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jennydoesnotgetit's review against another edition
4.0
I love Faulknerâs style; his long and recursive sentences often make me feel the weight of guilt, history and sin. Itâs super interesting (and charming!) to see this same style used for humor.
cryo_guy's review against another edition
4.0
âWhat?â I said. âHow can I forget it? Tell me how to.â
âYou cant,â he said. âNothing is ever forgotten. Nothing is ever lost. It's too valuable.â
A few years ago, a friend lent me that book of 3 novella/short stories by Flannery O'Connor (Wiseblood, The Violent Bear It Away, and Everything That Rises Must Converge). And I was like damn! I should really read more Southern fiction like I've always wanted to. So I was meaning to get back to Faulkner and also to read some more O'Connor and whoever else comes to mind in that category. Finally, I have done so. I was looking for a quick novel to read and realized I had two Faulkner books on my shelf-As I Lay Dying and The Reivers. Since I had read the other (and also The Sound and The Fury), the choice was obvious. Funnily enough, I've had this book for even longer than that, I bought it while in undergrad at a used bookstore in DeLand. I've had it for at least 8 years carting it around. I recall buying it because I fancied the title and hadn't heard anything about it but it turns out this is his last work, which also got him his second Pulitzer prize. One of only three writers to have done so (Booth Tarkington and Updike are the others). That's cool.
The Reivers is a picaresque tale, ranging from the locales of Faulkner's invented county-Yoknapatawpha-to Memphis Tennessee and the various characters who embody them. For those of you not in the know about âpicaresque,â it's just a fancy word that means the main character is a bit of a rogue and the plot is episodic. Wiki tells me the main character is often of a low social class, surviving by his wits in a corrupt society. The Reivers is subtitled âA Reminiscenceâ; the main character is eleven at the time of the story but the narrative is from an adult pov. He's the grandson of a well-to-do family in Jefferson, Mississippi, so he doesn't exactly have low social standing. But his two partners in crime could fit the description of lovable rogues- Boon Hogganbeck and Ned McCaslin. Boon the uneducated white retainer of the Priest family with a hidden heart and Ned the uneducated black retainer of the Priest family always outwitting the rich white folk and always being forgiven as a member of the âfamily.â The book is unique among Faulkner's oeuvre for this reason. It's much more lighthearted and it doesn't particularly feature any of the torturous narrative convolutions that are so wildly innovative (and praiseworthy) about Faulkner's modernist style. Apparently Faulkner is quoted as saying that he intended to write a final novel that would be the âGolden Book of Yoknapatawpha Countyâ and many scholars, although deeming this a lesser book, judge that it is that golden book.
So what did I think? Well I'll admit I didn't quite know how intentionally Faulkner had written this book to be lighter before I started reading so I was pretty surprised by the tone and the straightforward narration. I remember, long ago, when I first read The Sound and the Fury that I read it because a friend had said it was too challenging and decided to give it up. By contrast, this book is a super easy read. So if you're wary of Faulkner for anything like that but still find Southern fiction interesting, maybe give it a try. Having said that, I will say that I don't think The Reivers is quite as powerful as the two books of his that I have read. I plan on reading more, but I can only comment on what I've read at this point. There's a bit of a mystery to the book, but the heightened sense of ambiguity that the other two books have is completely lost. On the other hand, the characters and vignettes are as good as ever. The book has that Faulknerian lyrical quality that I admire. It has a contemplative attitude that's buttressed by a single narrative voice. And where it somewhat lacks in poignancy, it excels in comedy. Another feature of the picaresque is satire and wit, which I think this book does well. I've included a few quotes that I think show either that lyrical or that satirical quality. It also has lovely parentheticals. Who doesn't love a good parenthesis?
