Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion (Modern Library)

48. The Mansion by William Faulkner
OPD: 1959
format: 386-pages within a Kindle ebook trilogy called Snopes
acquired: May read: Aug 23 – Sep 7 time reading: 17:04, 2.7 mpp
rating: 3½
genre/style: Classic Fiction theme: Faulkner
locations: Fictional Jefferson Mississippi and surrounds, including Memphis, during the 1st half of the 20th century.
about the author: 1897-1962. American Noble Laureate who was born in New Albany, MS, and lived most of his life in Oxford, MS.

Full trilogy:
[3412::The Hamlet] (1940) – 4½ stars, run-on writing with lots of points for quirkiness and romantic bestiality. An experience.
[3424::The Town] (1957) – 3 stars, slightly annoying telling of an ok story with some substance
[46859::The Mansion] (1959) – 3½ show more stars, decent, but also with a wonderful ending that I’m still thinking about.

This whole trilogy is only ok, with some entertaining quirky writing in the first book, and some substance in the story and atmosphere. But it also comes with one of the most satisfying conclusions to a book ever, especially after all that the reader works through before. I won’t put in any further spoiler in than that, but it’s important when explaining my response to the book. It really ends well. My short take is that [3412::The Hamlet] was curious, [3424::The Town] was terrible (wandering narrative, soft story), and [46859::The Mansion] was OK. And I’m hoping this wasn't Faulkner’s best work. But longer take is more forgiving. The world and full substance of the series holds something more meaningful.

The Mansion seems has three parts, each titled on one character, Mink Snopes, Linda (nee Snopes) and Flem Snopes. Mink has prominent quirky bit in The Hamlet, and then got left behind in book 2. But his story unexpectedly picks up here, and he’s far more complicated and earthy than we realized. Ultimately he has a gravitas from his disoriented illogical but fierce mindset. Laura doesn’t get to tell her story. Like her mother in the previous two books, we always see her through the men, and the lust colors what isn’t supposed to be lustful story, more platonic and wanting and disenchanting in a way. Flem also doesn’t get any say in his section, although things come around back to him, with him in the center.

The true central character of the trilogy is Gavin Stephens, a bachelor and Harvard educated town lawyer, defined by his reserve and repressed lust of Linda’s mom, Eula, and later, his inappropriate love/lust of Linda, 20 years his junior. Never improper, he gets nowhere with anything, But he’s a central figure in the fictional town of Jefferson, Mississippi. And he and his nephew, with some commentary by a country-born uneducated know-everything sewing machine salesman, V.K. Ratcliff, tell most of the story. All these characters have some presence in whatever real-world Faulkner experienced in his Mississippi and wanted to share. His flawed truth, where African Americans are anonymous and where woman are physical forms defined by the way men react to them - either silently enduring screwed-up dads and husbands, or, if they’re physically attractive, silently enduring undue constant small-town attention. We’re in soiled humus of the low Mississippi hills, and also in a world of contemporary technology, high education, and distant world wars the men run off to fight, often through the air force. That is this little place is insulated, hard, inward looking and resistant, but also swamped by the larger seemingly more enlightened, but equally vicious wider world. In this way, it’s a book that is larger than its little story.

I’m glad I read this. I’m grateful for Faulkner’s ending. But I’m only recommending this to Faulkner completists.

2023
https://www.librarything.com/topic/351556#8226969 show less

This is an immersion experience: 1050 pages in the Modern Library edition.

Though I don't know why it's called Snopes. Sure folks by that name figure mightily in the novel, but really it's a sort of social and historical study of the fictional town of Jefferson running from WWI to after WWII. Although there is one good Snopes, the family as a whole represents the destruction of that old way of life by single minded commercial interests. Money, money, and the pursuit thereof.

I read it as part of my exploration of my relation to the rural south in the 1940's and 50's. I was a kid back then, but have enough of a memory of the place to feel it was a different time, really, and a very different place. Not a good place, mind you, just very show more different from sitting here at the start of the 21st century.

It's a clunky book, full of plots and sub-plots interweaving over time, and told, as Faulkner insists on doing, from multiple points of view. Full also of those nuts and lunatics that people Faulkner's fiction. I think especially of the village idiot who falls romantically and carnally in love with a cow. Though Faulkner handles this delicately and suggestively, not at all in detail.

I surmise Faulkner was one horny fellow. His descriptions of Eula, the central female character, while featuring no salacious details of the modern variety, are quite erotic, taking one back to that teenage time when powerful hormones cast the whole world in sexual tones. She just walks, but in such a way, that her clothes seem to wish to fly off her ample being.

Good stuff. All around good stuff. And mostly and basically, Faulkner treats each and every no good character with complete respect. There's no looking down. And maybe because of this, each character seems a fate. show less

generally, the praise i see for this trilogy plots a declining slope with The Hamlet unanimously receiving much accolade and varying degrees less being lauded upon the others with The Mansion at the bottom of this descent of fluctuant proportions, from "close, but not quite as good as the others" to "superfluous"...i think The Mansion is simply great so i just wanna give it a little of the credit i feel it's due...i'd say it's even better than The Town (though i shan't deviate from the norm with my regard for The Hamlet)...and as a trilogy i don't think these works are really separable...and any differences in quality across the series is only slight...The Hamlet sets a strong beginning and The Mansion is a strong end...i'll just keep show more my review vague and forgo the details...so, that's all... show less

The Hamlet is the best, but The Town is also great. The Mansion is very good, but it's not as terrific as the first two. I recommend reading all three of these at once to get the full scope of the Snopes family, which isn't even Faulkner's most well-drawn family. (I like the McCaslin family) But don't just read one of these and certainly read them in order. Some great writing here.