even drops the names of Hemingway, Malraux, and Huey Long.

For me, this was a satisfying conclusion to the very worthwhile experience of reading the Snopes trilogy.

[J · Rating 5 out of 5]

The final installment of the Snopes by William Faulkner uses the 3rd person perspective while oscillating in tone between poetic and colloquial, depending on the character(s) being described. The Mansion is more lucid than the preceding books, The Hamlet and The Town, respectively. But even when Faulkner’s prose is polished, it is rather circuitous.

Snopes spans about five decades and is a local history, narrow in its ostensible scope; however, in many instances it encompasses a history of Mississippi, the Deep South, the United States, and even the whole of humankind.

This review will attempt to refrain from discussing the entirety of the trilogy as much as possible and focus on The Mansion in itself. It will not achieve total success because the Mansion explains, sometimes in more detail and other times from a new perspective, events from The Town, as well as and even more so, events from The Hamlet.

From the late 19th century to the middle of the 20th, Snopes chronicles an evolving country: mule and horse-drawn carriages and buckboards turn into automobiles, an agrarian economy becomes financialized. Even the advent of American football is described. Inequality and war are two things that remain constant. Of the latter, Faulkner says, regarding the men returning from combat: “…with only a third of life over, to know now that they had already experienced their greatest experience, and now to find that the world for which they had so endured and risked was in their absence so altered out of recognition by the ones who had stayed safe at home as to have no place for them in it anymore.”

The Mansion is the most overt of the three books in its anti-racism. The KKK and the lesser known Silver Shirts are mentioned fairly frequently. Faulkner is never heavy-handed but allows bigotry to appear senseless on its own account.

The Mansion also features politics more prominently. A member of the Snopes clan, Clarence, is a state senator and has potential in Washington. This corrupt character is not even close to being the most depraved of the Snopes, but he is used to represent most politicians; and we mustn’t forget this prescient statement: “Politics and political office are not the method and means by which we can govern ourselves in peace and dignity and honor and security, but instead are our national refuge for our incompetents who have failed at every other occupation by means of which they might make a living for themselves and their families.”

Pessimistic sentiments are prevalent as the main catastrophe from The Town, a suicide, is revisited. Here's a bleak example: “You are happy when your life is filled, and any life is filled when it is so busy living from moment to moment that it has no time over to remember yesterday or dread tomorrow. Which of course couldn’t last.”

More than racism, bigotry, misogyny, politics, or philosophy, The Mansion is about the superstitious and sanctimonious fools and foolishness that typically make up a town like Jefferson, MS—or a county like his fictitious Yoknapatawpha. Only a few characters, Charles Mallison, Gavin Stevens, VK Ratliff, and Linda Snopes, provide us with freethinking mouthpieces for the author. Public sentiment dictates a lot of what happens over the course of the lives of these characters and others. We see what “Main Street” has to offer, and generally, it is not good.

The Mansion has Faulkner jabbing at the good old U.S. of A.: for all its backwardness, for all its bull pucky, but he is not making fun of it. He’s lamenting human frailty and folly. He speaks of the doom of war, the carnage; but he’s speaking as one of those watching the men return home—the men injured in mind and body. It is amazing how the voice of the author can feel like that of a large group: a community, a town, a county, or even a country.

The novel is not all grim. There is some good advice: “Don’t ever waste time regretting errors. Just don’t forget them.” There are sensible, good-hearted characters. But there are hard truths, and there is much cynicism: “Illusionees”—those who believe that “honor and justice and decency would prevail just because they were honorable just and decent.”

It is in this last book that we truly see what Snopes represents. The “Sn” sound in the name is no coincidence (sounds like snake). The family, the name, and even all the individual Snopeses come to represent all the greedy philistines in all the world.

[Clif Hostetler · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this, the final book of Faulkner’s “Snopes” trilogy, we see the completion of the narrative that follows the rise of Flem Snopes from son of poor tenant farmer to bank president living in The Mansion.

