Faulkner William - Snopes - The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion

The Town is entirely told by three voices: first by Charles Mallison, who was not yet born when half the events of the story took place and calls himself, in the second paragraph of the first chapter, the collective point of view of the town of Jefferson; by the highly educated (Harvard and Heidelberg) lawyer, Gavin Stevens, an indefatigable talker who can manage some stylish mouthfuls on his own; and by his friend Ratliff, a patient listener who has learned some wisdom. The three, taken together, tell the whole story and very gradually begin to sound more and more like each other as they influence each other. In The Mansion the original third-person narrator returns now to share the telling with the same three monologists from The Town .

Clearly, then, one of the things that the whole Snopes trilogy is “about” is story-telling, how stories come to be and come to us and how the sum and substance of them become our history; how history is made. In a larger sense the history of Yoknapatawpha County becomes, as Faulkner planned and hoped, by action, event, allusion, and echo, a version of the history of the world. In that sense the cumulative story of that one place is the story of every place.

The surface of these novels, this trilogy, is complex, often intricate. But the tale, itself, is passionately simple. It follows the almost uninterrupted rise of Flem Snopes, from poverty and obscurity to power, first in the county and later in the town where he manages also to acquire the patina of respectability, if not honor, peaking as a bank president and a deacon of the Baptist Church—a paradigm, then, of the American dream of upward mobility, except for the undeniable fact that each and every step of the way has been achieved by every conceivable kind and form of merciless double-dealing—from simple scams worked on the illusions of simple people (never forget that Ratliff, too, falls victim at the end of The Hamlet and learns a lot thereby) to overt acts of blackmail and extortion, larceny, grand and petty. Nothing is too small for the ruthless, greedy attention of Flem Snopes; and, until the very end of the trilogy he is secure in his shamelessness. Most of the swarming Snopes clan—though not all by any means; bear in mind the honorable and successful Wall Street Panic Snopes—are up to no good most of the time, fascinating and repulsive and often as funny as can be. But Flem is the master Snopes, identified like his aristocratic counterpart, Jason Compson, who has a significant cameo role, as a true son of Satan, a banal and evil man.

All by himself, Flem Snopes would be worth a trilogy or more, but the two women in his life (never mind how and why; read and find out), the fabulous Eula Varner Snopes, heir to Lillith and Helen of Troy, and her daughter, Linda, are equally remarkable creations, both doomed and tragic figures, though with a difference; the first raised to mysterious and mythical proportion, both biblical and classical, by all her beholders and a multitude of admirers; the latter more “real” to those close around her (thus to readers also).

The only two characters in the trilogy of whom we are not invited to share the inner experience of consciousness are Flem and Eula. Mysterious to others, they become the occasion for steady and unrelenting speculation. We know them only from their works and ways. They keep their secrets to the end. They remain always able to surprise us, and everyone else, fictional and real, for as loas they live. Nevertheless, we notice, suddenly and briefly, some special truths about the. In The Town we learn in one flashing moment, when Eula confronts her profoundly romantic admirer, Gavin Stevens, that, mythical creature or not, she can be coldly pragmatic and ruthlessly single-minded when she thinks she has to be. She is something more and different, in truth, than anyone had imagined her to be. Flem’s nefarious career, in all three novels, is so marked by success that we tend not to notice his few failures or the true source of his power over others. His powers work, like those of any confidence man, only by appealing to the greed of others. When as in the case in the first chapter of The Town , the two black men, Tom Tom and Tomey’s Turl, set against each other and sorely abused by Snopes, manage to get together, swallow their pride, and come to “complete federation,” Snopes is beaten. We know then that he is not invulnerable.

There are so many things to celebrate about this magnificent trilogy. I have elected here to speak, in awe and honor, about only a couple of things. One is the rich variety of Faulkner’s method, his endlessly inventive ways and means of telling stories. He has opened up new territories for all the writers who have come and will come after him. He has changed our ways of thinking about the power and glory of fiction. He has challenged writers and readers alike, all over the world, to bring and to give to the experience of his art nothing less than the best they have. He has demonstrated that they (we) will be well rewarded.

And I have stressed his magical capacity at characterization. The events, outrageous or quotidian, that occur in these novels are perfectly presented, executed with a timing and finesse that the finest athletes could envy. But they work, they capture our attention and sustain our involvement because they happen to characters we can care about and believe in. He presents the surface—Flem’s bow tie, Ratliff’s blue shirt, Stevens’ corncob pipe—directly and engages us with an intense physicality. Their flesh and bones seem real enough to suffer or rejoice, and the world they move in is not so much described as felt. And, above all, no matter how foolish or flawed they may be, no matter how educated or ignorant, they are blessed with the equality of an inner life and being that renders even the least of them worthy of full attention. All of this is clear, at once poetic and explicit, in the final pages of The Mansion when both Stevens and Ratliff unknowingly echo the prayer of the preacher Goodyhay—“Save us, Christ, the poor sons of bitches.” And the classic poor s.o.b. Mink Snopes has a final and authentic vision of himself among the dead, “himself among them, equal to any, good, as any, brave as any, being inextricable from, anonymous with all of them…” Faulkner has been sometimes faulted for giving deep thoughts and feelings to common characters, but that criticism can come only from a different vision of mankind, a vision as cold and mechanical as that of Flem Snopes. Faulkner’s inclusive, democratic vision of the equality of human souls shines through all his characters and makes them matter. There is much laughter in the Snopes trilogy, but there are tears also.

A great deal has been written by scholoars and critics about Faulkner and about this trilogy. Some of it is extremely valuable to a fuller and deeper appreciation of his work. But my strong suggestion to readers coming to these novels for the first time (and there will be generations of you) is to plunge in and fare forward, allowing the experience of the story to happen as it does, without any additional mediation or guidance. Experience the story before turning to or trusting the opinions and judgments of others, myself included.

The one big exception to this rule is the biography by Joseph Blotner, preferably the revised, one-volume version of 1984, wherein the story of the creation of the Snopes novels and the public reception of each as it first appeared is followed closely and accurately and does not in any way lessen the original impact. It also seems to me likely that the words and thoughts of Faulkner, himself, about these books, to be found in the Selected Letters of William Faulkner (1977) can only serve to enhance the reader’s experience.