The Hamlet: Amazon.ca: William Faulkner: Books

Product Description

The Hamlet, the first novel of Faulkner's Snopes trilogy, is both an ironic take on classical tragedy and a mordant commentary on the grand pretensions of the antebellum South and the depths of its decay in the aftermath of war and Reconstruction. It tells of the advent and the rise of the Snopes family in Frenchman's Bend, a small town built on the ruins of a once-stately plantation. Flem Snopes -- wily, energetic, a man of shady origins -- quickly comes to dominate the town and its people with his cunning and guile.

Ingram

This darkly comic masterpiece is the first novel in Faulkner's trilogy about the Snopes family, the grasping clan that comes to dominate Yoknapatawpha County after the fall of the Confederacy.

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Customer Reviews

13 Reviews

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
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Average Customer Review

4.4 out of 5 stars (13 customer reviews)

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5.0 out of 5 stars A Sardonic Look at How the Old South Fell to Greed, Feb 6 2004

By

Dave Deubler (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Hamlet (Paperback)

Itinerant sewing machine salesman V.K. Ratliff matches wits with hard-headed businessman Flem Snopes and his ubiquitous relatives in this smoothly interwoven series of tales from Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi. The Snopes Saga continues with The Town and The Mansion, but neither of these books are nearly as sardonically humorous, and this first volume ends neatly enough that the unimpressed reader can stop right there. But most readers will be captivated by Faulkner's yarns of the horse-trading, deal-making, penny-pinching folk who inhabit Frenchman's Bend.

Faulkner uses these stories to reflect how the naiveté of the Old South allowed it to fall victim to a species of social infestation somewhere around the turn of the century. Flem Snopes is not exactly the hero of this book; he is mean, miserly, graceless, and unprincipled, but he does have a distinct knack for making money, and his inexorable rise seems to indicate that he is by some standards the smartest man in the village. Of course Faulkner can't help but try to show us how much the glory of the Old South gets lost in the process: courtesy, honor, common decency, and public responsibility. Snopes doesn't care who get hurt, so long as he comes out ahead in the deal.

Faulkner's often difficult prose is easier to follow in this novel than in some of his others, and absent the bizarre experiments with point of view that he's noted for, most readers should find this book sometimes rambling and long-winded, but not incomprehensible. As an example of folksy Southern humor, this one is more seriously pointed than his nostalgic reminiscence The Reivers, but not as grimly dark as his black comedy As I Lay Dying, and really shouldn't be missed. As is always the case with Faulkner, the women-folk may consider themselves excused.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Enter another world, Sep 21 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Hamlet (Paperback)

The Hamlet is about the beginning of the rise of the Snopes clan. But what you get out of it, what is more lasting than the stories of a pack of low-down people clawing and cheating and killing their way across Yoknapatawpha County -- which are devastating, and funny, and weird enough in themselves to earn this novel the highest praise -- is the sensation of immersion into William Faulkner's fictional reality. It is a universe in which the characters do things that people do, but as you are reading you get the feeling you might be dreaming. Something is just off, and that strangeness serves as a giant light beam on the human soul. No one has concocted a stage and players like this, with such deep insight, and beautiful poetic prose, and humor, since Shakespeare maybe. Read The Hamlet slowly, read sentences twice sometimes, don't hurry, and you will be utterly, irreversibly hooked.

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3.0 out of 5 stars Decent Faulkner, Aug 9 2002

By

GeoX "GeoX" (Men...Of...The...Sea!) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Hamlet (Paperback)

A lot of people claim that this novel is really, really funny. Maybe I'm just not receptive to this particular brand of humor, but I just don't get it. A few things made me smile or even laugh out loud, but in general, hilarity was at a minimum. Furthermore, at times Faulkner is clearly having trouble maintaining the fine line between stylization and just plain self-indulgence. A clear example of this is the section with Ike Snopes and the cow, where he goes into this weird, faux-pastoral style of writing. This is amusing at first--and the entire premise of the segment is effectively bathetic--but it just goes ON and ON and ON, eventually losing most of its appeal. The man just doesn't know when to stop sometimes.

Let it not be said, however, that there is not some excellent material on display here. The tension-laden section with Lump Snopes trying to get Mink to show him where the body's hidden is simply brilliant, and in the character of Armstid we see a genuinely frightening portrait of obsession. Furthermore, Ratliff is a great character, even if the ease with which he ultimately lets himself be swindled by Flem Snopes isn't even slightly believable.

Ultimately, what we have here is clear evidence of Faulkner's best tendencies as well as his worst. In my opinion, however, the former do outweigh the latter to some degree. The Hamlet is perhaps not the best starting place, but well worthwhile for enthusiasts.

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Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Dead-On Characterizations & Backwoods Hilarity
After reading all of Faulkner's 35 yrs ago in college, I have not been back until I bought this book recently. Read more

Published on Sep 28 2001 by Bill M

3.0 out of 5 stars It's a slow go, but well worth it
Three-and-a-half stars. There is nothing about The Hamlet that will surprise fans of Faulkner's work: it is a dense novel written in the author's trademark style--mind-bending... Read more

Published on Aug 22 2001 by Steve