Actually, the bank presidency was achieved by the end of the last novel, The Town. But the happenings in the previous two books of the trilogy are pretty well rehashed in this book, and thanks to the skilled and talented writing abilities of Faulkner the retelling is from a different point of view and holds the reader's interest.

The circuitous path followed by the narrative passes through numerous short stories about life in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County. It's a style of writing that reminds me of Garrison Keillor’s fictional Lake Wobegon.

But the wandering story line manages to reach a conclusion which I found less than satisfying. I’ve heard Faulkner referred to as the “poet of the southern dung-heap.” That description of southern life is shockingly negative, nevertheless I find it to be descriptive of how I feel after finishing the “Snopes” trilogy.

There are pockets of ironic humor and satirizing of southern racial prejudices in Faulkner’s writing. So I can’t say everything is negative in his writing. But something about his writing leaves me sad and depressed. It seems to confirm my personal prejudices regarding southern culture in having a rotten core covered with a flowery sweet smelling cover. (My apologies to American southerners. I know you are good people and don’t deserve this sort of slam.)

Faulkner has portrayed the rise from poverty to financial success by Flem Snopes as being an unlikeable person with no friends. I would think this sort of success would be considered a praise worthy life in an American context. Is the message here that people should stay in their place?

[Bob Brinkmeyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I said in my review of The Town, there’s a falling off in power in the late Faulkner, and we can also see that in the The Mansion, the concluding novel of the Snopes Trilogy. That said, there’s something really fascinating, intriguing, and even lovely about this novel—the depiction of Mink Snopes. Even though one section of the novel is entitled “Flem” (the other two sections are “Mink” and “Linda”), the driving force of the novel is Mink and to a lesser extent Linda. As in The Town, the fascination with Linda (and “Woman”) consumes Gavin, Ratliff, and Chick, and while she emerges, in part because of her political idealism, as a more complex figure than in the previous novel, the endless verbal masturbation concerning her by the three men once again eventually grows tiresome. Why don’t they just do something instead of talking all the time? I’m simplifying here, but you get the point.

But then there’s Mink, a great character. In glancing through some of the Goodreads reviews, I’ve noticed that a number of readers identify Mink as a psychopath, a designation that drastically misses and reduces the humanity of this driven man. Yes, he’s done some really bad things (including murder), but as Faulkner makes clear what drives him is a fierce pride and a fierce sense of honor. For many poor whites in the South during this time, scorned and taken advantage of by the middle class and the elites, pride and honor—and often violent vengeance—were the only means to maintain self-worth and dignity. Mink acts not as a psychopath but as a man driven by almost a Calvinistic sense of justice, and in this he stands far apart from the power-driven Flem. Moreover, Mink actually accomplishes some things, patiently biding his time rather than endlessly agonizing and pontificating, as Gavin and to a somewhat lesser extent Ratliff do.

The ending is some of Faulkner’s most elevated (some might say too elevated but not me) and glorious prose, and I will quote a passage (without giving anything away, I trust) to underscore how rich and in some ways heroic (as a revenge hero) Mink stands. Here Mink lies down to rest, “the ground already full of folks that had the trouble but were free now, so that it was just the ground and the dirt that had to bother and worry and anguish with the passions and hopes and skeers, the justice and the injustice and the griefs, leaving the folks themselves easy now, all mixed and jumbled up comfortable and easy so wouldn’t nobody even know or even care who was which anymore, himself among them, equal to any, good as any, brave as any, being inextricable from, anonymous with all of them: the beautiful, the splendid, the proud and the brave, right on up to the very top itself among the shining phantoms and dreams which are the milestone of the long human recording—Helen and the bishops, the kings and unhomed angels, the scornful and graceless seraphim.” Most all of my frustrations with this novel were themselves laid to rest when I got to this passage.

