"The Hamlet" is the first book of Faulkner’s trilogy “The Hamlet,” “The Town,” and “The Mansion,” devoted to the tragedy of the American South’s aristocracy. Families of high society faced a painful choice—to preserve old notions of honor and fall into poverty, or to break with the past and join the ranks of quickly enriched “nouveau riche” businessmen.
The embodiment of this “new South” is the entrepreneur Flem Snopes, who in his desire to build a fortune and become successful will stop at nothing…