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Thumper
Veteran Poster
Username: Thumper
Post Number: 561
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 22, 2008 - 10:04 pm: | 
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Hello All,
I know that this book is not written by or features an African American. The reason I'm writing this post because there does not seem to be an accurate summary of The Hamlet anywhere on the net. Maybet he book is still being taught in schools are something. I don't know, but when I look for a book summary I expect to read the truth of the matter and not some hem haw version of it because people seem to be scared to give away a mystery or something, when there is no mystery to the book.
Now the real skinny on The Hamlet is NOT, I repeat NOT a book that centers on Flem Snopes. The Snopes is a bunch of low rent, trashy, Southern white people who are either a little slow on the uptake or greedy as all hell, both are qualities that make them easy to manipulate. The novel is not about Flem Snopes, the Snopes who gets the ball rolling by using the fear of his father burning down the town's store owners barn that the store owners son, Jody Varner agrees to hire Flem Snopes as his store clerk. From there, Flem begins importing his low rent family into the town to where the Snopes seem to have their finger in everybody's pie. But, even with all that, the book is not about Flem Snopes, you will not find out anything relevant about Flem except that he is an opportunist. The book is about how the town REACTS to Flem Snopes. Flem Snopes is an honest man but he is a curt, no nonsense man. But when he cuts some of the town people's store credit, he is cast as the villian.
Well, a sewing machine salesman named V. K. Ratliffe believes he is a smart cookie, the smartest man in that part of the state. Ratliffe is a talker, so when he believes that he has outsmarted Flem, and then Flem really gets the best of him (this is over custody of the retarded Snopes, Isaac Snopes, the one that's in love with a cow). Well, Ratliffe can't get over the fact that Snopes got the better of him, so he spends the rest of the book trying to outsmart Snopes, which he doesn't.
Now, while over half of the book deals with the people reacting to Flem Snopes, the other half of the book is a series of short stories about people in the town and a few of the Snopes. There's Eula Varner who is the laziest woman character I have ever read. She don't like to walk anywhere. All she wants to do is eat and sit. And because she is the daughter of the richest man in town, she is allowed to do just that. Evidently Eula is a major sensual babe who just drives the men wild with passion, even though Eula is so lazy that if her dress hem rides up, she will not put her dress down. Eula eventually gives up the goods to this one man and becomes pregnant. Although if Eula is so lazy, I can't picture her opening her legs, but then again that's just me. So, Will Varner, the town store owner, has to marry her off and Flem Snopes agrees to it for the title of a piece of land that is rumored to have buried treasure on it, and other property and money.
There is the story that centers on the idiot Isaac Snopes who falls in love with a cow. he even "makes love" to the cow. So much so that the townsmen lines up an look inside the stall at the same time every day to see Issac hump this cow in a stall. When the rest of the Snopes hear about it, not Flem (he's away on his honeymoon), they buy the cow and sends it away. Then one of them takes pity on the idiot who is missing and moaning over this cow and buys him a toy cow. The toy cow is one of those toy cow that has a cow head on one end of a broom stick. So now the idiot takes the toy cow into the stall and humps the toy cow. I wonder if he ever got splinters in his...well, you know what I'm talking about.
A section of the novel is titled, The Long Summer. Many folks gives the wrong impression that this section is what the film The Long Hot Summer is based on. It is NOT! The only thing that film and this book has in common, beside the title is the name of some of the characters and that's it. Isaac Snopes' story is part of The Long Summer. So, that's all I'm going to say about it. |
Libralind2
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Libralind2
Post Number: 1080
Registered: 09-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 22, 2008 - 10:30 pm: |
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Im going to get this book and read it as soon as I finish my list. Sounds juicy? LOL
LiLi |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 7207
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 23, 2008 - 10:10 am: |
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While you are reading this you can also read Faulkner's essay in which he enthuses over shooting black people demonstrating for their civil rights in the streets. |
Libralind2
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Libralind2
Post Number: 1081
Registered: 09-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 23, 2008 - 05:28 pm: |
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I cant say nofin
LiLi ::poutin:: |
Thumper
Veteran Poster
Username: Thumper
Post Number: 563
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, July 24, 2008 - 12:44 am: |
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Hello All,
Chris: What's the name of the essay? I'm about to do a straight up Republican move on you: If I hold that as a reason not to read Faulkner, because I get a different vibe from his writings; should I hold Zora Neale Hurston to that same standard because she did not care for and spoke out against the Civil Rights Movement? |
Steve_s
Veteran Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 366
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, July 27, 2008 - 09:34 pm: |
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Note the lack of any kind of rejoinder whatsoever. ROFL! At least Faulkner had a sense of humor.
In "The Sound and the Fury," the Compson family sells (a symbolic?) 40 acres in order to finance son Quentin's Harvard education, which the new owners subsequently turn into a golf course.
The intellectually-disabled son Benjy's attendant picks up a golf ball on the Compson property which he later tries to sell for admission to that evening's minstrel show. A mean golfer forcibly takes "the ball" from him, thereby setting off Benjy who howls with the memory of his castration (a,k.a.Mugabe bikini wax, but then what can ya say about a brutal dictator who actually sports a Hitler moustache?). After stealing the ball, the golfer cries out "caddy!" once again setting off Benjy with the memory of his sister Caddie." |
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