[Judy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Mansion completes the Snopes trilogy (The Hamlet, 1940 and The Town, 1957.) This novel follows Faulkner's fictional town of Jefferson, MS, all the way up to early 1950s, but since a small Southern town was still quite behind the times in the 1950s and since Faulkner writes always within the hovering shadows of history, it barely feels like a modern story.

The resident psychopath in this volume is Mink Snopes. He is, as they say in the South, a piece of work, who could only have been created by this author: a man of almost zero consequence except for his ability to hold a grudge with the patience of Job.

Other characters whom I have, in a weird sense, grown fond of throughout the trilogy, live out their destinies. All of these destinies are intertwined to such a degree that one small action by a single individual can produce major ripples in the lives of the others. It is these outcomes which drive the plot through the dense thickets of Faulkner's prose.

As always when I read Faulkner, I passed through all the emotions known to man. I struggled with his confounding sentences as I marveled at the sheer storytelling rhythms of his characters' voices. I wanted to quit the book but was compelled to read on. Through the tiny prism of his imagined Yoknapatawpha county, he illuminates all of mankind and especially American mankind. Reading him feels like something that is supposed to be good for you. In the end, it is!

[Marc · Rating 5 out of 5]

For me the steady build up of tension, the intricate development of multiple characters, the fictional South brought to life, and the layered, multiple perspective story telling came to a wonderful conclusion in this final book of the series. I would literally gossip about the characters to my wife and tell her about their ridiculous ploys (e.g., shake my head and say to her, "You would not believe where that Mink Snopes tried to winter his cow!"). You can feel the wheel of history slowly turning in this saga and the gears of culture just beginning to grind up again after not so short a time ago when they almost ground the country to a halt. The world changes, but survival, dignity, and love still combine to either foster a better future or provide the kindling to burn the whole thing down. I'm actually sorry this one has come to an end (normally, I'm the type of reader that's ready to jump into the excitement of a new book before the one I'm reading is even done).

[Elizabeth (Alaska) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the third and final installment of Faulkner's Snopes trilogy. It wraps up the story of the Snopes family in brilliant fashion. Although the beginning and the end of this installment are closely tied, the great middle parts are as much a putting together of anecdotes as anything. By doing so, Faulkner does a better job of characterizing his Yoknapatawpha County better than in the others of the series - or maybe even better than the other novels I have read. Or, perhaps I was trying to see more plot in the others than is there, and reading this I was more willing to just go with the flow.

Faulkner puts us inside the head of his characters better than any writer I can recall. In this, we again occasionally have V.R. Ratliff giving us the story in his own words. Ratliff isn't really part of the story, he just witnesses a lot of it, and occasionally advises Lawyer Gavin Stevens. Still, his characterization is presented as well as the others, and together with all of the others making up the characterization of the north Mississippi hill country.

Eula never done no waiting. Likely she never even knowed what the word meant, like the ground, dirt, the earth, whatever it is in it that makes seed sprout at the right time, dont know nor need to know what waiting means. Since to know what waiting means, you got to be skeered or weak or self-doubtful enough to know what impatience of hurry means, and Eula never needed them no more than that dirt does. All she needed was jest to be, like the ground of the field, until the right time come, the right wind, the right sun, the right rain; until in fact that-ere single unique big buck jumped that tame garden fence outen the big woods or the high mountain or the tall sky, and finally got through jest standing there among the sheep with his head up, looking proud. So it was McCarron that put off that long what you might call that-ere inevitable.

This quote seemed perfect when I highlighted it, but I can see how anyone reading it now would not understand the context. Still, one can see that Ratliff's observations are pure Faulkner, and, hopefully, that one can see the story would be missing something entirely without him. Not everyone is presented in dialect. Most have little southerness, one or two a bit more.

My rating for this may be based on the trilogy as a whole, rather than this installment. I do know that I wasn't very far into this, when I realized that I will keep reading Faulkner as long as there is Faulkner to be read.

