Snopes A Trilogy

Here, for the first time published in a single volume as Faulkner always hoped they would be, are the three novels that compose the famous Snopes trilogy, a saga that stands as perhaps the greatest feat of Faulkner's imagination.The Hamlet, the first book of the series chronicling the advent and rise of the grasping Snopes family in mythical Yoknapatawpha County, in a work that Cleanth Brooks called "one of the richest novels in the Faulkner canon." It recounts how the wily, cunning Flem Snopes uses an exploiter's mentality to dominate the rural community of Frenchman's Bend--and claim the voluptuous Eula Varner as his bride.The Town, the second novel, records Flem's ruthless struggle to take over the county seat of Jefferson, Mississippi. The book is rich in typically Faulknerian episodes of humor and profundity and explores love, both sacred and profane. Finally,The Mansiontells of Mink Snopes, whose archaic sense of honor brings about the downfall of his cousin Flem. "For all his concern with the South, Faulkner was actually seeking out the nature of man," noted Ralph Ellison. "Thus we must turn to him for that continuity of moral purpose which made for the greatness of our classics." This volume includes a new introduction to the trilogy by acclaimed novelist George Garrett, author ofDeath of the FoxandThe Succession. "The insidious horror of Snopesism is its lack of any kind of integrity--its pliability, its parasitic vitality as of some low-grade, thoroughly stubborn organism--and its almost selfless ability to keep up pressure as if it were a kind of elemental force. These are Flem's special qualities. The difficulty of fighting Flem and Snopesism in general is that it is like fighting a kind of gangrene or some sort of loathsome mold. The quality of honor--even a mean and rancorous 'honor'--would immediately make it vulnerable.... It is because he lacks honor that Flem is really invulnerable.... It will therefore be only the madman, the outlaw, or the passionate man who can strike him down.... Flem is a kind of monster who has betrayed everyone, first in his lust for pure money-power, and later in what Faulkner regards as a more loathsome lust, a desire for respectability." --Cleanth Brooks

William Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, on September 25, 1897. He published his first book, The Marble Faun (a collection of poems), in 1924, and his first novel, Soldier’s Pay, in 1926. In 1949, having written such works as Absalom, Absalom!, As I Lay Dying, Light in August, and The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He also received the Pulitzer Prize for two other novels, A Fable (1954) and The Reivers (1962). From 1957 to 1958 he was Writer-in-Residence at the University of Virginia. He died on July 6, 1962, in Byhalia, Mississippi.

George Garrett spent nearly twenty years writing, assembling, researching, changing forms of the work that has triumphantly come to be Death of the Fox. He is the author of previous novels, poetry, and short stories. His work in all these forms has evoked serious and favorable critical reception.