I found myself laughing out loud a few times and being tickled by the descriptions of things and I was also moved by Lucius', the protagonist, descriptions of his own thoughts and feelings. There's a lot of well-put things about coming of age themes like innocence. I would have included more quotes on that subject but often Lucius' existential dread-feeling out of place-which inspired in him a deep nostalgia, the kind only a child can have where home is an asylum, was caused by his inability to understand one character's job as a prostitute. That she would have to debase herself so was deeply upsetting to him and he describes how his innocence is stripped away from him, that knowledge is forced upon him too soon, and that that struggle is unbearable. It's a poignant picture, I think, but at the same time there's something unsettling about the patriarchal call to save the woman from her plight. I don't really know anything about prostitution in the 1910-20s or what it was like to live that life or to âchooseâ to live it (choose is undoubtedly the wrong word here), but it didn't sit quite right. Although maybe from a child's perspective it's not so strange. And maybe I'm not doing a good enough job understanding the sociohistorical context. I mean the truth is, at 11, Lucius has just lived a very sheltered life and it would be strange for him to have any other reaction. He has lofty ideals though, ruminating on the forces of Virtue and Non-viruteâabout which I've selected a few quotes. At any rate, that existential dread he experiences, the loss of innocence, is also generated by his complicity in stealing the car and going on the adventure to Memphis, so it's not as if that part of the plot is completely tasteless if it is at all. His homesickness struck me as pure and I recognized a bit of it in myself.
There's plenty of other elements to the story, Boon and Ned are great characters. They take turns playing the fool and being clever by turn. And there are a few older white men who play as stolid patriarchs dispensing the wisdom of the ages and moderation. Boon's lover has her own innocence about her and the woman who owns the brothel is fiery. Lots of great archetypes. I haven't said much about the depiction of race or touched on those themes in the book because they are basically no more complicated than what you would expect. One other theme perhaps worth mentioning is death which Lucius brings up once or twice and which I think articulates some interesting things about how people deal with it, suggesting men and women have different tacks. I've included those quotes and you can decide for yourself.
So I'd recommend this to...hmm people interested in Southern fiction but not so much Faulkner's modernist tendencies. It's hard to say that, because in a way that's what makes Faulkner good and unique, but if that's what you like, then you'll get it. In another way, if you're reading a lot of Southern fiction or a lot of Faulkner you definitely want to read this one just to see how Faulkner could write in a different way and a story told with some of the same great features but in a much lighter tone. For me it was particularly enjoyable for that reason, although most of all I think I just enjoyed reading some Faulkner again after so long.
Quotes
Humorous/interesting descriptions
â(the banker, murdered ten or twelve years ago by the mad kinsman who perhaps didn't believe his cousin had actually sent him to the penitentiary but at least could have kept him out or anyway tried to)â
âNor could we figure this: how Mr. Buffaloe, a meek mild almost inarticulate little man in a constant condition of unworldly grease-coated dreamlike somnambulismâhow, by what means, what mesmeric and hypnotic gifts which until now even he could not have known he possessed, he had persuaded the complete stranger to abandon his expensive toy into Mr Buffaloe's charge.â
âWhy you got to snatch a man up just for passing the day with you?â
âAll right, all right,â Boon said. âJust listen to me a minute, will you? I aint talking about mudholes. I'm talking about the things a fellow-boy can learn that he never even thought about before, that forever afterward, when he needs them he will already have them. Because there aint nothing you ever learn that the day wont come when you'll need it or find use for itâproviding you've still got it, aint let it get away from you by chance or, worse than that, give it away from carelessness or pure and simple bad judgment. Do you see what I mean now? Is that clear?â
âI dont know,â I said. âIt must be, or you couldn't keep on talking about it.â
â(You see? How much ahead of his time Mr Binford was? Already a Republican. I dont mean a 1905 RepublicanâI dont know what his Tennessee politics were, or if he had anyâI mean a 1961 Republican. He was more: he was a Conservative. Like this: a Republican is a man who made his money; a Liberal is a man who inherited his; a Democrat is a barefooted Liberal in a cross-country race; a Conservative is a Republican who has learned to read and write.)â
