Four episodes limning the rise of the Snopes family, one of which is "The Long Hot Summer." Anyone who has seen the movie (or the '60's era TV series) will be very, very startled if they expect the steamy sex they saw on the screen. Steamy sex there is, but I doubt if a faithful film version would star Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, or Lee Remick. Orson Welles, perhaps -- but as the cow. ( )

Ah, the South. the story? the story is of a small little crook in the road really, in Mississippi, right at about the time of the beginning of the Great Depression. not that anyone there knew it was the Great Depression; they were too poor to tell. When your entire worldly belongings consist of one set of clothes to a person, one set of mismatched shoes for five people to share, a pot, a brush with no handle, and a hammer head with no claw tails set upon a stick of firewood... yeah, well, Wallstreet is nothing but a name to you. literally ;)

there is not really a main main character, but ostensibly one could claim this is the chronicle of the origins of Flem Snopes, a crusty frog-like individual who raises himself from an incredibly impoverished and common enough beginning to the highest possible level in that society, by way of his own bootstraps and heartless, almost soulless, manipulation of other people and their expectations. since the trilogy is called the Snopes trilogy, and since the last scene of the book includes Flem and his new wife and child leaving to set up in Jefferson, I'm pretty sure I'm justified in saying so.

;) ( )

Like all Faulkner, this was a somewhat disturbing story set in the American South. This book marks the beginning of the Snopes saga, detailing Flem Snopes rise to power in a small, provincial town. It's more than that, though -- it's also an exploration of the seedy depths and peculiarities of the town itself. It's supposed to be comedic novel, a satire of previous literature about/from the old South, such as "The Big Bear of Arkansas" or the Brer series. If you know anything about this, then the book can be much mroe amusing -- watching what he does with their themes is mindbendingly interesting. Whether you know about it or not, Faulkner's difficult prose guarantee that you'll have to read through an entire situation before stopping and realizing it's funny. A good book, but not for the literary faint-hearted. 7/10 ( )

http://www.readin.com/books/hamlet/th... ( )