This was the second installment in Faulkner's trilogy centered around the Snopes family in Mississippi. Flem Snopes, a devious character, is hell-bent on taking over Jefferson. In this particular instance, the town lawyer is determined to put a stop to his schemes. Snopes has no qualms about sacrificing anyone, be it family, wife, or daughter.

At certain moments, this book was truly exciting. The unfolding of some of Flem Snopes's plots was captivating and held the reader's interest. However, the ending was rather random and left the reader somewhat perplexed. I perused the note on the text and discovered that a few sections of the book were originally short stories that had been incorporated into the novel. I suspect this is what occurred here. While it was one of the most engaging parts of the book, it simply didn't seem to fit in seamlessly.

If you're a fan of Faulkner and have already read "The Hamlet," then this is a worthwhile read. I, for one, will be eager to pick up "The Mansion" and complete the trilogy as soon as possible.

Have you ever contemplated being a writer? What would be the subject matter of your writing, and for whom would you pen your words?

W. Faulkner initially aspired to be a poet and then a short story teller. However, after deeming himself unsuccessful in these pursuits (as he thought), he transitioned into becoming a novelist. He crafted big and intricate novels such as "Sound and the Fury", "Light in August", and "Absalom, Absalom", among others. In my view, these are his finest works, where the reader can experience a gamut of emotions, his love and anger towards his characters, and towards a society that incensed him due to all the racism and silliness. It was because of this that his people believed the family name was more crucial than the family itself.

"The Town" is one of W.F.'s later works and is a blend of his styles. It reminded me of "The Reivers", especially those segments narrated by Chick Mallison, and "Sartoris", where we become acquainted with the city of Jefferson, its first car and bank. Then, we witness the further evolution of the Yoknapatawpha county in "The Town".

Finally, we gain a better understanding of Flem Snopes and his family. We see Eula Snopes, a spoiled child who was too lazy to even walk, transform into a "normal" woman and a mother. The story is told by our old acquaintance from "The Manson", V.K. Ratliff, and we finally get his story as well, which is quite surprising. We encounter Linda Snopes, a truly distinct female in the entire Faulknerian world, a good girl with bright future prospects, unlike any other women, and her patron, Gavin Stevens, a rather interesting character, a lawyer with very high moral ethics.

"The Town" serves as a bridge between the beginning and the end of the Snopes trilogy and描绘了 Flem's success climax.

My favorite parts in the story are the short tales of other Snopes', such as Byron with his children and Wall Street Panic Snopes (Wally) with his wife.

Finally, my impression of the book wasn't as great as that of the first part of the trilogy, mainly due to the style and the repetition of many parts for those readers who haven't read "The Mansion". This makes the story standalone but with a bit too many reminders. Let's拭目以待 what "The House" will bring - how Faulkner will handle Flem and his death.

This is one of William Faulkner's later and lesser-known novels. It poses a challenging read, particularly if you haven't engaged with the Snopeses in a while.

Essentially, it's the tale of how the sleazy Snopes family infiltrated the fictional town of Jefferson, Mississippi. One of them, Flem, managed to become highly influential and successful, ascending to the position of bank president. However, Flem remains an enigmatic figure, seldom heard from. Instead, the story is recounted by three other characters in the novel, one of whom was a young child for a significant portion of the time covered in the book. I initially found the first forty pages or so nearly incomprehensible, but it improved thereafter.

Being Faulkner, you're bombarded with some of his familiar fixations. There are various sexual and racial stereotypes, along with some good humor and sentences that seem to go on forever. Then, the same information resurfaces in the next chapter, presented through the voice of a different narrator, who also clarifies why he disagrees with the earlier narrator's perspective. There are some uncomfortable sections regarding a thirty-something man's intense interest in a teenage girl and some peculiar financial transactions that I still can't fathom. Nevertheless, it concludes neatly, with a dramatic twist near the end and a hilarious coda to the story.

Of course, Faulkner isn't merely writing about his characters; he's delving into the history of the South and how it can discover something new to replace the slave economy that prevailed until the Civil War. The corrupt Snopeses embody one possible trajectory for the "new South," while the attorney Gavin Stevens represents an alternative viewpoint. Then there's the entire aspect of Flem's pursuit of respectability. It's at least thought-provoking, albeit also headache-inducing.

This is one of those books where you feel a sense of accomplishment for having read it, rather than during the actual reading process. I've managed to make it through two-thirds of the Snopes trilogy and will likely attempt to finish the last book - but not immediately.