âIn fact, I rate mules second only to rats in intelligence, the mule followed in order by cats, dogs, and horses lastâassuming of course that you accept my definition of intelligence: which is the ability to cope with the environment: which means to accept environment yet still retain at least something of personal liberty.â
â...as fragile looking as a filtered or maybe attenuated moonbeam.â
On death
âBesides that, people took funerals seriously in those days. Not death: death was our constant familiar: no family but whose annals were dotted with headstones whose memorialees had been too brief in tenure to bear a name evenâunless of course the mother slept there too in that one grave, which happened more often than you would like to think. Not to mention the husbands and uncles and aunts in the twenties and thirties and forties, and the grandparents and childless great-uncles and -aunts who died at home then, in the same rooms and beds they were born in, instead of in cubicled euphemisms with names pertaining to sunset. But the funerals, the ritual ceremonial of interment, with tenuous yet steel-strong threads capable of extending even further and bearing even more weight than the distance between Jefferson and the Gulf of Mexico.â
âIt's not men who cope with death; they resist, try to fight back and get their brains trampled out in consequence; where women just flank it, envelop it in one soft and instantaneous confederation of unresistance like cotton batting or cobwebs, already de-stingered and harmless, not merely reduced to size and usable but even useful like a penniless bachelor or spinster connection always available to fill an empty space or conduct an extra guest down to dinner.â
On innocence, virtue, and non-virtue
âWhen grown people speak of the innocence of children, they don't really know what they mean. Pressed, they will go a step further and say, Well, ignorance then. The child is neither. There is no crime which a boy of eleven had not envisaged long ago.. His only innocence is, he may not yet be old enough to desire the fruits of it, which is not innocence but appetite; his ignorance is, he does not know how to commit it, which is not ignorance but size.â
âhaving noticed in my time how quite often the advocates and even the practitioners of virtue evidently have grave doubts of their own regarding the impregnability of virtue as a shield, putting their faith and trust not in virtue but rather in the god or goddess whose charge virtue is; by-passing virtue as it were in allegiance to the Over-goddess herself, in return for which the goddess will either divert temptation away or anyhow intercede between them. Which explains a lot, having likewise noticed in my time that the goddess in charge of virtue seems to be the same one in charge of luck, if not of folly also.â
âSo you see what I mean about Virtue? You have heardâor anyway you willâpeople talk about evil times or an evil generation. There are no such things. No epoch of history nor generation of human beings either ever was or is or will be big enough to hold the un-virtue of any given moment, any more than they could contain all the air of any given moment; all they can do is hope to be as little soiled as possible during their passage through it. Because what pity Virtue does notâpossibly cannot-take care of its own as Non-virtue does. Probably it cannot: who to the dedicated to Virtue, offer in reward only cold and odorless and tasteless virtue: as compared not only to the bright rewards of sin and pleasure but to the ever watchful unflagging omniprescient skillâthat incredible matchless capacity for invention and imaginationâwith which even the tottering footsteps of infancy are steadily and firmly guided into the primrose path. Because oh yes, I had matured terrifyingly since that clock struck two minutes ago. It has been my observation that, except in a few scattered cases of what might be called malevolent hyper-prematurity, children, like poets, lie rather for pleasure than profit. Or so I thought I had until then, with a few negligible exceptions involving simple self-defense against creatures (my parents) bigger and stronger than me. But not any more. Or anyway, not now.â
âYou cant,â he said. âNothing is ever forgotten. Nothing is ever lost. It's too valuable.â
A few years ago, a friend lent me that book of 3 novella/short stories by Flannery O'Connor (Wiseblood, The Violent Bear It Away, and Everything That Rises Must Converge). And I was like damn! I should really read more Southern fiction like I've always wanted to. So I was meaning to get back to Faulkner and also to read some more O'Connor and whoever else comes to mind in that category. Finally, I have done so. I was looking for a quick novel to read and realized I had two Faulkner books on my shelf-As I Lay Dying and The Reivers. Since I had read the other (and also The Sound and The Fury), the choice was obvious. Funnily enough, I've had this book for even longer than that, I bought it while in undergrad at a used bookstore in DeLand. I've had it for at least 8 years carting it around. I recall buying it because I fancied the title and hadn't heard anything about it but it turns out this is his last work, which also got him his second Pulitzer prize. One of only three writers to have done so (Booth Tarkington and Updike are the others). That's cool.
