Submitted by jburgers@gc.cuny.edu on Sat, 2018-04-14 11:51
These "young fellers from the paper" who report the story of Mink Snopes' attempted prison break repeatedly ask him what his real name is, since "Mink" is "jest a nickname" (98).
Submitted by jburgers@gc.cuny.edu on Sat, 2018-04-14 11:18
Montgomery Ward refers to this girl when, in a passage summing up the scoundrels in his family, he talks about "Uncle Wesley leading a hymn with one hand and fumbling the skirt of an eleven-year-old infant with the other" (93). In The Town Wesley is caught having sex with a fourteen-year-old, so it is certainly possible that Monty is referring to a real event and victim, but it seems more probable that, as in his use of the word "infant," Monty is inventing or exaggerating here. (The 'Unnamed Fourteen-Year-Old Girl' in the earlier novel has her own character entry.)
Someone informs Stevens about both Lonnie's funeral and Joe's whereabouts on the day he was buried. There is good reason to think this person is someone from Frenchman's Bend, and it may even be the coroner whose telephone call first brought Stevens into the story, but all the text provides is a voice which speaks in correct (i.e. not vernacular) English and with unmistakable if unsentimental sympathy for Joe's loss.
