My rating of this book is based on what I've read of it (btwn a third and half); I can only say that I wish I'd had it to hand when I slogged my way through Absalom, Absalom! (by choice, no less: I wasn't assigned it for a class), or even through some of Faulkner's other, not quite as dense works. Brooks' book helped me through the latter half of the Snopes Trilogy (The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion; The Long Hot Summer comes from The Hamlet), and informed and instructed me in the other novels I read about. The "Notes" section at the back of the book includes such useful material as a chronology of the events in Sanctuary, discrepancies between it and its sequel, Requiem For a Nun, five pages (including 3 pages of diagrams) explaining "How Ratliff Outsmarted Flem" in the Snopes Trilogy, a chronology of the events in The Mansion, and several pages of tables listing fact-checking and conjectures about Thomas Sutpen and his children from Absalom, Absalom!.

I've read 9 Faulkner novels at this point (8 set in Yoknapatawpha County, plus The Wild Palms) and will doubtless read more (and re-read some of what I've read); but one novel that I can almost guarantee that I won't read is The Reivers, unless Brooks' chapter on it magically convinces me otherwise. ( )