Faulkner began to write The Town, a sequence to The Hamlet, in November 1955, though he had already made a brief outline of the Snopes trilogy as early as December 1938. The aim of this paper is, first, to survey what work he was occupied with in the period between 1940 and 1955 to seek reasons for his delay in starting the composition of The Town; and, next, to study a few problems in its structure, paying attention to the work's nature as a "chronicle."
Soon after the completion of The Hamlet, Faulkner decided to alleviate his constant monetary difficulties by writing short stories, and then going to Hollywood. An idea he got there—the idea that "Christ (some movement in mankind which wished to stop war forever) reappeared and was crucified again"—expanded into A Fable (1954). The composition of this fable seems in the main to have kept the author from turning to the creation of The Town. In addition, as he started writing The Town, he was not in good condition, either physical or mental, because of sickness, habitual drinking, and irritation at the issue of racial integration. The major problem in the structure of this work stems from the role of Gavin Stevens. Faulkner intended him to become a successor to Ratliff as the critical antagonist to Snopesism, but he turns out to be an idealist, a man of principle: instead of making realistic efforts to "save Jefferson from Snopeses," he tries to protect Eula and Linda from Flem as the foremost embodiment of Snopesism. As a result, the story of his relationship with both women controls a large part of the whole narration, which necessarily keeps the original, central subject of Snopesism in the background.
In this connection, we may detect the tendency of the story to become fragmentary. This tendency is due not only to the regression of the original subject, but to the use of twenty-four chapters, inappropriate to the book's nature as a "chronicle." Further, the multiple narration tends to be explanative and analytic, especially in Steven's case. The tendency, in effect, incurs the change of "the inscrutable Flem of Frenchman's Bend into the hypocritical Flem of The Town," a change which diminishes the menace of rapacious, inhuman Snopesism.