Future And Fantastic Worlds Book

As I said in my review of The Town, there's a falling off in power in the late Faulkner, and we can also see that in the The Mansion, the concluding novel of the Snopes Trilogy. That said, there's something really fascinating, intriguing, and even lovely about this novel'the depiction of Mink Snopes. Even though one section of the novel is entitled "Flem" (the other two sections are "Mink" and "Linda"), the driving force of the novel is Mink and to a lesser extent Linda. As in The Town, the fascination with Linda (and "Woman") consumes Gavin, Ratliff, and Chick, and while she emerges, in part because of her political idealism, as a more complex figure than in the previous novel, the endless verbal masturbation concerning her by the three men once again eventually grows tiresome. Why don't they just do something instead of talking all the time? I'm simplifying here, but you get the point.

But then there's Mink, a great character. In glancing through some of the Goodreads reviews, I've noticed that a number of readers identify Mink as a psychopath, a designation that drastically misses and reduces the humanity of this driven man. Yes, he's done some really bad things (including murder), but as Faulkner makes clear what drives him is a fierce pride and a fierce sense of honor. For many poor whites in the South during this time, scorned and taken advantage of by the middle class and the elites, pride and honor'and often violent vengeance'were the only means to maintain self-worth and dignity. Mink acts not as a psychopath but as a man driven by almost a Calvinistic sense of justice, and in this he stands far apart from the power-driven Flem. Moreover, Mink actually accomplishes some things, patiently biding his time rather than endlessly agonizing and pontificating, as Gavin and to a somewhat lesser extent Ratliff do.

The ending is some of Faulkner's most elevated (some might say too elevated but not me) and glorious prose, and I will quote a passage (without giving anything away, I trust) to underscore how rich and in some ways heroic (as a revenge hero) Mink stands. Here Mink lies down to rest, "the ground already full of folks that had the trouble but were free now, so that it was just the ground and the dirt that had to bother and worry and anguish with the passions and hopes and skeers, the justice and the injustice and the griefs, leaving the folks themselves easy now, all mixed and jumbled up comfortable and easy so wouldn't nobody even know or even care who was which anymore, himself among them, equal to any, good as any, brave as any, being inextricable from, anonymous with all of them: the beautiful, the splendid, the proud and the brave, right on up to the very top itself among the shining phantoms and dreams which are the milestone of the long human recording'Helen and the bishops, the kings and unhomed angels, the scornful and graceless seraphim." Most all of my frustrations with this novel were themselves laid to rest when I got to this passage.