The Jeffersons

Seventeen years after publishing The Hamlet, Faulkner published a sequel.  The Town sees the Snopes movin’ on up from the lowly backwater of Frenchman’s Bend to the town, the bona fide town, of Jefferson itself.  (Really, the town is named Jefferson.  A curious coincidence?)  And along the way, we watch a remarkable transformation of Flem Snopes.

As noted here in an earlier post, the Snopes in general and Flem in particular are symbolic of a modern commercial spirit.  Flem makes money; somehow, someway, he turns every opportunity into cash.  Nobody is ever quite sure how he manages to do this over and over, but he does.  At the end of The Hamlet, he has swapped a worthless old bit of property for a profitable bit of property in town, and so he moves.  At the outset of the Town, he is finding ever more ways to acquire wealth.  Bit by bit, other Snopes follow him.  There is the good Snopes, Eck, who dies in an unfortunate accident.  But, fortunately for the line, and for humanity, Eck's son is also a Good Snopes, a hard-working industrious Snopes, who in violation of all that is Snopeslike, builds a rather profitable, creditable, ethical business in Jefferson.  Eck’s son, Wallstreet Panic (that is really his name: Wallstreet Panic Snopes) shows a path that could have been travelled by the clan, but wasn't.  Instead, the clan ends up looking a lot more like I.O.’s son, Montgomery Ward (that is his name Montgomery Ward Snopes), who sets up a pornography business in town (which, I suppose is an improvement over the prostitution business he set up while in the army during WWI).  You know where this is all headed.  As goes Frenchman’s Bend, so goes Jefferson.

Except it doesn’t.  Flem, having acquired his wealth, realizes he wants something else, something more.  He wants respect.  (All together now: R-E-S-P-E-C-T).  And so he tackles the two hurdles in his way.  First, the other Snopes must go.  He can’t get rid of Wallstreet Panic, but then again, he doesn’t really need to do so.  He does manage to get Montgomery Ward and I.O. out of town.  Suddenly, there are no other Snopes around to drag down the family name.  But, Flem needs more.  He needs a position of responsibility and respect.  And this is where the tale gets incredibly dated.  What is the most responsible and most respected job in town?  The banker, obviously.  Flem take over the bank.  In doing so, he runs the previous banker, the man, incidentally (well, probably incidentally) who is sleeping with Flem’s wife, out of town.  The Town is the story of the Triumph of Flem.

Well, except there are some discordant notes on the horizon.  Flem’s wife makes what seems like a shockingly abrupt decision.  His adopted daughter has an uncertain future. And then there are these wild child Snopes who show up in town one day; they are too much even for the Snopes’ clan to handle, and so they are shipped back out of town.  You know it is bad when even the Snopes can’t handle the wild branch of the family.  Maybe Flem’s position isn’t so secure after all. 

Maybe this is a trilogy.

The Town is a stronger book than The Hamlet.  For one thing, it coheres better.  For another, it is told by three narrators, with the shifting viewpoint Faulkner does so unbelievably well (see As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury).  We are never quite sure what is motivating anyone in the book; what does Flem’s wife want?  What does she hope to attain?  Is she really just bored?  And is De Spain as shallow as he seems; can we trust Gavin, who is clearly jealous of De Spain, on this matter?

But the big question it raises is whether Flem has any hope of succeeding.  Can you buy your way into respectability?  It is a weird question.  Once upon a time, there was some moral suspicion of those who had too much wealth.  We still pretend that is true today, but check out People magazine.  Or think about Steve Jobs or Bill Gates.  Or look at the self-promoting autobiographies which fill the Business sections of any Barnes and Noble.  These days, we worship the wealthy.  Why?  Mostly because we want to be the wealthy.  Yeah, every now and then, you hear some noises about the 1%, but at the end of the day, the people complaining about the 1% just want to get their new iPhone and lead a life of leisure, just like the 1% are doing—well, except the 1% work 20 hour days and all, but we don’t want to mention that fact because it ruins that pleasant buzz of righteous indignation.

In other words, who would actually look down on Flem Snopes?  I noted this when talking about The Hamlet; I have a hard time condemning Flem.  The Town makes it even crisper.  Yeah, Flem’s failed little stunt at the power plant was a bit déclassé, but he has moved on from that, so why shouldn’t we?  If Flem Snopes moved into town, and moved his way into the biggest house in town, and had his house decorated just like in the decorating magazines, and took over the most prestigious business in town, would anyone in modern society think he was doing something wrong, that somehow, this just wasn't right?

But, that being said, I cannot imagine anyone handing the Snopes trilogy to a teenager and saying, “Model your life after Flem Snopes.”  Something is missing here.  I just can’t put my finger on it.  Maybe The Mansion will make it clear.