William Faulkner: Novels, 1957-1962: The Town / The Mansion / The Reivers (Library of America) [Hardcover]

William Faulkner (Author), Noel Polk (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1999

William Faulkner's fictional chronicle of Yoknapatawpha County culminates in his three last novels, rich with the history and lore of the domain where he set most of his novels and stories. "The Town" (1957), the second novel of the Snopes trilogy that began with "The Hamlet," charts the rise of the rapacious Flem Snopes and his extravagantly extended family as they connive their way into power. In "The Mansion" (1959), the trilogy's conclusion, a wronged relative finally destroys Flem and his dynasty. Faulkner's last novel, "The Reivers: A Reminiscence" (1962), distinctly mellower and more elegiac than his earlier work, is a picaresque adventure that evokes the world of childhood with a final burst of comic energy. "Novels 1957-1962," like previous volumes in The Library of America's edition of the complete novels of William Faulkner, has been newly edited by textual scholar Noel Polk to establish an authoritative text, that features a chronology and notes by Fau! lkner's biographer Joseph Blotner.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

The Library of America adds two more winners to its ever-growing product line. The Faulkner volume includes The Town (1957), The Mansion (1959), and his last novel, The Reivers: A Reminiscence (1962). The James volume is LOA's fifth and final collection of that author's writings, marking the first time in three decades that his complete canon is in print. This volume gathers 24 of his stories, including "Poor Richard," "A Landscape Painter," and "A Passionate Pilgrim." Both volumes contain notes on the text, a chronology of the author's life, and the other signature extras of the series.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Publisher

The Library of America is an award-winning, nonprofit program dedicated to publishing America's best and most significant writing in handsome, enduring volumes, featuring authoritative texts. Hailed as "the most important book-publishing project in the nation's history" (Newsweek), this acclaimed series is restoring America's literary heritage in "the finest-looking, longest-lasting edition ever made" (New Republic).

Product Details

• Hardcover: 1020 pages
• Publisher: Library of America; 1st edition (October 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1883011698
• ISBN-13: 978-1883011697
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #346,558 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

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Two-thirds of an amazing trilogy, April 16, 2006

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Charles S. Houser (Binghamton, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: William Faulkner: Novels, 1957-1962: The Town / The Mansion / The Reivers (Library of America) (Hardcover)

The Library of America (LOA) has done a wonderful job of publishing all of Faulkner's novels in five compact, uniform editions. Besides being handsome, beautifully typeset volumes, they contain the texts of one America's most brilliant authors in versions that are as authoritative as can reasonably be expected. All five volumes were edited by two of the foremost Faulkner scholars--Noel Polk and Joseph Blotner; and each volume contains their notes on the text and a detailed chronology of Faulkner's life (In case you ever find yourself wondering when Faulkner entered first grade, the year was 1905; he enjoyed drawing and painting.) The scholarship and care that went into the preparation of the LOA Faulkner is impeccable.

Within the LOA series, the novels are arranged chronologically (though the volumes were not released in sequence). Consequently, the present volume contains the last two novels (The Town and The Mansion) in Faulkner's great trilogy, The Snopes. To get the first (and critically proabably the best) novel in the trilogy, The ;Hamlet, you'll have to purchase William Faulkner: Novels 1936-1940 (ISBN 0-940450-55-0). Since that volume also includes Faulkner's masterpiece Absalom! Absalom!, it is worth the purchase price. In my opinion, it is impossible to overpraise The Snopes trilogy, and it is difficult to summarize its themes. Suffice it to say, the trilogy encompasses many genres (myth, folklore, legend, realism, epic) while provideing an insightful and scathing commentary on the American dream, society, and the tension between traditional values and modernity. (Faulkner's insights make Theodore Dreiser look like an entertainment Tonight! reporter.) Although The Town has been called a "weak plank between two substantial boulders," I have to confess a fondness for its depiction of the goofy and sexually naive town lawyer, Gavin Stevens (also the hero of Faulkner's Knight's Gambit short stories). I would also venture to say that readers' uncomfortability with The Town may also be a reflection of the fact that this part of the trilogy represents the "real world of the present"--not our mythic past which we nostalgically recast to flatter our self-image (The Hamlet), nor an expression of our "wildest dreams," what we expect our life to be like "when our ship comes in" (The Mansion). Most of life, in other words, is taken up not with valiant struggles and bold accomplishments, but with the pettiness of domestic life and trying to get along with others. The Town (published in 1957), therefore, can be seen as the flip side of Father Knows Best, Leave It to Beaver, and all the other 1950s family sitcoms. Taken in that vein, I think it's a good satire and a delectable opera bouffe between two grand operas.

