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Faulkner's first Snopes novel is a bridge from modernism to postmodernism. The narrator is not unreliable, but he is a rather sneaky character. The story is told much by hearsay. The narrator knows more than everyone else, but not much more than the town gossips who stand on the gallery of the store and chew tobacco, smoke pipes, eat crackers with cheese.

The Snopes represent a shift in the culture, in the way of life in this little village in turn of the (20th) century Mississippi. Barn burning and horse trading are still big concerns, but it is all about to change; in this first book of Snopes, the reader can only sense what's coming; it is not quite explicit.

Not all the Snopes are shrewd, diligent, and resilient, but the main family member, Flem, is all three; he's pretty clever and downright mean, too.

Most of the townsfolk are rather wry and terse, at least a little harsh when we hear their dialogue. Will Varner and the sewing machine salesman, Ratliff, are characters with at least some cheer.

This is the type of fiction that rings with so much truth that the reader feels as if a real history is being told.

We are introduced to myriad other Snopes, from a supposedly pious school teacher to a burgeoning blacksmith to a mentally disabled cousin with predilections that include slobbering, moaning, and bestiality.

Flem seems to conjure a cousin every time he moves to a higher position in the community's primitive hierarchy; the newcomer takes Flem's old place, but we are led to believe it is all to the benefit of Flem, the top Snopes.

Faulkner discusses sex frankly without meandering into vulgarity, even by 1940 Southern Baptist standards. There is murder. There is domestic violence. There is, of course, racism and misogyny. Faulkner skewers it all in a slick way, subtle, never preaching.

The game of American Football is new around the time this novel takes place, and it is discussed and described a little. We are told that a thirst-quenched horse will blow into water instead of drinking. We are let in on secrets of horse trading and how those traders begat the used-car salesmen of later decades. Asides like these keep the narrative unexpectedly interesting.

The Hamlet is about how some persons get over on others, how pitiful those who are being had can be, and how miserable those doing the taking can be. And that is what has been going on in the world of humans since before there was writing, before there was even speaking.

Some of those who get walked on deserve little pity. They're so weak it's sickening. Men stand around watching a woman get smacked by her idiot husband. They gather round to see the intellectually disabled Snopes' bovine copulation. Faulkner calls out his kin, his fellow Mississippians, Americans, and human beings in general.

Varner and Ratliff are wise, but wisdom is no match for Flem Snopes' shrewdness, his cold perseverance. The book is a statement about a new era in America, where knowledge and decency are overtaken by calculation, organization, and coldhearted conniving. It is a book that shows how a narrative narrow in scope can touch on just about everything under the sun.