[Tatiana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved, loved, loved this trilogy. Characters appear across Faulkner's novels, giving you a sense of slowly becoming enmeshed in the world of Yoknatapawpha. Prior to this I read The Sanctuary and Requiem for a Nun, in which we meet one of the Snopses, Clarence.

The first book in the trilogy, The Hamlet, is by far the most rustic and comic. The second two, The Town and The Mansion, differ in that they take place in town rather than the country, and 20 years later, post WWII, reflecting a great deal of social and economic change. The last, The Mansion, is really a revenge tragedy with the most unexpected of all heroes, a man who outside the fabric of this particular society would be deemed a psychopath, but here in an impoverished world in which survival is truly precarious in fact plays by, makes great sacrifices for and thus even in extremis reinforces the social order of this world.

Certain contrasts really stand out for me: an undercurrent of hardscrabble intensity, sometimes depravity and even violence within a society in which common decency, true neighborliness, hospitality, and good manners are strictly observed. Opposing the convoluted machinations of nearly rapine capitalism is a strong and often complicated sense of fair play and honor.

Faulkner's social commentary is subtle but sharp. I am often surprised by his reverance of nature and our abuse thereof, for example "to walk sweating through the soundless agony of cut flowers," and this startling but accurate description of cosmetics used to hide shame with "the placentae of worms and the urine and vomit of cats and cancerous whales."

The novels abound in the charm of Southern circumlocution and archaic syntax, enriched by marvellously colorful sayings like, with reference to a man who cannot keep a secret "a feller that even his in-growed toe-nails was on the outside of his shoes." At first I struggled with the double negatives and reverse syntax (forget subject, verb, object word order) but once I got the hang of it I found myself trying to talk like that!

A last comment, Cleanth Brook's critical essays on Faulkner are a must, there is so much more going on here that you are likely to miss unless you are a literature scholar with a solid grounding in the Southern Gothic genre.

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Man aint really evil, he just aint got any sense."

A great novel with which to end my Faulkner-completism journey, as it winds up both the magnificent "Snopes" trilogy as well as, I was pleased to find, pretty much all the random, frayed storylines emanating out of Jefferson, MS.
"Mansion" is the end of the Flem Snopes epic, by now that wily southern creep ensconced as head of the local bank and having restored/remade the old mansion in town as a place to sit in while his daughter prowls about drinking whiskey and trading sweetnesses with Faulkner's ubiquitous hero, lawyer Gavin Stevens. Oh yes, and the elusive Mink Snopes, Faulkner's secret literary weapon, plans his gentle, simple revenge against Flem for never getting him out of jail for murder.
This one stands out because Faulkner begins to let the outer world really flood in for the first time here. The world wars, Communism, Franco (Linda Snopes goes and fights against fascists in Spain!), the New Deal and the aftermath of all of that. Adroit of always, Faulkner weaves all of this in and out of northern Mississippi, and makes this probably his most touching and romantic novel.
I am sad this is all over, since I tend to only re-read things I like decades later, but it was a nice one to end on.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Mansion by William Faulkner. Rated 10 out of 10. Really loved this one? Ratliff and Gavin and ChIck go over and over the Snopeses (Flem, Mink, Linda primarily) again, from a later POV. You realize that Mink killing John Houston (over a tiny kennel fee to get his cow back) and Flem not coming to save him in 1908 has festered everyone until 1946 when Linda enables Mink to come home, Still angry enough at Flem to kill him, which GS in and Ratliff knew, which Flem himself knew and somehow Linda knew too. It's taken a long time to tell the story. Mink kills Houston in The Hamlet. Flem causes him to try to escape so that he be captured and re-sentenced in The Town and Mink gets released in The Mansion. So much goes on I between.

I haven't read the trilogy since I was in grad school in the 60ies.

[Lee Thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

God, I love, love, love Faulkner. These last few years I've seen that "Counrty Noir" genre thrown around, and I love the stuff, and I think Faulkner invented it. Was nice to see a cameo in this final novel of the Snopes trilogy from Jason Compson (of THE SOUND AND THE FURY.) I always hated that bastard.

