Submitted by ben.robbins@fu-... on Thu, 2017-10-26 08:16
Charles Mallison, Jr. - or "Chick" - is the only child of a family that is connected, through marriage, with Yoknapatawpha's oldest, most aristocratic families. He plays a major role in several of Faulkner's late fictions, becoming the youngest in the line of young idealists that includes Quentin Compson and Ike McCaslin. He narrates a sizeable portion of this novel, as well as The Town, the earlier, second volume in the Snopes Trilogy. As a character he spends most of his time and energy helping V.K.
Melisandre Backus's husband was "a big rich New Orleans bootlegger," until "they brought him home with a bullet hole neatly plugged up in the middle of his forehead, in a bullet-proof hearse" (187). In "Knight's Gambit" his name is Harriss.
Jack Crenshaw and this man are federal officers, "revenue field agents" (182), who "are just interested in whiskey, not photography" (183). They find the moonshine whiskey in Montgomery Ward Snopes' studio. (As officials whose task it is to make sure all alcohol production is properly taxed, 'revenuers' play a prominent role in the lore of moonshine whiskey.)
Jack Crenshaw, "the Revenue field agent that did the moonshine still hunting in our district" (182), calls Hampton about Montgomery Ward Snopes' studio.
None of these people are mentioned as individuals, but Gavin and Charles pay a visit to this community, where the local population was "having some kind of a squabble over a drainage tax suit" (181).
According to Ratliff, Wilbur Provine "was really a Snopes" - which is another way of casting aspersions on his character. In Wilbur's case, "he ran a still in the creek bottom by a spring about a mile and a half from his house" (177). He gets a five-year sentence for moonshining.
Gavin Stevens, in his campaign for County Attorney, "began to talk like the people he would lean on fences or squat against the walls of country stores with" (176).