Wonderful continuation of the story begun in The Hamlet. The plotting throughout this very long narration is truly excellent, on par with anything else I have ever read. There is no sign of a sagging middle, which keeps the reader engaged from start to finish. The financial shenanigans are presented in a hilarious manner through the use of Southern rural speak. It adds a unique flavor to the story and makes it even more enjoyable.

I must modify my previous suggestion that Flem is Trump. Flem is actually infinitely smarter and more successful. While he may not be charming in the traditional sense, he is at least not thuggish. His character is complex and multi-faceted, which makes him an interesting and compelling figure to follow.

I am extremely excited to start the denouement in The Mansion. I can't wait to see how the story concludes and what final twists and turns Faulkner has in store for us. The anticipation is palpable, and I know that it will be a reading experience that I won't soon forget.

What he was doing was simply defending forever with his blood the principle that chastity and virtue in women shall be defended whether they exist or not.

And you stand there—you, the old man, already white-headed. It doesn't matter if they call your gray hairs premature because life itself is always premature, which is why it aches and anguishes. You are pushing forty, only a few years from it. As you stand there, the spring darkness rises up to you, proffered up to you. It is the unsleeping darkness which, although it is of the dark itself, declines the dark since dark is of the little death called sleeping. Look how, even though the last of the west is no longer green and all of the firmament is now one unlidded studded slow-wheeling arc and the last of earth-pooled visibility has drained away, there still remains one faint diffusion. Everywhere you look about the dark panorama, you still see them, faint as whispers: the faint and shapeless lambence of blooming dogwood returning loaned light to light as the phantoms of candles would.

And you, the old man, standing there while the spring dark, peopled and myriad, rises to you, about you, suffocating you. Two and two are seeking never at all solitude but simply privacy, the privacy decreed and created for them by the spring darkness, the spring weather, the spring which an American poet, a fine one, a woman and so she knows, called girls' weather and boys' luck. It was not the first day at all, not Eden morning at all because girls' weather and boys' luck is the sum of all the days: the cup, the bowl proffered once to the lips in youth and then no more; proffered to quench or sip or drain that lone one time and even then—that sometimes premature, too soon. Because the tragedy of life is, it must be premature, inconclusive and inconcludable, in order to be life; it must be before itself, in advance of itself, to have been at all.

Some ghosts, or perhaps real people, seem to be out to get me.

But Faulkner, he is truly better than Shakespeare. There is no one who can pack as much into a single page as he does, and that's precisely what makes him so challenging.

No one writes about purer human beings either. He puts his thoughts on paper with such unbridled energy. Some of his sentences, approximately one every three pages, are so complex that they make you want to give up and retreat back to the womb.

This particular work is the second in a trilogy. We could call it "The Snopes Empire Strikes Back." It delves into the dark, soulless, and anarchic extremes that Flem Snopes will go to in order to consume a town full of people who are wonderfully hypocritical in their supposed God-fearing nature.

We also encounter again one of the greatest characters I've ever read. He is as much himself as Hamlet, so fallibly infallible that we should all wish to have such a person in our own towns. His name is VK Ratliff.

Faulkner's writing is a true exploration of the human condition, filled with depth, complexity, and a raw energy that is both captivating and overwhelming.

I truly despise William Faulkner. It's frustrating that I can't give this book a perfect five because if I did, I would have to rate The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom! even higher, perhaps a six or a seven. I loathe the fact that he had the ability to write with both the utmost complexity and the utmost simplicity. It annoys me that he is so outstanding that I can easily place five of his books in my personal top 10 without hesitation.

Even years after reading his other novels, I can vividly remember who Bayard Sartoris was, who Lucas Beauchamp was, who Thomas Sutpen was, and who Horace Benbow was. They are all such colorful and memorable characters.

Among them, however, I have the greatest admiration for Gavin Stevens, who is one of the central characters in this novel. In a nutshell, Stevens is the conscience of Yoknapatawpha. He represents the force of good. There are certain parallels in our lives that resonate within me. He values goodness over women and has remained a bachelor despite being intelligent and kind.

He believes in the 'uxorious and rigid respectability which remains strong and undecadent only so long as it still produces an incorrigible unreconstructible with the temerity to assail and affront and deny.' He has a deep belief in the virtue and chastity of women and endeavors to protect them. He was even mockingly asked by a character, his brother-in-law, about where his white horse and lance were. But despite being undeniably human, he still tries to be a decent person. He even falls in love with the femme fatale Eula Snopes.

