William Faulkner Novels 1936-1940 (LOA #48) : Absalom, Absalom! / The Unvanquished / If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem / The Hamlet

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by its past and uncertain of its future.In the intricate, spellbinding masterpieceAbsalom, Absalom!(1936), Quentin Compson descends into a vortex of images, voices, passions, and doomed desires as he and his Harvard roommate re-create the story of Thomas Sutpen and the insane ambitions, romantic hopes, and distortions of honor and conscience that trap Sutpen and those around him, until their grief and pride and fate become the inescapable and unbearable legacy of a past that is not dead and not even past.In seven episodes,The Unvanquished(1938) recounts the ordeals and triumphs of the Sartoris family during and after the Civil War as seen through the maturing consciousness of young Bayard Sartoris. The indomitable Granny Millard, the honor-driven patriarch Colonel Sartoris, the quick-witted and inventive Ringo, the ferociously heroic Drusilla, and the scheming, mendacious Ab Snopes embody the inheritance that Bayard must reconcile with a new, but diminished, South.If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem(published in 1939 asThe Wild Palms) tells of desperate lovers fleeing convention and of a convict escaping the chaos of passion. In The Wild Palms, an emotional and geographic odyssey ends in a Mississippi coastal town. In counterpoint, Old Man recounts the adventures of an inarticulate tall convict swept to freedom by a raging Mississippi flood, but who then fights to return to his simple prison life.InThe Hamlet(1940), the first book of the great Snopes family trilogy, the outrageous scheming energy of Flem Snopes and his relatives is vividly and hilariously juxtaposed with the fragile communal customs of Frenchmans Bend. Here are Ike Snopes, in love with a cow, the sexual adventures of Eula Varner Snopes, and the wild saturnalia of the spotted horses auction, a comic masterpiece.The Library of America edition of Faulkners work publishes for the first time new, corrected texts ofThe Unvanquished,If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem, andThe Hamlet. (The corrected text ofAbsalom, Absalom!was published by Random House in 1986.) Manuscripts, typescripts, galleys, and published editions have been collated to produce versions that are faithful to Faulkners intentions and free of the changes introduced by subsequent editors.LIBRARY OF AMERICAis an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nations literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, Americas best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.