Town [Paperback]

William Faulkner (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Random House Inc (June 1, 1973)
• ASIN: B001IBLF2W
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #11,170,568 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Born in 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi, William Faulkner was the son of a family proud of their prominent role in the history of the south. He grew up in Oxford, Mississippi, and left high school at fifteen to work in his grandfather's bank.

Rejected by the US military in 1915, he joined the Canadian flyers with the RAF, but was still in training when the war ended. Returning home, he studied at the University of Mississippi and visited Europe briefly in 1925.

His first poem was published in The New Republic in 1919. His first book of verse and early novels followed, but his major work began with the publication of The Sound and the Fury in 1929. As I Lay Dying (1930), Sanctuary (1931), Light in August (1932), Absalom, Absalom! (1936) and The Wild Palms (1939) are the key works of his great creative period leading up to Intruder in the Dust (1948). During the 1930s, he worked in Hollywood on film scripts, notably The Blue Lamp, co-written with Raymond Chandler.

William Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949 and the Pulitzer Prize for The Reivers just before his death in July 1962.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An entertaining chronicle of a self-made man, August 21, 2001

By 

Steve (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Town: A Novel of the Snopes Family (Mass Market Paperback)

The Town is the second volume of Faulkner's Snopes trilogy, picking up the story from the moment of Flem Snopes's arrival in Jefferson, Mississippi. With the foundation firmly laid in The Hamlet, Faulkner is free to delve deep into the character of Flem, the volatile Snopes-Varner dynamic, and the fascinating interaction between Eula, Gavin Stevens, and Linda Snopes, the pawn in her father's plan to take over Jefferson. Not surprisingly, another host of Snopes parade onto the scene; but it is Flem and his underhanded, diabolical shenanigans that make this novel a joy to read. The ending is both humorous and seriously disturbing, paving the way for the Fall of the House of Snopes in The Mansion. One note: while the book jacket claims The Town may be read on its own, I would highly discourage it; trek through The Hamlet first before launching into it--it is well worth your time.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The plot thickens, March 21, 2007

By 

John Cullom (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Town: A Novel of the Snopes Family (Mass Market Paperback)

This is the middle book of the Snopes trilogy, and it seems like Faulkner has significantly changed his perception of the Snopeses. The Town and the Mansion were written much later than the Hamlet, and it's clear that they're written by a more complex person. It seems that the Jefferson of The Hamlet has an idealized honor that is being stolen away by the invasion of the amoral Snopeses. However, by the Town, the honor held by the locals is shown to be largely in their own opinion. We do see something slipping away, but it's not altogether clear that it's worth preserving. The shift makes for a much more interesting book.

Additionally, there's the maturation of Eula Varner, something beautiful in the South if not altogether pristine, and she is lost in this middle section of the trilogy. Her suicide says something about the South's willfull destruction, the outgrowth of a deal with the devil, but it takes some further mulling to fully absorb her.

There are three first person narrators guiding the reader through the news of The Town. Unfortunately, one of them, Charles Mallison, is an enormous yawn. Faulkner is usually fantastic with the first person children (Sound and the Fury, The Unvanquished), but his heart isn't in this one. Fortunately, the others are much more interesting and make the novel fly. Gavin Stevens is similar to father Compson in Sound and the Fury, and I believe one of the mouthpieces for Faulkner himself.

The Snopes trilogy is interesting in that it shows the maturation of a writer and the deepening complexity of his views. This trilogy didn't end up in the vein in which it was started, and that's a very good thing. Not my favorite Faulkner, but ambitious as hell, and that's the real reason to read him in the first place. When he pulls it off, there's nobody better. If you're already hooked on him, the trilogy is worth doing, unlike Sanctuary and Pylon, which are just downright miserable (regardless of what Sartre had to say about them, the putz).

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unforgettable Characters in Obsessive Relationships, November 10, 2007

By 

Dave Deubler (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Town: A Novel of the Snopes Family (Turtleback)

County Attorney Gavin Stevens and his relationships with Eula and Linda Snopes provide the centerpiece for this rambling, reconstructed narrative of the rise of the ignoble Snopes clan in the Town of Jefferson, Mississippi. The narration comes through the viewpoints of Stevens, his younger nephew Charles Mallison, and sewing machine salesman and all-round busybody V.K. Ratliffe. Stevens' rivalry with Mayor De Spain dominates the first section of the book, and shows how irrationally an educated man can behave when he is blinded by desire; any reader with an ounce of sensitivity will surely squirm at Faulkner's skill in combining drama and farce here. Later Stevens turns his attention to "saving" Eula's daughter Linda from a life of "Snopesdom" and continues making a fool of himself in the process. All the while, the inscrutable Flem Snopes continues on the acquisitive path he established in the first volume, The Hamlet, now setting his sights firmly on De Spain's bank. Can the sympathetic lawyer save Linda, or even himself?

Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County novels are among the best that American literature has to offer, and the Snopes trilogy is certainly no exception. Jefferson is populated with unforgettable characters, including (besides the above-mentioned) the many additions to the vermin-like Snopes clan - Eck, Montgomery Ward, I.O., and Wallstreet Panic Snopes. Some of these characters will turn up in other Faulkner novels as well, and collectively the books enrich each other, building up a depth of shared experience. Although Faulkner's focus is on men, and his women are often either absent or troublesome, this volume's focus on obsessive relationships makes this a fine selection for women readers as well - much more so than the horse-trading of The Hamlet, for example. And while this isn't the Master's very best work, it still easily rates 5 stars.