Damn Faulkner. Damn his genius. I hate him. I hate him so much. I hate the fact that I can't write as well as he does yet. I hate him for being so damn good.

I'm really not loving this series :/

It seems to lack the elements that would truly engage and captivate me. The storylines feel somewhat平淡 and uninteresting. The characters don't have that depth and complexity that would make me care about them.

Maybe it's the way the plot is developed or the writing style that just doesn't click with me. There are no real surprises or twists that would make me want to keep reading.

Overall, I'm quite disappointed with this series and don't think I'll be continuing with it. It just doesn't have what it takes to hold my attention and make me a fan.

It’s an irony of William Faulkner’s career. He finally achieved financial solvency and began to receive kudos in his own country for work that is far inferior to his best.

Intruder in the Dust put him over the top financially, mainly because he sold the movie rights. A Fable won both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. These things opened the floodgates to various movie sales, public appearances, travels, and stints at universities. His later life was very different from his early ones when he was writing furiously to keep creditors at bay.

I now believe his great period was from 1928, when he started writing his greatest novel, The Sound and the Fury, to 1942, when he published Go Down, Moses. Not everything he produced then was great, and the ranking of the novels is largely a matter of personal taste. But all the great novels came from that period. After that, the intensity of his work and the novels themselves diminished.

Faulkner conceived of the Snopes trilogy in the late thirties and apparently envisioned all three volumes. But he didn’t get around to The Town and The Mansion until the mid-fifties. One wonders if he was completing them dutifully just because he’d thought of them. But that’s not the impression I get from reading. They seem to be Faulkner in his tale-spinning mode, like in The Unvanquished, telling the history of his mythical county as if on the porch of Will Varner’s store.

I could swear I read all three books, but I didn’t read them consecutively, so my impressions were disjointed. I didn’t remember them at all until an event near the end of this novel startled and puzzled me. I also forgot the whole tenor of it.

The Snopes trilogy describes how a certain family, representing a mindset, gradually took over Yoknapatawpha County during the author’s lifetime. It started with Flem and included unforgettable names like I.O., Wallstreet Panic, Montgomery Ward, Byron, and Virgil. One Snopes would move up, and another would move in. That’s an accurate description of The Hamlet. But The Town actually centers on Flem Snopes and his pursuit not just of money but also of respectability, which proves elusive.

Flem’s maneuver at the end of The Hamlet, marrying Will Varner’s daughter Eula, was not just a financial move but the opening salvo in his bid for respectability. He married into the first family of Jefferson. He was an enigmatic guy, always wearing the same bow tie and hat, chewing tobacco but never spitting (that you could see), keeping track of every penny in the till, and never cutting a break to anyone, even his own family. And Eula was the most beautiful or sexually alluring woman in town, starting at fifteen. Their child, Linda Snopes, shows up in this novel, equally alluring but not oozing sexuality like her mother. She becomes the object of affection of, among others, the middle-aged Gavin Stevens.

Stevens is my nemesis among Faulkner narrators. Faulkner seems to find his extreme verbosity and ability to spin out Southern rhetoric hilarious. I find it hilarious in the abstract, but when I have to read page after page of his endless explanations, I understand Rebecca Solnit. If she thinks mansplaining happens in Silicon Valley, she should come to the South.

Other narrators include V.K. Ratliff, the genial sewing machine salesman and wise person (though he gets taken in by Flem in a major scheme), and Charles Mallison, who was a boy in Intruder in the Dust and grows up in this one. Charles’ mother is Gavin’s twin sister, and Gavin lives with them. He seems to be a confirmed bachelor, a courtly Southern man who takes great interest in women, admires and helps them (he gave both Eula and Linda a copy of John Donne’s poetry), but never quite makes it into bed with them. Maybe he’s gay. It wouldn’t surprise me.

These narrators alternately tell the story of what at first seems like more Snopes shenanigans but is actually Flem eliminating his less savory cousins and battling the old established families, most notably Major DeSpain, for the presidency of the bank. The man is ruthless, and he’s successful if achieving a certain position achieves respectability.

I complained after reading The Hamlet about the long chapter on Eula Varner’s youth. I think what I really didn’t like was the way she seemed like a stereotype, and we only saw her from the outside. In a brief chapter near the end of this novel, we hear her speak as a mature human being. She reveals that Flem is impotent, so there hasn’t been any sex in their bizarre marriage, but she’s had a lover the whole time. She’s talking to Stevens because she’s concerned about her daughter’s welfare. After that intimate scene, something happens that is so sad that I couldn’t believe I didn’t remember it. And I think it was a mistake in what had been an essentially comic novel. Throughout Faulkner’s writing about the Snopes, they haven’t quite been real human beings. (No one really names their child Wallstreet Panic or Montgomery Ward.) We thought it was a light satire, but then something tragic or at least terribly sad happens.