[David Aasen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a drudge. The part about Mink was quite good, but after that I lost interest and skimmed through the last 200 pages. A bit disappointing since I really liked The Hamlet and enjoyed the Town.

2 or 2.5 stars.

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kind of a letdown after The Town. There is a good third of the novel that is a rehash of the previous two. I don’t mind, however, because the story is told by different narrators and there are added details. But sometimes I got a little impatient and had to remind myself that Absalom, Absalom also went over its material several times. However, I felt that Mink Snopes’ recollection of why he killed Houston was a bit of revisionism (Faulkner published The Hamlet nineteen years prior to The Mansion) and that Faulkner had decided he wanted to make a different point with the incident. I can’t complain too much since I always felt like Houston’s murder was entirely too abrupt, so finally getting to know why it happened was rewarding on some level. But I wish that Faulkner had figured out some way to have Mink narrate his chapters himself instead of bringing back the omniscient narrator who was not missed in The Town. I was bummed that Faulkner could not figure out a way to continue the multiple first-person narrators that were so perfect in The Town. I loved the chapter that Monty Snopes narrated and his observations about the nature of being a Snopes. I felt Charles Mallison became a better narrator as an adult because he is old enough to look critically at Gavin Stevens’ decisions. I continued to have an emotional involvement in Gavin and Linda Snopes’ relationship, and I was always aware of the ghost of Eula haunting our protagonists. I think that Linda is my favorite of Faulkner’s rebellious female characters. I loved the stories about Clarence Snopes political career and old Meadowfield’s battle with Snopes and his own daughter. I loved the section on Jason Compson’s attempt to get Snopes to buy the old golf course (previous the Compson mile) to build an airport called Snopes Field, only to see it become GI housing called Eula Acres. I loved getting to see some of the old characters like Miss Reba and Minnie in Memphis, or a glimpse of Ike McCaslin. I appreciated the rare glimpse of what the town of Jefferson was like in the mid-20th century at the beginning of the civil rights movement, during WWII, and the postwar boom. And I loved this description of Ratliff: “To be unschooled, untraveled, and to an extent unread, Ratliff had a terrifying capacity for knowledge or local information or acquaintanceship to match the need of any local crisis.”

[Brian Willis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although Faulkner did not intend it, this final book in the Snopes trilogy actually serves as a summative commentary on his ongoing exploration of Southern life and cultural heritage as set within the confines of the postbellum and early twentieth century periods.

Change and progress continues to evolve Jefferson, Mississippi (not accidental, this most controversial yet seminal of Southern Presidents whose name lends the town its nomenclature). The charms and gentility of the South alongside its stubborn refusal to change and its guile are divided among the main characters of the trilogy, with the stubbornness, arrogance, egotism, and guile represented by the Snopes family (massive in number, invading Jefferson like Huns and Vandals, with many of the names devolving from icons of commercialism and mercantilism such as Montgomery Ward) and the gentility and essential spirit of chivalry of Southern life represented by Gavin Stevens, V.K. Ratliff, and Chick Mallison.

Faulkner brings his tale (which began in the late nineteenth century) to a close after the events of the twin World Wars and with a final judgement on the durability of small town Southern life within the hurtling speed of the twentieth century. Discerning readers will notice these small clues throughout the trilogy. I won't spoil much of what happens, though I would say this is probably a series for Faulkner readers with some experience. However, I must say that Gavin Stevens and Linda Snopes are two of the most astonishing, lifelike, and sympathetic characters I have ever read in literature, particularly within the milieu of American writing. Linda alone is the kind of role that would win an actress an Oscar if filmed - but a character of extraordinary strength and passion. Gavin Stevens is at times the perfect Southern gentleman, but he is also a protagonist we return to time and again, almost a Hamlet figure, because his morals and his intellect are simultaneously both his greatest strength and his greatest weakness. Fascinating stuff. Considering how peak Faulkner was in writing this, it saddens the reader to realize he would be dead in three short years.

