The Town

By: William Faulkner

Narrated by: Joe Barrett

Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins

Publisher's Summary

This is the second volume of Faulkner's trilogy about the Snopes family, his symbol for the grasping, destructive element in the post-bellum South. Like its predecessor, The Hamlet, and its successor, The Mansion, The Town is completely self-contained, but it gains resonance from the other two.

The story of Flem Snopes' ruthless struggle to take over the town of Jefferson, Mississippi, the book is rich in typically Faulknerian episodes of humor and of profundity.

As an added bonus, when you purchase our Audible Modern Vanguard production of William Faulkner's book, you'll also receive an exclusive Jim Atlas interview. This interview – where James Atlas interviews James Lee Burke about the life and work of William Faulkner – begins as soon as the audiobook ends.

This production is part of our Audible Modern Vanguard line, a collection of important works from groundbreaking authors.

©1957 William Faulkner (P)2010 Audible, Inc.

Accessible Faulkner

Faulkner humorously tells tales about the Snopes family members....sneaky, oily, crafty, ravening, grasping, double-dealing, nearly wolfish lower class Southerners who are determined to rise above their birth status.

This is one of the easier Faulkner titles to read. Still, Faulkner does employ his challenging prose style at times, so the reader/listener must attend carefully.

The narrator of the book did a very good job, with an excellent accent and very good pacing.

Superb and Accessible Second in Snopes Trilogy

This superb second in the Snopes trilogy (*The Hamlet,* *The Town,* and *The Mansion*) is an improvement from and much more accessible than the first, and, for that matter, than all of Faulkner's oeuvre with the exceptions of *The Unvanquished* (a series of related shorts) and the novel *Light in August.* I was surprised, saddened and ultimately edified upon learning the fate of a significant fictional female, whose character and what she symbolized were bound to doom by the growing commercialization of the American South in the first few decades of the 20th Century.

Disappointment

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

I like many of William Faulkner's other books, but this one I didn't finish. Too many characters to keep track of, not a very interesting story to me about a small town, and the reader's voice was not to my liking.

Would you ever listen to anything by William Faulkner again?

I would listen to other Faulkner books that I know, but I would definitely preview a sample of the reader's voice.

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Joe Barrett?

If I was able to hire the narrator, I would have hired Richard Poe, narrator of John Steinbeck's

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

This book didn't have any redeeming qualities for me. I listened for two hours and then jumped ahead, searching for something to pique my interest. No such luck. I kept waiting for the story to get better. Very disappointing. Finally just moved on to another book.