The Reivers is a picaresque tale, ranging from the locales of Faulkner's invented county-Yoknapatawpha-to Memphis Tennessee and the various characters who embody them. For those of you not in the know about âpicaresque,â it's just a fancy word that means the main character is a bit of a rogue and the plot is episodic. Wiki tells me the main character is often of a low social class, surviving by his wits in a corrupt society. The Reivers is subtitled âA Reminiscenceâ; the main character is eleven at the time of the story but the narrative is from an adult pov. He's the grandson of a well-to-do family in Jefferson, Mississippi, so he doesn't exactly have low social standing. But his two partners in crime could fit the description of lovable rogues- Boon Hogganbeck and Ned McCaslin. Boon the uneducated white retainer of the Priest family with a hidden heart and Ned the uneducated black retainer of the Priest family always outwitting the rich white folk and always being forgiven as a member of the âfamily.â The book is unique among Faulkner's oeuvre for this reason. It's much more lighthearted and it doesn't particularly feature any of the torturous narrative convolutions that are so wildly innovative (and praiseworthy) about Faulkner's modernist style. Apparently Faulkner is quoted as saying that he intended to write a final novel that would be the âGolden Book of Yoknapatawpha Countyâ and many scholars, although deeming this a lesser book, judge that it is that golden book.
So what did I think? Well I'll admit I didn't quite know how intentionally Faulkner had written this book to be lighter before I started reading so I was pretty surprised by the tone and the straightforward narration. I remember, long ago, when I first read The Sound and the Fury that I read it because a friend had said it was too challenging and decided to give it up. By contrast, this book is a super easy read. So if you're wary of Faulkner for anything like that but still find Southern fiction interesting, maybe give it a try. Having said that, I will say that I don't think The Reivers is quite as powerful as the two books of his that I have read. I plan on reading more, but I can only comment on what I've read at this point. There's a bit of a mystery to the book, but the heightened sense of ambiguity that the other two books have is completely lost. On the other hand, the characters and vignettes are as good as ever. The book has that Faulknerian lyrical quality that I admire. It has a contemplative attitude that's buttressed by a single narrative voice. And where it somewhat lacks in poignancy, it excels in comedy. Another feature of the picaresque is satire and wit, which I think this book does well. I've included a few quotes that I think show either that lyrical or that satirical quality. It also has lovely parentheticals. Who doesn't love a good parenthesis?
I found myself laughing out loud a few times and being tickled by the descriptions of things and I was also moved by Lucius', the protagonist, descriptions of his own thoughts and feelings. There's a lot of well-put things about coming of age themes like innocence. I would have included more quotes on that subject but often Lucius' existential dread-feeling out of place-which inspired in him a deep nostalgia, the kind only a child can have where home is an asylum, was caused by his inability to understand one character's job as a prostitute. That she would have to debase herself so was deeply upsetting to him and he describes how his innocence is stripped away from him, that knowledge is forced upon him too soon, and that that struggle is unbearable. It's a poignant picture, I think, but at the same time there's something unsettling about the patriarchal call to save the woman from her plight. I don't really know anything about prostitution in the 1910-20s or what it was like to live that life or to âchooseâ to live it (choose is undoubtedly the wrong word here), but it didn't sit quite right. Although maybe from a child's perspective it's not so strange. And maybe I'm not doing a good enough job understanding the sociohistorical context. I mean the truth is, at 11, Lucius has just lived a very sheltered life and it would be strange for him to have any other reaction. He has lofty ideals though, ruminating on the forces of Virtue and Non-viruteâabout which I've selected a few quotes. At any rate, that existential dread he experiences, the loss of innocence, is also generated by his complicity in stealing the car and going on the adventure to Memphis, so it's not as if that part of the plot is completely tasteless if it is at all. His homesickness struck me as pure and I recognized a bit of it in myself.
There's plenty of other elements to the story, Boon and Ned are great characters. They take turns playing the fool and being clever by turn. And there are a few older white men who play as stolid patriarchs dispensing the wisdom of the ages and moderation. Boon's lover has her own innocence about her and the woman who owns the brothel is fiery. Lots of great archetypes. I haven't said much about the depiction of race or touched on those themes in the book because they are basically no more complicated than what you would expect. One other theme perhaps worth mentioning is death which Lucius brings up once or twice and which I think articulates some interesting things about how people deal with it, suggesting men and women have different tacks. I've included those quotes and you can decide for yourself.