Daniel J. Singal in William Faulkner: The Making of a Modernist (1997; Univeristy of North Carolina Press) pinpoints November 1940 as the date when Faulkner's genius and talent began to irreversibly fade. While on a camping trip Faulkner, always a heavy drinker and surely already an alcoholic for many years, suffered brain damage when he passed out while drinking. If this is true, that means all three novels collected in Novels 1957-1962 were written during the Nobel laureate's waning years. Concerning the many passages of brilliant writing in The Mansion, Singal notes that many of these had been previously published as short stories and only reworked to become part of the novel. It is hard to imagine how The Mansion could have been better (though I'm sure there is no shortage of Faulkner scholars willing to suggest some scenarios). As far as The Reivers goes, I have long recommended this novel to friends who want to read something by Faulkner but are intimidated by the structural challenges of The Sound and the Fury or Absalom! Absalom! The Reivers is a nostalgic look at the early days of Jefferson (the key town in Faulkner's invented Yoknapatawpha County) told mostly through the eyes of a young boy. The story is linear and easy to follow, and the humor is some of Faulkner's funniest and most heart-warming. If this is Faulkner at his most diminished, most American novelists writing today should be so diminished!

So buy both Novels 1936-1940 and Novels 1957-1962 and treat yourself to The Snopes trilogy. Then, after you've finished it, rent "The Long Hot Summer" and see what a mangle Hollywood made of Faulkner's richly imagined world.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From Work To Wealth, The Snopes Saga, April 2, 2000

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Jimmy E Ayala (Glenview, IL, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: William Faulkner: Novels, 1957-1962: The Town / The Mansion / The Reivers (Library of America) (Hardcover)

It is too bad that the first novel "The Hamlet" is not included (it appears in an earlier volume of this excellent series of The Library Of America) with "The Town" and "The Mansion" in this wonderful tale of growth and maturity of the outcast Snopes clan to a Snopes family of civic prominence. The three novels need to be read in their order to feel the strength of uneducated and poor individuals struggling for opportunities to better themselves, successfully, to claim the privileges of wealth that only the aristocracy of landowners enjoy. This is the new Yoknapatawpha County of automobiles and areoplanes. The old wilderness of the bear hunters was long ago paved over for speed. "The Reivers" is a long hearty laugh at innocence in a whore house. Told from a boy's viewpoint, the action is very adult and funny as adults pursue their urges for sex and gambling. The horse race is a fine piece of sustained Faulkner writing. Buy this book. It is a keeper.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars three good novels in one book, July 9, 2009

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D. Albers "novice civil war buff" (chicago il) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: William Faulkner: Novels, 1957-1962: The Town / The Mansion / The Reivers (Library of America) (Hardcover)

This volume of Faulkner's novels is a very good bargain. Two of the books The Town and The Mansion are part of the Snopes family trilogy. The Hamlet being the first novel. The three together tell the story of a family's grasping for wealth and power by any means and the destruction of the family by one of its own members.
The third vilume, The Reivers is a funny and entertaining story of young boys on an adventure that begins with stealing a car and go to Memphis. and find out the seamy side of life.