The Late Work

Abstract

The Hamlet (1940) is the first manifestation in novel form of a project which was to stretch over 33 years, from ‘Father Abraham’ around 1926 to the third novel in the ‘Snopes Trilogy’, The Mansion (1959) (the middle novel was The Town [1957]). In 1945 Faulkner wrote to Malcolm Cowley that The Hamlet was ‘incepted’ as a novel, but it represents a skilful melding and reworking of several earlier short stories, including ‘The Hound’ (1930, basis for the story of Mink and Houston), ‘Spotted Horses’ (1931), ‘Lizards in Jamshyd’s Court’ (1932), ‘Fool About a Horse’ (1936), and ‘Barn Burning’ (1938). John Pikoulis describes in detail how these stories have been reworked from ‘narrative samplers’141 into a fictional history of the community of Frenchman’s Bend. He suggests a tension between the variety of tales of a static community (reminiscent, perhaps, of Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio) and recurring themes of economy overruling passion, which suggest the inevitable demise of the pastoral world. Certainly the key protagonists reflect this demise: Ratliff, the businessman who prefers to gossip on the steps of the general store, beaten by Flem Snopes, the dedicated moneymaker who is virtually silent throughout the trilogy.