Customer Reviews

The Reivers: A Reminiscence (G.K. Hall Large Print Perennial Bestseller Collection)

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

When I first tried to read The Reivers about 35 years ago, I found the book hard to get into. I found that happening again this time, but my advice to you is to stick with it. Past the opening scenes, you'll find the story wrapping its gentle tendrils around your mind and enjoyably taking you back to a simpler time when automobiles were new, and people acted in less restrained ways when they had the chance.

The experience of reading this book is like sitting on your grandfather's knee listening to him describe his youth. Sit back, take a deep breath, relax, and settle in for a most entertaining story that should not be hurried.

The book's title is filled with irony. Although ostensibly looking at the temptations that cause people to steal, underlying that surface message is a more subtle one of how people in power use that power to steal dignity and opportunity from others. Before the story ends, everyone in the book is a reiver (an older term for thief) of something or of human dignity.

The book opens with Boon Hogganback losing his temper and trying to shoot a man who insulted him. Fortunately, Boon is a bad shot. That's also the bad news because he wounds a young black girl and shoots out a store window. It will take him a long time to pay the damages.

The story then shifts to Boon's equally impulsive infatuation with the automobile that the narrator's grandfather has purchased, but doesn't intend to drive. Boon craftily overcomes grandfather's reluctance, and the family is soon riding with Boon as the driver.

When the narrator's other grandfather dies, the family leaves town by train for the funeral leaving Boon with an automobile. Boon and Lucius Priest (our 11 year-old narrator) find themselves unable to resist the temptation to "borrow" the car for four days and head to Memphis for 80 miles over unpaved roads. After many adventures (like getting across streams without bridges), they arrive in Memphis. Lucius notices that there is something strange about the boarding house that they are visiting. It turns out to be a house of ill fame, and just as soon as they settle in the car disappears!

The story will remind you of Huckleberry Finn. Boon is a Tom Sawyer-like character, and Ned McCaslin (his grandfather's black handyman) is like Jim. The trip to and from Memphis is like Huck's trip down the Mississippi. The plot is filled with humor, and soon revolves around the most complicated scheme imaginable for getting the car back.

The book also has many elements of Don Quixote with Lucius, Ned, and Boon taking turns playing that role. Despite their lies, misappropriations, and misbehavior, they are constantly trying to do the right thing. One of the most beautiful moments is Lucius speaking up for the honor of Boon's lady friend who works in the "boarding house." This spontaneous and generous act sets off a series of responses by the other characters that redeem and uplift them.

If you have tried to read other Faulkner stories, you will find this one much more accessible. On the other hand, it moves in deliberate, convoluted ways that require your attention and patience. You will be rewarded, however, because each tiny element is important to the overall picture being portrayed and story being developed.

For those who like excitement, you should know that a major part of the story revolves around a series of horse races with serious bets involved. As soon as you get closer to the horse races, you will find yourself totally engrossed in the story and wondering how it will all turn out. The suspense is excellent, and you will probably be surprised in many pleasant ways by the story's resolution.

After you read this book, you should think about how one should handle the clash between society's expectations and rules, and the needs of those in trouble. How should the gap be covered?

Let temptation make you stronger and more virtuous in the ways that count!

Some fans of Faulkner have bemoaned the fact that his final novel is not a profound summation of his heftier, more philosophical works (as though Faulkner could have foreseen his own death and owed his readers that much). While it is true that The Reivers is a much lighter (and more comical) work than those commonly regarded as Faulkner's "masterpieces," it is still worthy of attention. For one thing, The Reivers is Faulkner at his most entertaining; unburdened by the need to address the darker symptoms of the human condition, he is free to let his imagination run wild: the trials and triumphs of young Lucius Priest and his travelling companions make for some hilarious scenes and leave the reader feeling far more bouyant at the novel's close that, say, at the end of The Sound and the Fury or Absalom, Absalom!. The Reivers also features two additional benefits: the divine Miss Reba (second only to Granny Millard as Faulkner's most entertaining and resourceful female character); and the much-appreciated absence of that nosy and annoying popinjay Gavin Stevens. While one might read The Reivers as a Bildungsroman (Lucius's growth and awakening to the realities of the world around him are clearly underscored throughout the novel), I prefer to see it as a simple, amusing and satisfying story from a man who, by the end of his life, had done more to explore the human condition than most writers ever attempt - and was content to leave it at that.

William Faulkner had previously won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1949, and the Pulitzer Prize for fiction (in 1955 for "A Fable"). This novel won him a second Pulitzer Prize. It was published in 1962, the year of his death.

The novel is written in the style of an older man reminiscencing about his youth. Some of the individual sentences ramble and digress, as do some parts of the story, put gradually the plot moves forward. Not everyone will like the writing style. I found the beginning of the novel hard to get into; but as the plot progressed it was hard to put down.
It is written as a first person narrative with some dialogue.

The setting is in May 1905. Lucius Priest is an 11-year old boy living in a Mississippi town about 80 miles from Memphis, normally a two day drive over dirt roads if it's not raining and the roads are dry. Boon Hogganbeck, of somewhat unknown ancestry, was more or less inherited by the Priest family and works in the family's livery stable as the night man when he is not acting as the driver of an automobile purchased by Lucius's grandfather, a banker in the town. Ned McCaslin is the black coachman for the family.

When the adults in the family are called away to the Gulf coast for a funeral, Boon, Lucius, and Ned "borrow" the grandfather's automobile to make a trip to Memphis where they stay overnight in a bordello that Boon has visited in the past. Things become complicated when Ned trades the automobile for a stolen racehorse. Ned has a way with animals, and sees potential in the horse (which has previously lost all of its races). The plot has an interesting ending, and Ned is smarter than people may have thought.