[Steen Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Mansion concludes what used to be called the 'Snopes Trilogy', which Faulkner himself wanted to call it: a sharp and deeply insightful portrait of Mississippi before there was anything called the Civil Rights Movement. Top marks - 5 stars - to all three novels in this trilogy.
LOL

[Paulla Ferreira Pinto · Rating 4 out of 5]

Um Faulkner diferente do Luz em Agosto e do Sartoris mas não menos apelativo. Mais despojado e sarcástico, pontilhado de momentos de humor, mas sempre a par da tragédia da cotidiana existência humana.

[Brian E Reynolds · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Mansion is the third volume of Faulkner’s Snopes Trilogy. In the first book, The Hamlet, Flem Snopes had led an invasion of Snopeses into the hamlet of Frenchmen’s Bend in Mississippi’s Yoknapatawpha County marrying Eula Varner, daughter of Will Varner, chief property owner in Frenchmen’s Bend, and serving as father to her yet to be born daughter Linda. In the second volume, The Town, having experienced success in the hamlet, the Flem takes his young wife Eula Varner and the new baby Linda Snopes with him to the larger town of Jefferson, the county seat. There the ruthlessly ambitious and greedy Flem succeeds in feeding his desire for control and money.

In this third volume, the years advance into the 1930s, the Spanish Civil War and into WWII and its aftermath. The story centers on several plots, including:

- The fate of Linda Snopes during her experiences through both of these wars and in on her return to Jefferson. Linda’s life-long close relationship to lawyer and sometime narrator Gavin Stevens plays a vital factor in the dynamics of her story.
- The fate of Flem Snopes in the face of the possible return to Jefferson of convicted murderer Mink Snopes, as told in The Hamlet, after 38 years of incarceration. Mink has long vowed to come back and kill his cousin Flem, who he blames for failing to bail him out of his murder conviction.

The novel slowly builds these interlocking storylines to a dramatic climax that serves as a fitting conclusion to the Snopes Trilogy. On the way there, it presents various vignettes and scenes reflecting the entertainingly idiosyncratic attitudes and practices of the Yoknapatawpha County denizens. There is humor but it is humor with a serious edge. Through all these scenes, Faulkner’s uses the same vivid descriptive language and creative syntax he used in the previous volumes that give the narrative an entrancing rhythm and flow.

I was really surprised by how much I enjoyed reading this Faulkner trilogy. I have read several other Faulkner’s but until this trilogy I never felt that I got a true portrait of the humor and the quirky Yoknapatawpha County denizens I had often heard about.

My final evaluation of this trilogy is a far cry from what I would have anticipated during the first 100 pages of this trilogy when I was viewing it as a slog that I expected to cease reading after finishing the first book. I’m glad I stuck with it as it got better and better as I got more and more used to Faulkner’s style resulting in this surprisingly enjoyable reading experience. I rate this book as 4+ stars and give the Snopes Trilogy as a whole 5 stars.

[Daniel Polansky]

Let me preface this by saying, on the extremely off chance that someone from Vintage International reads this, whoever wrote the back copy of this should be yelled at, fired, and then run out of town on a fucking rail. HOW FUCKING STUPID ARE YOU TO SPOIL THE END OF THIS ENTIRE TRILOGY ON THE BACK COVER OF THE BOOK. Seriously, I want to find this person and beat them upside the head with something (assuming they’re a man of appropriate beating age.)

