Five or six miles north of Jefferson, Mink leaves the road and walks along "the dense-brier cypress willow jungle of the creek bottom" (444). Although Mink doesn't know its name, and the novel doesn't give it, the creek is undoubtedly Hurricane Creek, often called Harrykin Creek, a familiar part of Faulkner's landscape that appears often in the fictions, especially the ones featuring Sartorises.
During his rise toward respectability, Flem Snopes joins and faithfully attends the Baptist church in Jefferson; the narrative notes "the outward and augmented physical aspect of the edifice" which has been paid for with his money (461).
In The Mansion Tug Nightingale and his father worship at a "little backstreet Hardshell church" somewhere in Jefferson (203). The term "hardshell" refers to a branch of the Baptist religion that is extremely conservative. The novel also includes a Baptist Church in Jefferson, but that is almost certainly a larger, more mainstream branch of the faith - though throughout Faulkner's fiction the Baptists are portrayed as conservative.
Ratliff invites Stevens to come hunt geese in the "big oat field in the bend below Uncle Billy's pasture" (139). Oats are an atypical crop in Yoknapatawpha, but no other details are provided, not even what "bend" is referred to. It is not the bend from which Frenchman's Bend derives its name, and it could be a bend in a road or a river. However, it is undoubtedly in the Frenchman's Bend region, since it belongs to "Uncle Billy" Varner. The specific place in the Bend we chose to locate it is speculative.
In both "By the People" and The Mansion V.K. Ratliff invites Gavin Stevens to come hunt geese in the "big oat field in the bend below Uncle Billy's pasture" (139, 352). Oats are an atypical crop in Yoknapatawpha, where cotton is grown for money and corn to feed livestock and make whiskey, but no other details are provided, not even what "bend" is referred to. It is most likely a bend in a road or a river, but if it were the bend from which Frenchman's Bend derives its name, presumably the word would be capitalized.
"Tallahatchie" (137) is the name of the river that forms the northern border of both the fictional Yoknapatawpha and the real Lafayette counties. By suggesting that a "blue tick" dog from "up" there has used the dog thicket at Varner's Mill on the river at the southern end of Yoknapatawpha, Ratliff gives credence to the idea that the scents in the thicket have been left there by "every dog in the Congressional district" (137).
Submitted by ben.robbins@fu-... on Sat, 2017-10-21 09:06
Eddie Rickenbacker was the most famous American aviator during World War I. He is mentioned by Stutterbuck, who calls him "Rick," implying an acquaintance with the "Ace" who shot down twenty-six enemy planes (84). But there is not the slightest chance that Stutterbuck is telling the truth.
Submitted by ben.robbins@fu-... on Sat, 2017-10-21 09:05
The man whom Stutterbuck refers to in The Mansion as "Black Jack" is John Joseph Pershing, who led the American Expeditionary Force that went to Europe during the last year of World War I - or as Stutterbuck puts it, who went "to France to run the show over there" (84). Stutterbuck claims to know Pershing, but there is not the slightest chance he is telling the truth, about that or anything else.
Submitted by ben.robbins@fu-... on Sat, 2017-10-21 09:03
A patron at Reba's brothel in Memphis. Montgomery Ward Snopes says Strutterbuck "even got his name out a book" (86), but it's not clear what book Mink might be thinking of, and the money order he gives Miss Reba proves Strutterbuck's last name is real. Most of the rest of his story, however, rings false, including the military rank he claims and the stories he tells about his service in World War I. He is described as "about fifty," "tall, pretty big, with a kind of rousterbout's face" (83). He tries to cheat a prostitute named Thelma out of her money.
Submitted by ben.robbins@fu-... on Sat, 2017-10-21 09:02
Thelma is a "new girl" at Miss Reba's brothel (89); Reba tells Mink that she "just came in last week" (84). Apparently she forgets to ask Strutterbuck for money before having sex with him.
