William Faulkner : Novels 1936-1940 : Absalom, Absalom! / The Unvanquished / If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem / The Hamlet (Library of America) (Hardcover)

by William Faulkner (Author), Joseph Blotner (Editor), Noel Polk (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
These four novels show one of America's greatest writers at the height of his powers. Presented in authoritative new texts, they explore the struggles of characters in a South caught between a romantic and a tragic past and the corrupting enticements of the present. Quentin Compson and his Harvard roomate re-create the story of the insanely ambitious patriarch Thomas Sutpen--and discover that his grief, pride, and doom are the inescapable legacy of a past that is not dead. "The Unvanquished" recounts the ordeals and triumphs of the Sartoris family during and after the Civil War. In "If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem" (first published as "The Wild Palms"), paired stories tell of desperate lovers and a fleeing convict. In "The Hamlet," the outrageous scheming energy of Flem Snopes and his clan is vividly and hilariously juxtaposed with the fragile community and customs of Frenchman's bend, Mississippi.

From the Publisher
The Library of America edition of Faulkner's work publishes new, corrected texts: manuscripts, typescripts, galleys, and published editions have been collated to produce versions that are faithful to Faulkner's intentions and free of the changes introduced by subsequent editors. 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 is 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).

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 1148 pages
• Publisher: Library of America (June 1, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0940450550
• ISBN-13: 978-0940450554
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #258,190 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars great deal, August 20, 2003

By	Sam Duncan (Hillsville, VA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

You probably either love Faulkner's work or you hate it. If you hate it I won't argue with you. There are good reasons why you might not like his work (talk about acquired tastes). If you love him then you can't really find a much better deal than this book. "Absalom, Absalom," "If I Forget Thee Oh Jerusalem," and "The Hamlet" are some of his best work and you can get this book, which is a nice little volume in about every way, for about 2/3 of what you'd pay to get them seperately as paperbacks. I'm not overly impressed by what I've read of "The Unvanquished," and scholars seem to share my opinion, but with works as good as the other three I think a little filler is okay.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Value on Faulkner, August 17, 2005

By	L. Cochran - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I agree with the previous review: Faulkner is an acquired taste. However, if you like his work and want to own some of his greatest novels without breaking the bank, this book fills the bill. It's a high-quality book. It's bound well, the paper stock is not flimsy and it holds up to reading after reading. I received mine as a graduation gift in 1997. Since then it's been read by me, some friends, family members and coworkers and it shows little wear.

These are some of Faulkner's greatest works. To own them under one cover for this price? You won't find a better deal.

5.0 out of 5 stars Sutpen's Hundred, December 10, 2005

By	PM (Memphis) - See all my reviews

Thomas Sutpen when he is fourteen years old knocks on the front door of a mansion and is told to go to the back door. He and his family are poor and just down from egalitarian mountains, the many class distinctions of southern plantation dynastic society stun him. Born of poor white stock in what later became West Virginia, as an adolescent he moved with his family to the Tidewater region of Virginia and for the first time saw wealthy planters. This formative experience at the age of fourteen led him to realize the social caste system of the antebellum South, and this experience led him to conceive his "design" to create a dynasty of wealth and power.
"Out of quiet thunderclap," Faulkner writes of Sutpen's haunting presence in Miss Rosa's voice, "he would abrupt (man-horse-demon) upon a scene peaceful and decorous as a schoolprize water color, faint sulphur-reek still in hair clothes and beard" Sutpen with slaves and an architect "overrun suddenly the hundred square miles of tranquil and astonished earth and drag house and formal gardens violently out of the soundless Nothing and clap them down like cards upon a table beneath the up-palm immobile and pontific, creating the Sutpen's Hundred, the Be Sutpen's Hundred like the oldentime Be Light". Sutpen appears upon the "soundless Nothing" of earth like some gnostic demiurge. Distorting the invocation "Be Light" from the book of Genesis, the description of Sutpen's construction on the land 12 miles outside Jefferson shows him calling his own empire into existence with the phrase "Be Sutpen's Hundred" like a demoted godling trying to rob the creator of franchise.
During the war Sutpen's daughters Judith and Clytie along with Aunt Rosa form a cabal at Sutpen's Hundred like three nuns awaiting not Christ's return but Sutpen's. Judith repudiates Sutpen's design by taking in Bon's mulatto son who has yellow fever and dies nursing him. Faulkner has spun an intricate tapestry of polymathic prose. He experiments with characters becoming part of telling the story. The story is told from three views, Rosa Coldfield, Mr. Compson whos father knew Sutpen, and Quentin and Shreve who are college roomates and who tell and imagine parts of the story in their cold, cold room deep into one winter night, "the two of them creating between them, out of the rag-tag and bob-ends of old tales and talking, people who perhaps had never existed at all anywhere, who, shadows, were shadows not of flesh and blood which had lived and died but shadows in turn of what were (to one of them at least, to Shreve) shades too, quiet as the visible murmur of their vaporizing breath".