Snopes

<p><b>From the Modern Library&#146;s new set of beautifully repackaged hardcover classics by William Faulkner&#151;also available are <i>As I Lay Dying The Sound and the Fury Light in August Absalom Absalom! </i>and <i>Selected Short Stories</i></b><br><br>Here published in a single volume as he always hoped they would be are the three novels that comprise William Faulkner&#146;s famous Snopes trilogy a saga that stands as perhaps the greatest feat of this celebrated author&#146;s incomparable imagination. <i>The Hamlet </i>the first book of the series chronicling the advent and rise of the grasping Snopes family in mythical Yoknapatawpha County is a work that Cleanth Brooks called &#147;one of the richest novels in the Faulkner canon.&#148; It recounts how the wily cunning Flem Snopes dominates the rural community of Frenchman&#146;s Bend&#151;and claims the voluptuous Eula Varner as his bride. <i>The Town</i> the central novel records Flem&#146;s ruthless struggle to take over the county seat of Jefferson Mississippi. Finally <i>The Mansion </i>tells of Mink Snopes whose archaic sense of honor brings about the downfall of his cousin Flem. &#147;For all his concerns with the South Faulkner was actually seeking out the nature of man&#148; noted Ralph Ellison. &#147;Thus we must turn to him for that continuity of moral purpose which made for the greatness of our classics.&#148;</p>