Along the way, Lucius learns to drive the automobile, defends a woman's honor, and learns a lot about life that he would never have learned in school.

While there is little of Faulkner's work that DOESN'T rate five stars, this last of his stories earns them unquestionably and merits every bit of perseverance it might take to read it to the end, and to savor the sly humor, the right-on characterizations, the irony about class, role, virtue, etc., that take the reader from Jefferson, Mississippi, to Memphis and back. As a coming-of-age story, one might compare it to THE BEAR and INTRUDER IN THE DUST. As an adventure in rollicking humor, it's reminiscent of the "Spotted Horses" section of THE HAMLET. Having made those comparisons, it's still important to emphasize that THE REIVERS stands on its own as a last testament to Faulkner's ability to knock you over with his moral vision and his uncanny insight into human beings. If there's a difference from his earlier great works that make profound moral statements, e.g., THE SOUND AND THE FURY and ABSALOM, ABSALOM!, it's that an older man is much gentler and more forgiving about human foibles but is still effective in making his point. P.S. Keep a dictionary with old words in it nearby.....you can't always find "reivers" and "callipygian" in the newer ones.

Although I had read Faulkner's other major works, I only just recently got around to completing this novel. As students of Faulkner know, this book is not--nor did its author intend it to be--a major work of literature. For those just beginning to read Faulkner, it will prove much more accessible than the classic texts (like The Sound and the Fury), and it will introduce them to some of the author's characters and themes--but it won't introduce them to important elements of his Modernist technique.

The novel has a great deal of charm, however, and I will take this opportunity to suggest that it be assigned as summer reading (do they still do that?) for students in about 10th grade. It's a coming-of-age story that has to do with responsibility. At the end the grandfather says to Lucius following the boy's adventure in Memphis: "A gentleman can live through anything. He faces anything. A gentleman accepts the responsibility of his actions and bears the burden of their consequences, even when he did not himself instigate them but only acquiesced to them, didn't say No though he knew he should" (p. 302).

Not having attempted Faulkner since high school, I decided to try this one, seeing the reviews that it was light-hearted and comedic. I have to say, I was not disappointed! It took a little while to get back into understanding the writing style, but once I did, I appreciated it that much more. His style does give you the feeling of being inside someone's head while they are telling a story. Parts of this book really did make me laugh out loud! Parts, especially when Lucius learns Miss Corrie's profession, and what it means, made me tear up a bit. To be that innocent again! All in all, this was a great story. I think it was a great reintroduction to Faulkner, and I will have to try some of his other works now!

Have you ever read a novel or a short story and felt an urgency to finish it but also an urgency to never finish? That's how I felt while reading Faulkner's The Reivers. This Pulitzer prize novel concerns one eleven-year-old white boy named Lucius Priest. Through the mediation of his father's underlings--Boon Hoggenbeck and Ned McCaslin--Lucius comes of age in the art of non-virtue. While Lucius's grandfather is away, the three of them "borrow" the old man's automobile and embark on a bumpy journey to Memphis. On the trip, Lucius sees it all--whoredom, lust, theft, profanity, gambling--and struggles with these things in the context of a southern religious tradition. Though he has every opportunity to turn back and forgo the trip, he presses on and convinces himself that it's all too late. Non-virtue has already embraced him. On the other hand, Boon and Ned have no doubts of their lack of virtue, and when they see Lucius drinking from evil's muddy waters, they just nod their heads (don't think that the story is grim, for it's down right funny at times). The story is addictive, even though the language is rocky and convoluted at times. Faulker was no Raymond Carver or Ernest Hemingway; conversely, he was the ultimate practitioner of the compound-complex sentence. The dialogue was so real, especially with Ned and other black folks. I felt as though I were standing around the campfire chewing tobacco and thumbing my suspenders and talking about horse racing. No wonder this novel hooked the Pulitzer. It's quality stuff.

William Faulkner is one of my all time favorite authors, one who I greatly admire and love. His writing always seems fluid in its movement from paper to mind, giving up such a full picture of what is going on. The Reivers is yet another novel that draws you in and makes you feel as though you are right there with Lucius, Boon and Ned as their adventures lead them to Memphis.

All, of course, did not go as planned. Lucius Priest, an eleven year old boy, is persuaded by Boon, a character we've seen in other Faulkner novels (such as Go Down, Moses), to "borrow" Lucius' grandfather's car. Eventually the star of the book, Ned McCaslin, is discovered and the adventure soon took a decidedly different direction.

The Reivers is a great comic, picaresque novel that is one of Faulkner's easier novels to read. This does not distract from the novel and, in a way, lends the story its credibility. At times we see the naive and ignorant young Lucius, then we meet the older narrator Lucius. Boon the mastermind, only to be usurped by Ned. The morals and the justice of the story all come together nicely by the end.

Faulkner is one to be admired, and I have yet to pick up one of his novels and not be impressed. Although some find his novels too complex or confusing, this one is a much easier read and allows the reader to enjoy the complexity of Faulkner in a much more straight forward manner.

5 stars.

The Faulkner I've previously read explores mans' imperfections and failures. This book celebrates them. The story is told from the perspective of a young boy, and his sentence structure and punctuation takes getting used to, but it's worth it. The book is beautifully and joyfully written.

Another marvelously wordy Faulkner novel, though this time the story is unfettered by stream-of-consciousness. This showcases precisely what there is to love about Faulkner: Believable characters still fanciful enough in their predilections to keep a person awake; sound and multilayered plotline; fascinating locales and locals. The only complaint could arise when one considers that more than three hundred pages of dense prose is funneling out of an old man to whom his own life at eleven could hardly be that clear. Of course ,this is a novel, with disbelief suspended shortly after you pick up the book. Truly remarkable; great for the casual reader.