End of rant. Right. So, I’m going to just review both of these together, since I read them one after the other and my thoughts apply to both. Faulkner’s prose is, for my soon-to-be-rapidly-depreciating-US-dollar, about as good as you’re going to find. It’s like jumping into cold water, painful at first, and then innervating – the compulsive sentences rolling downward, the bits that are deliberately left unsaid, the clever obfuscations, the profane jokes. And his plotting is fiendishly clever, something which you one very rarely finds oneself saying about ‘literary’ writers. In his big reveals, in his nested secrets and sudden murders, there is a whiff of the genre ghetto to Faulkner (no surprise he wrote the screenplay for Big Sleep, even if he kind of fucked the pooch on the ending). And both of these qualities are on display in these two, the second and third books in the Snopes Trilogy, which details the life of one Flem Snopes, an amoral backwoods savage with a genius for a sharp trading and a desire to attain respectability.
I devoured these, laughed loudly at them in bars, kept yelling at acquaintances about it. And yet…well, obviously, when one is reading one of the great writers of the age, as indeed I believe Faulkner to be, one is not just asking ‘is this a good book’, because of course it’s a good book, even the shit Faulkner tossed out just for money (The Reivers, I’m looking at you) are really good. What one is asking is, ‘is this one of the works which cements the authors place in the canon’, and the answer to this trilogy is, no, not quite, not to my mind. The main characters in the book – Lawyer Stevens, Eula and Linda, and of course Flem himself – never quite come together. Various smaller bits, about the rest of the Snopes clan and pitiful folk they abuse, are far stronger, but the motivations for the major characters felt, ultimately, either vague or kind of unconvincing.
Which is to say, I suppose, that if you haven’t read Faulkner, read Faulkner but maybe don’t start here, and if you’ve already read Absalom, Absalom, etc. then you could do a lot worse than counting on with the Snopes trilogy.

[Still · Rating 5 out of 5]

For best results do not attempt to start this novel without having read the previous novels in the “Snopes Family Trilogy” in order of publication - The Hamlet and The Town (aka "Snopes Trilogy #2).
All three novels in the Snopes trilogy have intrigue, crime, murder, romance and heart-stopping poetry.

If you enjoy Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler or Horace McCoy, chances are this is your kind of read. All you have to do to enjoy these novels is become adjusted to the cadence of rural speech and the references to classic Greek myths. Faulkner’s frequent use of antiquated terms and references can also become a bit cumbersome.
Once you’ve overcome these minor obstacles, you’ll be rewarded with an unforgettable reading experience.

I would add this: had I not first read Kem Nunn and then Jim Nisbet and on to Daniel Woodrell, Donald Ray Pollock, Larry Brown, and William Gay (in that order), it is unlikely I would have gotten beyond the first chapter of The Hamlet. Had I not read The Hamlet, I would have missed out on The Town and without having read The Mansion, the mysteries would have never fallen into place and I would have never found out exactly what had transpired in the first two entries in this trilogy.

Outstanding literature and unforgettable writing.
I will never read another novel as great as the titles in this trilogy.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

To me, "The Mansion" is the most accessible/readable Faulkner novel (of those I've read). Faulkner started this Snopes trilogy in 1925, then finishes in 1959. It's as if Faulkner has dropped his very stylistic prose and writes relatively straightforward. Then again, the story itself here is simple: a man in prison holds on tight to a grudge, and once released he focuses in on revenge and murder. (Sometimes, it takes me a long time to get over a perceived wrong, and to me it's true that "revenge is a dish best served cold". But "cold" means done and over in my world: if there was a true injustice to be judged, then it has or will be judged by SOMEONE ELSE and I'll step aside.) Anyway, a final portion of the last paragraph feels out of place. Without giving anything away, here it is: "...the beautiful, the splendid, the proud and the brave, right on up to the very top itself among the shining phantoms and dreams which are the milestones of the long human recording-Helen and the bishops, the kings and the unhomed angels, the scornful and the graceless seraphim." Not so simple. Lots to think about. It's like Faulkner had this line in mind from 1925 to 1959 and come hell or high water he was going to use it. It's typical Faulkner, it's pretty good I think, and it closes the trilogy nicely. But it doesn't flow with the rest of the simplistic style exhibited for 435 pages here of this final volume. And oh, isn't the term "unhomed angels" so perfect for right now? Still, on it's own, "The Mansion" is very good, very enjoyable.