So I'd recommend this to...hmm people interested in Southern fiction but not so much Faulkner's modernist tendencies. It's hard to say that, because in a way that's what makes Faulkner good and unique, but if that's what you like, then you'll get it. In another way, if you're reading a lot of Southern fiction or a lot of Faulkner you definitely want to read this one just to see how Faulkner could write in a different way and a story told with some of the same great features but in a much lighter tone. For me it was particularly enjoyable for that reason, although most of all I think I just enjoyed reading some Faulkner again after so long.
Quotes
Humorous/interesting descriptions
â(the banker, murdered ten or twelve years ago by the mad kinsman who perhaps didn't believe his cousin had actually sent him to the penitentiary but at least could have kept him out or anyway tried to)â
âNor could we figure this: how Mr. Buffaloe, a meek mild almost inarticulate little man in a constant condition of unworldly grease-coated dreamlike somnambulismâhow, by what means, what mesmeric and hypnotic gifts which until now even he could not have known he possessed, he had persuaded the complete stranger to abandon his expensive toy into Mr Buffaloe's charge.â
âWhy you got to snatch a man up just for passing the day with you?â
âAll right, all right,â Boon said. âJust listen to me a minute, will you? I aint talking about mudholes. I'm talking about the things a fellow-boy can learn that he never even thought about before, that forever afterward, when he needs them he will already have them. Because there aint nothing you ever learn that the day wont come when you'll need it or find use for itâproviding you've still got it, aint let it get away from you by chance or, worse than that, give it away from carelessness or pure and simple bad judgment. Do you see what I mean now? Is that clear?â
âI dont know,â I said. âIt must be, or you couldn't keep on talking about it.â
â(You see? How much ahead of his time Mr Binford was? Already a Republican. I dont mean a 1905 RepublicanâI dont know what his Tennessee politics were, or if he had anyâI mean a 1961 Republican. He was more: he was a Conservative. Like this: a Republican is a man who made his money; a Liberal is a man who inherited his; a Democrat is a barefooted Liberal in a cross-country race; a Conservative is a Republican who has learned to read and write.)â
âIn fact, I rate mules second only to rats in intelligence, the mule followed in order by cats, dogs, and horses lastâassuming of course that you accept my definition of intelligence: which is the ability to cope with the environment: which means to accept environment yet still retain at least something of personal liberty.â
â...as fragile looking as a filtered or maybe attenuated moonbeam.â
On death
âBesides that, people took funerals seriously in those days. Not death: death was our constant familiar: no family but whose annals were dotted with headstones whose memorialees had been too brief in tenure to bear a name evenâunless of course the mother slept there too in that one grave, which happened more often than you would like to think. Not to mention the husbands and uncles and aunts in the twenties and thirties and forties, and the grandparents and childless great-uncles and -aunts who died at home then, in the same rooms and beds they were born in, instead of in cubicled euphemisms with names pertaining to sunset. But the funerals, the ritual ceremonial of interment, with tenuous yet steel-strong threads capable of extending even further and bearing even more weight than the distance between Jefferson and the Gulf of Mexico.â
âIt's not men who cope with death; they resist, try to fight back and get their brains trampled out in consequence; where women just flank it, envelop it in one soft and instantaneous confederation of unresistance like cotton batting or cobwebs, already de-stingered and harmless, not merely reduced to size and usable but even useful like a penniless bachelor or spinster connection always available to fill an empty space or conduct an extra guest down to dinner.â
On innocence, virtue, and non-virtue
âWhen grown people speak of the innocence of children, they don't really know what they mean. Pressed, they will go a step further and say, Well, ignorance then. The child is neither. There is no crime which a boy of eleven had not envisaged long ago.. His only innocence is, he may not yet be old enough to desire the fruits of it, which is not innocence but appetite; his ignorance is, he does not know how to commit it, which is not ignorance but size.â
