Another riff from Faulkner’s University of Virginia lectures, this one on the Snopes family, the disappearing blackguard, and the curse of respectability.
Joseph Blotner: One thing that we sometimes seem to see with acquisitive people like the Snopeses is that after they have made the gains which they want very much to make, respectability seems to set in and start to work on them, too. Do you see any signs of that happening in that clan?
William Faulkner: No, only that the rapacious people, if they’re not careful, they are seduced away and decide that what they’ve got to have is respectability which destroys one, almost anybody. That is, nobody seems to be brave enough anymore to be a—an out-and-out blackguard or rascal, that sooner or later he’s got to be respectable, [audience laughter] and that finishes it.
Unidentified participant: Why aren’t there blackguards [then]?
William Faulkner: They ain’t brave and strong and tough like they used to be. [audience laughter]
Unidentified participant: [And] why not?
William Faulkner: It’s the—the curse of the times, maybe. It may be there’s a three or four color printing of advertisements have—have been too seductive, or a picture of a fine big car in two colors with a handsome young woman by it, so that you almost think the woman comes with the new car [audience laughter] when you make the starter payments. Money is—there’s so much pressure to conform, to—to be respectable.
Unidentified participant: More than in the Victorian?
William Faulkner: I think so, yes. In the Victorian, they tried to—to force you to be respectable to save your soul. Now, they compel you to be respectable to be rich.
Unidentified participant: Were these people blackguards to save their souls? I’m not quite sure I understand the connection.
William Faulkner: Well, I think that possibly the old Adam in man suggests to him to be a blackguard if he can get away with it, and when there’s a great deal of pressure to be respectable, if there is—is a great enough reward for the respectability, he will choose that in preference to the pleasure of being a scoundrel and a blackguard, that people don’t have enough verve and zest anymore, which is not the fault of man so much as the fault of the times that we live in to where he—there’s too much pressure against being an individualist, and—and a—a good first-rate scoundrel is an individualist. He don’t really belong to a gang. Once he’s got to join a gang, he becomes a second-rate scoundrel, but a first-rate scoundrel is like a first-rate artist. He’s an individualist, and the pressure’s all against being an individualist. You’ve got to belong to a group. It don’t matter much what group, but you’ve got to belong to it, or there’s no place for you in the—the culture or the economy. Maybe to belong to a gang you might escape the Atom bomb.
Unidentified participant: Are you saying that he has to be a—a scoundrel to be an individualist?
William Faulkner: No, sir. I say a scoundrel, to be a good one, must be an individualist. That only an individualist can be a first-rate scoundrel. Only an individualist can be a first-rate artist. He can’t belong to a group or a school and be a first-rate writer.
Frederick Gwynn: You could have some grudging admiration for Flem Snopes who pretty well sticks to his character.
William Faulkner: Well, until he was bitten by the bug to be respectable. Then he let me down. [audience laughter] I had an admiration for him until then.
