"Mr Jim Avant from Hickory Flat,” one of the four well-known dog breeders and trainers mentioned in The Reivers, is almost certainly intended to be J.M. (James Monroe) Avent was a well-known owner and trainer of pedigreed bird dogs. He co-established the National Bird Dog Championship and in 1930. Time magazine called him the "most celebrated of contemporary handlers," citing too his nickname the "Fox of Hickory Valley," his home in Tennessee. Faulkner either misremembered or misspelled his name in this novel, and he also relocated hi m - perhaps on purpose.
In The Reivers Otis tells Lucius that Aunt Fittie, who took Corrie in after her mother's death, "might have been kin to some of us," but that isn't definite (153). She lives "in a house on the edge" a small town in Arkansas and prostitutes the "eleven or twelve" year-old Corrie to local men for fifty cents a visit (154).
In The Reivers "Aunt" Callie's title is the culture's label for a black woman of her age and in her role as a 'mammy' to Lucius and his brothers. She was "born in the country and still preferred it" (49), although she lives in town with the family she works for. While black and a servant, she does not hesitate to berate white males in the line of her duty to her charges - although her frequent "yelling" has no effect on any of them (54).
Requiem for a Nun identifies the voters in Yoknapatawpha during the hundred years after the building of the courthouse in 1835 as "the white male citizens of the county" (37). Historically of course, a pair of Constitutional amendments gave black males the right to vote in 1870 and women the vote in 1920, but perhaps the novel is reminding us about the peculiar (unwritten) constitution of the world Faulkner is representing.
According to Requiem for a Nun the pioneers and other men who travel through the wilderness do so "armed and in parties," for protection against the robbers and murderers who lurk there (9).
In a facetious passage connecting the lost lock in 1826 to the future of the U.S., the narrator of Requiem for a Nun makes "a glorious prophecy" about the when when the American "people" will identify federal money with the "manna" of a generous god (17). They are described as "a race of laborers" whose only labor it to consume government funds (17).
According to Requiem for a Nun, "even Negroes" can vote in Yoknapatawpha elections "now" - though these enfranchised voters "vote for the same . . . white supremacy champions that the white" voters elected (38).
In Requiem for a Nun Temple compares her own experience overcoming trauma to this fictional character. Although Faulkner blurs the details, saying that the book in which this woman appears was written by "somebody - Hemingway, wasn't it?" (121), it's very likely that Temple is thinking of Maria, a character in Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls. According to Temple's account, this character freed herself from the past by "refusing to accept it" (121).
Describing her married life in Requiem for a Nun, Temple refers to the "country club younger set" of friends with whom she and Gowan socialize (124). Apparently assuming it is a progressive gesture, these friends "applaud" when Temple hires the black "ex-dope-fiend" Nancy as a nurse for her children (124).
