What do You think about Mosquitoes (1996)?
Though slagged as Faulkner's worse novel by the all knowing academia, I actually found it to be a good read. It was far, far superior to Faulkner's first, Soldier's Pay. This reads much more like Faulkner in his prime. More a novel of ideas than anything else, it introduces us to some of his future favorite words like... "fecund." Sadly, "ratiocination" and "apotheosis" have yet to surface. As Faulkner himself references, this may perhaps be his ode to Balzac. And as another Facebook review noted, this does have the feel of Melville's The Confidence Man, if not in spiraling obfuscation, in its setting.
—Esteban Gordon
This novel has so much . . . potential. There are beautiful images abounding, and fascinating insights into artistic philosophy. That being said, without much of a plot to hold it together and with a fair dash of prose experiments on Faulkner's part, Mosquitoes is a supremely difficult read. It's almost as if the reader is alternately drowning and then coming up for air each time Faulkner offers a reprieve in the form of one of his more skillful passages (the foray into New Orleans' swamps is replete with gorgeous imagery). My best recommendation would be a purchase of the book and a re-read (and another, and another) in between your other 'to-reads' . . . it seems that this method would net a better appreciation of this early Faulkner.
—Ann Santori
'You don't commit suicide when you are disappointed in love. You write a book.'Mosquitoes is a unique novel of William Faulkner. His serpentine style wasn't fully formed at the time he wrote the novel: sometimes, the novel even read like Hemingway, both because of the subject matter (artistes) and the terseness of Bill's writing style. It wasn't a difficult read (especially when compared to Absalom, Absalom! or The Sound and the Fury), but it was a novel that was boring and uneventful for the most part. There were certainly high points in the novel, however, and I gave it three stars because I still have more fondness towards it than I do towards A Fable. No one would certainly think of this as a good Faulkner novel. It was, however, certainly a better read than Pylon or A Fable was for me. Fable was simply confusing and extremely bloated. Read as a testament to Faulkner's evolution as a writer, though, the novel is enlightening. Themes that would pervade his later work such as time and grief already appear in this work. Sadness and the passage of time is a permanent entity in Faulkner's world. 'Only an idiot has no grief; only a fool would forget it. What else is there in the world sharp enough to stick to your guts?'
—Michael David