As Faulkner wrote to Jean Stein, “Just finishing the book. It breaks my heart. I wrote one scene and almost cried. I thought it was just a funny book but I was wrong.” We thought it was funny too. Now we’re not so sure.

[1] I now say, from this most recent rereading, that the great novels are The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Absalom, Absalom!, and Go Down, Moses, with The Hamlet as first runner up. In the not-great-but-surprisingly good category, I would put Flags in the Dust, Sanctuary, and The Unvanquished. All the novels are worth reading, including certain sections of A Fable. But I’m not sure I would recommend that book as a whole for Faulkner lovers. He was trying to do something different and it didn’t work out.

[2] This notion of a man improving a woman’s mind is offensive to a modern sensibility but was common when Faulkner wrote about it.

[3] In the movie based on The Hamlet, “The Long Hot Summer,” Joanne Woodward played Eula Varner and really vamped it up. Paul Newman played the Flem Snopes character, though he was called Ben Quick in the movie, actually the name of a different Faulkner character. Bizarrely but very effectively, Orson Welles played Will Varner, who is supposed to be tall and thin and lanky. They couldn’t make Welles thin and lanky, but he was blustery and overbearing.

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So this was a rather average Faulkner book. It encompassed all the enjoyable aspects of Faulkner - various perspectives, remarkable dialogue, sporadic flashes of truly outstanding prose, and of course, gothic grotesqueness. However, it truly seemed like an intermediate stepping-stone within the Snopes trilogy. I have not yet read the final one, but the first one - The Hamlet - was truly amazing. Therefore, I am hopeful that it will all come to a satisfying conclusion.

One excellent quote from the book is: "Because the tragedy of life is, it must be premature, inconclusive and inconcludable, in order to be life; it must be before itself, in advance of itself, to have been at all." This quote really makes one think about the nature of life and how it is constantly evolving and unfinished.

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**Question 1**

Flem Snopes and Thomas Sutpen share some similarities, but they also have significant differences. Both are ambitious and ruthless in their pursuit of power and wealth. Sutpen builds a plantation and tries to create a dynasty, while Flem uses his wits and cunning to climb the social ladder in Jefferson. However, Sutpen's actions are more driven by a sense of honor and a desire to prove himself, while Flem is motivated纯粹 by self-interest.

This comparison suggests that Faulkner was concerned with the changing nature of morality and social values in the 20th century. In earlier times, like Sutpen's era, there were still some remnants of a code of honor and a sense of community. But in the 20th century, as represented by Flem, these values were being eroded by greed and a lack of ethics. Faulkner may have been warning about the dangers of a society that places too much emphasis on material success and not enough on moral integrity.

**Question 2**

"The Town" can be considered a funny book in several ways. Faulkner's use of humor is often dark and ironic, as he satirizes the small-town characters and their absurd behavior. For example, the antics of Flem Snopes and his family provide many comical moments. However, the book is also much more than just a funny story. It is a complex and nuanced exploration of human nature, social class, and the American South.

Rather than simply being "funny," "The Town" could be defined as a tragicomedy. It combines elements of both tragedy and comedy to create a unique and powerful work of literature. The characters' flaws and mistakes lead to both humorous and heartbreaking consequences, and Faulkner uses this to explore deeper themes about the human condition.

**Question 3**

Whether Faulkner is the best novelist of all time is a matter of personal opinion. However, there is no denying his significance and influence in the world of literature. His innovative writing style, complex characters, and exploration of deep themes have made him one of the most respected and studied authors of the 20th century.

Faulkner's works, such as "The Sound and the Fury," "As I Lay Dying," and "Absalom, Absalom!," are masterpieces of modern literature. He was able to capture the essence of the American South and its people, while also exploring universal themes such as love, loss, and the meaning of life. His use of multiple narrators, stream of consciousness, and nonlinear storytelling techniques was revolutionary at the time and has since been emulated by many other writers.

In conclusion, while it may be impossible to definitively declare Faulkner the best novelist of all time, his contributions to literature are undeniable. His works continue to be read and studied today, and his influence can be seen in the writing of countless other authors.