Submitted by tmtowner@utdall... on Thu, 2014-08-21 18:27
Jefferson has at least two restaurants for white patrons. The one Flem owns is on a "back street" and has mostly customers from the country (149, 151). Though Flem's ownership is a new chapter in its history, the restaurant has been in business for a long time: its "wooden counter" has been worn "glass-smooth by elbows in their eating generations" (150).
Submitted by tmtowner@utdall... on Thu, 2014-08-21 18:18
The "worthless piece of land which had been a portion of Mrs. Snopes's dowry" is not identified in this story, but from The Hamlet (1940) we know that it is the antebellum plantation called the Old Frenchman Place. In that later work readers also learn the deception by which Flem tricked V.K. Suratt into trading his share of the restaurant in Jefferson for it.
Submitted by tmtowner@utdall... on Thu, 2014-08-21 18:10
The "county store" where Flem Snopes worked before moving to Jefferson is not named in this story, but from other Yoknapatawpha fictions we know that it is Will Varner's store, which forms the center of the community in Frenchman's Bend. This area in the southeast part of the county is the setting for many of Faulkner's works.
