Dark & Twisty

I have one thing to say.  If all of Faulkner's work was as fun and easy to read as this, more people would be reading Faulkner.

This book is a Southern gothic noir story.  It is set in several areas across Mississippi, Memphis, and even give Birmingham, AL a shout out.  The story follows  the trail of black man accused of raping a girl and murdering a mentally retarded man.  It also follows the kidnapping of Temple a deb who is the girl accused of being raped.

In reality, she was raped by a man named Popeye (not the sailor).  He is little more than a antisocial personality disorder, who was scarred by his mothers syphallis.  He is impotent and it drives most of his criminality. HE raped Temple with a corn cob but told her it was his junk.  The girl bleeds profusely but doesn't realize that she's been raped with a corncob.  As the story goes on, Temple falls in love Popeye who makes her have sex with another man whle he watches. 

This story revolves around much of this antisocial behavior.  The Temple character even becomes evil. She lets the innocent black man take the rap for her rape and the murder.  All the man is guilty of is bootlegging, and being dumb enough to let these people hang around his joint.

Now, this story is wonderfully Southern Gothic.  The settings are dark and brooding as are the characters.  You don't know who to trust.  There is even overtones of horror.  The grotesque exists in the characters who float around. 

Other backwoods stories can be seen in this story.  I got the feeling of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  There are so many of these disgusting characters floating around. 

Faulkner can teach alot about writing, but his control of language, local color and dialect is superb.  I'm Southern (from Alabama not far from Birmingham,  yo!)  I enjoyed reading this tale out loud during the dialetical parts.  His way of coming up with spelling and pronunciation was excellent.

I greatly enjoyed this book and learned quite a bit from it.  A good read.  A really good read.