Audio Clips

Is Flem going to be respectable from now on? (8 May 1957; 1:14)

William Faulkner: Yes, sir.

Unidentified participant: Mr. Faulkner, in your new book, The Town, you have Flem Snopes assuming the mask of respectability. And I was wondering, since you, I think, are going to write a trilogy, that—I was wondering what type of character would Flem Snopes assume, say, in your next book?

William Faulkner: He had never heard of respectability. He didn't even know it existed, until suddenly [audience laughter] he found that he needed it. And so he assumed it, and as soon as he doesn't need respectability any longer, he will cast it away. That he had a certain aim which he intended to attain. He would use whatever tools necessary, with complete ruthlessness, to gain that end. And if he had to use respectability, he would use that. If he had to use religious observance, he would use that. If he has to destroy his wife, he will do that. If he has to—to trick a—a—a child, a girl child, into—to being his tool, he will do that with no compunction whatever. That respectability to him was just a tool.

Why does the novel have three narrators? (13 May 1957; 2:48)

Floyd Stovall: You have various children. You spoke of Benjy. There is—and also of The Sound and the Fury and Vardaman. I was thinking—been thinking recently about this boy who participates in the telling of the story in The Town. I don't know—I'm not sure that I know how you would explain the function of Charles Mallison in—in this last novel, whether he has—whether he is—his part of the story is supposed to have any particular value because he is a child or—and—and whether—and then Ratliff—there are three people, you see. There is yourself, and I—I'm—I haven't been able to see at the moment, and I've only read it one time, quite as well as I do in The Sound and the Fury the distinct values which come from the three points of view. I don't know whether I am making myself clear or not. You can comment on that problem.

William Faulkner: That's—was simply a—a—well, I don't like the word "trick," but it was used deliberately to look at—at the—the object from three points of view. Just as when you—you examine a—a monument you will walk around it. You are not satisfied to look at it from just one side. Also, it—to look at it from—from three different mentalities. That was—one was the mirror which obliterated all except truth because the mirror didn't know the other factors existed. Another was to look at it from the point of view of—of someone who had made of himself a more or less artificial man through his desire to practice what he had been told was a virtue, apart from his belief in virtues, what he had been told, trained by his respect for education in the old classical sense. The other was from the point of view of a man who—who practiced virtue from simple instinct, from—from—well, more than that, because—for a practical reason, because it was better. There was less confusion if all people didn't tell lies to one another and didn't pretend. That seemed to me to give a more complete picture of the specific incidents as they occurred if they could be [expressed?] three times.

Does Charles Mallison change during the novel? (13 May 1957; 0:17)

Floyd Stovall: And yet you didn't mean that Charles Mallison was quite as much of a child or an innocent as some of these other children?

William Faulkner: Well, he changed. He grew up in that book. And, of course, his point of view changed.

Is Gavin Stevens' character less likeable in this book? (13 May 1957; 2:13)

Floyd Stovall: One other question about that book. Someone has said recently—and I don't present this as my view, it is something that—that I would like you to comment on if you will—that Gavin Stevens in The Town is a less mature, a less responsible, somehow or other a less likable person than he appears in some other places, as in the stories of Knight's Gambit.

William Faulkner: Well, he had got out of his depth—depth. He had got into—to the real world. While he was—could be—a county attorney, an amateur Sherlock Holmes, then he was at home, but—but he got out of that. He got into a—a real world in which people anguished and suffered, not simply did things which they shouldn't do. And he wasn't as prepared to cope with people who were following their own bent, not for profit but simply because they had to. That is, he knew a good deal less about people than he knew about the law and about the weighing of evidence and—and drawing the right conclusions from what he—he saw with his legal mind. When he—when he had to deal with people, he was an amateur. He was—at times he had a good deal less judgment than his nephew did. Which is—is not against education, as probably the passion he had for getting degrees, for trying this and trying that and going all the way to Europe to get more degrees, to study more, was—was in his own nature. It was the same character that made him shy away from marriage. He was probably afraid to be married. He might get too involved with the human race if he married one of them. [audience laughter]

What time period does the novel cover? (13 May 1957; 0:55)

Unidentified participant: Did you mean Gavin Stevens to be like that in Intruder in the Dust?

