2011/12

William Faulkner: The Reivers (305p.)

The Reivers is one of the toughest books I have read in English, as it is written ‘Southern-colloquial’, by the 1949 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, William Faulkner, the great Southern writer. Reminiscent in its difficulty of Nelson Algren’s A Walk on the Wild Side (set in the South as well), which I read last year. A carbonated soft drink is a Coke in the South, a Pop in the Midwest and Northwest, and a Soda in the Northeast and Southwest. Everything’s different in the South. The lady and I spent a couple of years in Chapel Hill, North-Carolina.

The Reivers was Faulkner’s last book, a picaresque, most likely not his best book, but let me do a few more first before making further statements. I got The Sound and the Fury lined up.