âhaving noticed in my time how quite often the advocates and even the practitioners of virtue evidently have grave doubts of their own regarding the impregnability of virtue as a shield, putting their faith and trust not in virtue but rather in the god or goddess whose charge virtue is; by-passing virtue as it were in allegiance to the Over-goddess herself, in return for which the goddess will either divert temptation away or anyhow intercede between them. Which explains a lot, having likewise noticed in my time that the goddess in charge of virtue seems to be the same one in charge of luck, if not of folly also.â
âSo you see what I mean about Virtue? You have heardâor anyway you willâpeople talk about evil times or an evil generation. There are no such things. No epoch of history nor generation of human beings either ever was or is or will be big enough to hold the un-virtue of any given moment, any more than they could contain all the air of any given moment; all they can do is hope to be as little soiled as possible during their passage through it. Because what pity Virtue does notâpossibly cannot-take care of its own as Non-virtue does. Probably it cannot: who to the dedicated to Virtue, offer in reward only cold and odorless and tasteless virtue: as compared not only to the bright rewards of sin and pleasure but to the ever watchful unflagging omniprescient skillâthat incredible matchless capacity for invention and imaginationâwith which even the tottering footsteps of infancy are steadily and firmly guided into the primrose path. Because oh yes, I had matured terrifyingly since that clock struck two minutes ago. It has been my observation that, except in a few scattered cases of what might be called malevolent hyper-prematurity, children, like poets, lie rather for pleasure than profit. Or so I thought I had until then, with a few negligible exceptions involving simple self-defense against creatures (my parents) bigger and stronger than me. But not any more. Or anyway, not now.â
schenkelberg's review against another edition
5.0
Another checked off the list of Pulitzer winners, and goodness, is this story compelling. Faulkner's writing, once acclimated to, has a majesty that I've never seen elsewhere. The Reivers is a novel of the highest caliber, a complete story, although truthfully I probably won't understand it fully unless I read it several times over the course of the next couple decades.
perryleibovitz's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
amittaizero's review against another edition
5.0
"Nothing is ever forgotten. Nothing is ever lost."
I've been burning through the collection of Faulkner at the library of the college where I teach English.
I majored in Creative Writing as an undergrad and remember being particularly averse to Faulkner in my lit classes at the time. I grew up a little and came back to Faulkner and am better for it.
I've been burning through the collection of Faulkner at the library of the college where I teach English.
I majored in Creative Writing as an undergrad and remember being particularly averse to Faulkner in my lit classes at the time. I grew up a little and came back to Faulkner and am better for it.
radioisasoundsalvation's review against another edition
2.0
I was told you can't hate Faulkner and Hemingway both... so I'll take Faulkner. Keep in mind, I'm going to give A Fable a whirl soon... but The Reivers did not impress me. The prose was not enough to get me excited, nor were the dubious characters. I know why it was supposed to be a comedy... I guess it's just not my sense of humor. I hope to have my opinion on Faulkner changed, though, and hope that my opinion is the rare one... I hate to have a bad attitude towards a book... so forgive me.
Perhaps it's the un-Southern? Meh.
Perhaps it's the un-Southern? Meh.
bites_of_books's review against another edition
The sentences are so long and convoluted, Faulkner uses way too many parentheses in this book. It also did not age well.
graywild's review against another edition
adventurous
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
story of 3 men who "borrow" a car and do a road trip to Memphis. While there they get involve in a horse race to win money. Story is around this adventure. Well written. Just not sure I found the story super engaging.
duffypratt's review against another edition
3.0
Not sure what to say about this. I kind of liked it. I remember liking the movie a lot as a kid, but I don't remember anything else about the movie in particular, just a sort of feeling that it was charming. The book is not as charming. It has a reputation for being comic, and I guess its sort of wry, but not nearly as funny as As I Lay Dying. And its supposed to be Faulkner lite, but I don't really see that as a recommendation. I have loved quite a bit of his heavier stuff. By comparison, this just felt slight, and left me a little cold.
firerosearien's review against another edition
4.0
Parts were entertaining, parts were a little more annoying. Lucius seemed to me almost more Holden than Huckleberry.