[La Central · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Adaptando pero también cuestionando la tradición griega clásica, las epopeyas norteamericanas modernas se distinguen, en cuanto al tiempo, al no abarcar necesariamente un período prolongado compartiendo personajes, pero también porque se inscriben en un territorio determinado que, más que escenario, se convierte en un elemento protagonista; este doble aspecto adquiere, en el caso de Faulkner, un papel fundamental.

La mansión, conclusión de la trilogía de los Snopes y una de las últimas novelas del autor, comparte y amplifica los rasgos de la literatura faulknerianos, en una imprescindible e impecable traducción: la importancia de los gestos por delante de las palabras, la relevancia de lo que no se especifica y un narrador que nos esconde parte de lo que sabe. La ambición de Flem Snopes, y las consecuencias de sus actos respecto a Mink, el asesino de El villorrio, se ve enfrentada a la sed de venganza de este último, que se mueve más por la búsqueda del reconocimiento personal que por el frío ánimo de revancha. El conflicto está servido, y Faulkner, con su prosa oscura e hipnótica, gestiona a la perfección el registro trágico de unos personajes recluidos en un ambiente claustrofóbico e instalados en una escalada de violencia insoslayable". Joan Flores

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

At the risk of sounding like a Broadway critic angling for a blurb on the subway poster - a narrative tour de force!

As is often the case with Faulkner, the book is divided into three parts based around different characters. Like the first book in the Snopes trilogy, "The Hamlet", the character for which each section is named is not actually the narrator. So while the character is the focus of that part of the story, we often know little or nothing about their interior life, while the narrator in turn is often a secondary character about whom we also don't learn much - and yet there's a fantastic amount of nuanced detail in the story as a whole.

This "indirection" (if I am using the term close enough to correctly) is also mirrored in the central character who is deaf - while she can speak, she doesn't lip-read and can't hear the replies, so her closest interlocutors scribble in half-sentences, often half-erased, on little pads that they all carry around - a straitened form of communication that in some sense further limits our degree of understanding.

[K.M. Weiland · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Snopes trilogy has been a steady progression in the maturity and complexity of Faulkner as an author, concluding with The Mansion, the tragic finale piece. Less quirky and expansive than its predecessors and decidedly tragic in its inevitable downward spiral, the book offers one of Faulkner's simultaneously most complex and comprehensible studies of human nature. The characters, with the exception of V.K. Ratliff, are less likable than in previous installments, but the almost magnetic pull of the plot's inevitable conclusion is gripping.

[Sonia Anguelova · Rating 5 out of 5]

И в това свое произведение, Уилям Фолкнер навлиза в тъмната страна на човешките същества и ни я показва с многобройни детайли, с ослепителна сила ,с обезпокоителна яснота.
,,Дворецът", подобно на други от неговите романи се фокусира върху историята на една обсесия. Макар и изключително сложен във всяко едно от многобройните си внушения, Фолкнер е сред любимите ми писатели.
Книга, която препоръчвам, особено на онези, които все още не са се осмелили да разтлистят страниците на неговите книги, на онези, които не са запознати с литературното творчество на този писател.

[J. Alfred · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thus the trilogy ends, and if you give a William Faulkner that much room to work, some serious happenstance is going to happen.
The Hamlet started things off as almost a comedy, The Town veered toward tragedy, The Mansion turned into something undefinable and mystic. Is this some kind of inverted Commedia? Why not.
Or, as the preacher puts it, "Save us, Christ, the poor sons of bitches."
Amen.

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

If The Hamlet was poetry,as I thought it was, this book and The Town are architecture. Extremely complex architecture-- Faulkner must have had a great time building this novel.

[Old Man JP · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a reread for me after about 45/50 years. I had forgotten just how great Faulkner was. His great run-on sentences, dialog and subtle humor make it such a pleasure to read.

[Illiterate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mansion, like Town, lacks the zest of Hamlet. Ratliff’s irony is subordinated to Stevens’ devotion.