William Faulkner: No'm. These people I—I invent, and after that I just run along and put down what they say and do. I don't know always what they are going to develop into myself.

Unidentified participant: I mean, is Gavin at the same stage of development in Intruder in the Dust? Is he younger in The Town?

William Faulkner: Intruder in the Dust happened after The Town. Intruder in the Dust happened about 1935 or '40, and The Town began in—in 1909 and went to 1927. Probably Stevens learned something from The Town to carry into Intruder in the Dust.

Are Gavin and Quentin Compson similar as "knights"? (13 May 1957; 0:47)

Joseph Blotner: Mr. Faulkner, the fight that Gavin has with de Spain in The Town reminded me in some ways of the fight that Quentin had when he was in Cambridge. They both seemed a little bit like Don Quixote—

William Faulkner: Yes.

Joseph Blotner: —fighting for the honor of a lady. Is there any such similarity there, in character, between the two men at that time?

William Faulkner: No, that's—that's a constant, sad and—and funny picture too. It is the knight that goes out to defend somebody who don't want to be defended and don't need it. But it's a very fine quality in—in human nature. I hope it will always endure. It is comical and a little sad, and Quentin and Stevens were that much alike.

Why did Eula commit suicide? (30 May 1957; 1:50)

William Faulkner: Yes, sir.

Unidentified participant: I want to ask you a question about The Town. The—the heroine of this story, Eula Varner Snopes, at the end commits suicide. What do you think was her reason for it?

William Faulkner: It was for the sake of that child. She, at that—that time had realized that—that every child, a—a young girl, especially, needed the—the semblance of an intact home—that is, to have a mother and a father, to have the same things that the other children had. And she had reached an impasse where—where her—her lover would have demanded that—that she leave her—her husband, and then that child would have found out that—that it had grown up in a broken home. Up to this time, whether the child loved Flem or not, at least he was the symbol of the father which all the other children had, and with—the mother felt it would be better for this girl to have a—a mother who committed suicide than a mother who ran off with a lover, which was—that may have been the wrong decision she made, but that was the decision she did make—that at least this girl would've—would've had the—the similitude of an intact, though a— tragedy—tragedy-ridden home, just as other children did.

Unidentified participant: Do you by chance have in mind writing the story of this daughter now?

William Faulkner: Yes sir. That will be in the—in the next book. She's one of the most interesting people I've written about yet, I think. Her story will be in the next book.

Did you invent new Snopeses for this novel? (5 June 1957; 0:53)

Unidentified participant: Mr. Faulkner?

William Faulkner: Yes, ma'am.

Unidentified participant: In—in this book, The Town, we come across so many of the characters we have met previously. Are those four snaky Snopeses new?

William Faulkner: Are the what Snopes new?

Unidentified participant: The four snaky Snopeses, in the last chapter?

William Faulkner: Not to me. I thought of—of—of these people thirty years ago, and—and the more I thought about them, the more Snopes they invented. It's simply that I haven't got around yet to—to telling about them. There's one more volume, which I hope will be the last, but I have no assurance that it will be. [audience laughter] It may be that when I finish that there will still be another. But they are—are not new to me. They have been in—been alive and have been in motion. I have hated them and laughed at them and been afraid of them for thirty years now. [audience laughter]

Unidentified participant: Fascinating.

Is there a Snopes named Montgomery Ward? (7 March 1957; 1:05)

Joseph Blotner: Somebody once wrote, Mr. Faulkner, I—maybe this is apocryphal, that a—a couple of Snopeses who haven't yet been described, but who—who might [were to be described], were named Dollar Watch Snopes and Montgomery Ward Snopes. [audience laughter] Is there any truth to that?

William Faulkner: Yes, there's a Montgomery Ward Snopes. He went to France in 1917 to keep from being drafted. He joined the YMCA, [audience laughter] and he came back with a batch of—of French pornographic postcards and opened what he called a studio. [audience laughter] He—he had a—a Basque hat and a windsor tie by that time. He was an artist. His studio had a back door to it, and if people joined the club, they could look at the postcards [audience laughter] until the government caught him. That was Montgomery Ward.

Unidentified participant: Did he ever make it back to America?

William Faulkner: Oh, yes. This was back in Jefferson where he opened his studio. [audience laughter]