The Reivers

Dust cover: *The Reivers* is, with no reservations whatsoever, one of the funniest books in our literature. It is a comic classic that will be universally read and reread, not only today, but as far into the future as any fiction of our time can continue to delight, interest, and inform the world of tomorrow. To seasoned readers of William Faulkner, *The Reivers* will come as no surprise, for they are already aware that his great gift for comedy is one of the most brilliant facets of his genius. But to those readers who have only sampled his work, *The Reivers* will be an especial delight. To reveal too much of the plot would be a discourtesy to the reader, for this is a book which moves on the wheels of breathless suspense. It may be said, however, that one day in 1905 eleven-year-old Lucius Priest—certain to become one of the most cherished striplings in literature—borrowed his grandfather’s automobile, with the tacit connivance of two older friends: the part-Indian Boon Hogganbeck and Ned William McCaslin, a Negro. In that nostalgic day, their ensuing expedition in the car from Jefferson, Mississippi, to Memphis called for the fearless hardihood of pioneers. The account of the heroic trio’s journey is as exciting as it is hilarious—but it is just a pale prelude to the adventures that await them in Memphis. These being when Ned—a long-shot gambler and manipulator of Homeric stature—trades Grandfather’s car for a dubious race horse. How the three reivers *grapple with the ensuing crisis is the mainspring of the story. Beginning with a night of whispered conspiracy in Miss Reba’s brothel (made famous by the authors* Sanctuary* ), it ends only after a conflict with the law, and some of the most hair-raising and bizarre horse racing in the history of fact or fiction. The wild humor, the racy language, and the frenetic action will not, however, blind the perceptive reader to the fact that *The Reivers* , like all of William Faulkner’s work, is also a book about moving and tender human relationships, with profound moral insights into human conduct. *reive (reave): take awya by stealth or force; plunder.