It's a long life, and for me, trilogies hold a special allure. There's something wonderful about nestling down into a familiar world that can sustain me for hours on end.

This is the first installment of Faulkner's renowned Snopes trilogy, which delves into the story of a family, the Snopes, who take over a small Mississippi town called Frenchman's Bend. Faulkner is truly a master of characterization. We have Flem Snopes, the wily and ambitious son whose father burns barns to intimidate his landlords. Then there's his wife Eula Snopes, the lazy yet beautiful daughter of the rich and landed Will Varner. And let's not forget Ratliff, the traveling sewing-machine salesman. All of these characters are unforgettable, brought to life with such vividness and detail.

Faulkner's style is simply nonpareil. His patience in crafting each sentence, his ability to circumnavigate a topic, and his remarkable scope and precision are truly awe-inspiring. While this may not be his absolute best work - as it was written in parts over many years and perhaps lacks the narrative drive of some of his masterpieces - it is still a fine read that offers many rewards.

One reads Faulkner to get lost in his famously labyrinthine sentences. Take, for example, the scene where two brothers play checkers. One brother, who is mad, has just murdered a man, and the other, Flem, wants to know where the body is so he can pilfer the cash on it. The first brother stalls and challenges Flem to a game of checkers. The description of their game is both fascinating and masterful, with Faulkner painting a vivid picture of the two players and their very different styles.

Our modern attention spans may not have the time or patience for Faulkner's graceful rambles. In a contemporary creative writing class, that long sentence might be criticized or dissected. Stylistically, of the masters, we may still prefer Hemingway's brutality or Fitzgerald's elegance. But for me, I like a writer who is bold enough to unleash the floodgates and make his readers swim.

Lastly, the modern reader who skips The Hamlet misses out on a thirty-page-long, uproarious satire of a romance: Ike Snopes and his bovine love affair. It's a masterpiece of bestiality that adds yet another layer of depth and complexity to this already rich and engaging story.

The first installment of the Snopes trilogy transports us to Frenchman's Bend, a diminutive Mississippi town erected upon the ruins of an erstwhile stately plantation. In the wake of the war, the rather dubious character Flem Snopes makes his appearance and promptly commences to seize control of the town. The overarching theme, I surmise, is the abject penury of the townspeople and the unadulterated greed that impels some of them. It consists essentially of four tales - some tenuously connected. I could have dispensed with the one regarding the peculiar Ike Snopes and his amorous dalliance with a cow, yet that's the very one that folks chatter about, lol.

Faulkner has always been a bit of a chore for me, although this particular volume might be the least arduous one I've perused thus far.

Read as part of On The Southern Literary Trail - awarding it three stars and I'm done.

My first encounter with Faulkner was truly an experience.

It was an extremely challenging read, to say the least. The complexity of his language, the convoluted plotlines, and the deep exploration of human nature made it a difficult task to get through.

However, as I persevered and reached the end, I realized that it was well worth the effort.

The world that Faulkner created was so rich and vivid that I can still easily conjure it up in my mind.

The characters were fully developed, with their own flaws and virtues, and their stories were both tragic and inspiring.

Reading Faulkner has opened my eyes to a new way of looking at literature and has made me appreciate the power of words to create a lasting impact.

I am excited to explore more of his works and see what other treasures I can discover.

Overall, my first Faulkner was a memorable and rewarding experience that I will cherish for a long time.

I'm not a big fan of Faulkner.

Although he has themes that I find very interesting, such as his consistent imagery related to a particular theme and purpose that prevails throughout all of his works, and he even makes interesting commentaries on American Southern life based on this.

However, I don't believe that literature, and writing in general, should be a puzzle. I don't think the focus of a work should be its complex and labyrinthine structure that alludes to meaning and intentionally confounds the mind.

What really bothered me about this novel, though, were the characters. In some chapters, the characters were presented in one way, and then they were portrayed completely differently. For example, Jody was tough and sneaky, assertive and underhanded, but then suddenly he was a coward. And then he became an incestuous, slapstick, Benny Hill impersonation. All of the characters change according to the needs of the text. Whether the character would or should react in a certain way is ignored in order for them to function as Faulkner intended.

And finally, the last section of the "Pilgrims" part is ridiculous. It is beyond absurd; that any of the characters were involved is ridiculous, and it is inconsistent with the intelligence and traits of the characters. I know that Faulkner was embracing Southern tradition when writing this, even emulating Southern humor like Mark Twain. The horse swapping story is in line with the tropes of Southern humor, even in its outcome. But Faulkner tries to mix genres in a way that just doesn't work. The absurd cannot be combined with the meaning he attempts to convey in the way he does. Absurdity can be combined with many things to create meaning, but it must be handled properly because it is volatile.

I don't think Faulkner succeeds in representing a serious topic in an absurd way, but at least his narrative was generally understandable in this book. Except for the chapter where the retarded boy falls in love with the cow. I think Faulkner tried too hard to be avant garde and was instead just odd and offensive, as demonstrated by the rest of the novels in the Snopes trilogy.