Published in 1931, Faulkner appeared to have mixed emotions
about SANCTUARY. After serious concerns about it being too
controversial for print, the publisher accepted it, but
Faulkner recalled the proofs and spent many weeks of hard
work rewriting it. But when it was released, he mentioned in
an introduction to an early edition that he wrote it solely
for money.
SANCTUARY is set during the Prohibition era. Bad
living and bad luck delivers two young people into the hands
of a group of bootleggers living in a dilapidated house far
off the beaten path in the backwoods of Mississippi. In a
series of nightmare scenes, the young man breaks free, but
Temple, the innocent college-aged daughter of a prominent
citizen, witnesses a murder and then faces a horrible fate.
The wrong man is jailed for the crime but, fearing the person
who committed the crime more than the legal system, refuses
to talk. Temple is kidnapped and, facing more horrors,
undergoes a strange psychological transformation.
SANCTUARY is a dark,
brooding, psychological tale of terror, reminiscent of Poe
and Hawthorne. It breached the standard hardboiled portrayal
of crime as merely violent business outside the law, and
reached into the darker regions of men's souls, portending
the coming of noir. Indeed, James Cain's flagship of the new
genre, THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE, came out a mere three
years later. Faulkner has been credited as the originator of
the subgenre Southern Gothic, with followers such as Flannery
O'Connor and Harry Crews.
Faulkner is demanding of the reader. Details that seem
insignificant early in a novel are important in understanding
events which occur much later. Faulkner is purposely vague
about the action sometimes, giving the book a murky,
surrealistic, nightmare uncertainty. Some very significant
events go unexplained at the time they occur, with bits and
pieces revealed further on, in what might be perceived as a
painfully slow and tedious manner.
One thing that I noted while reading the book was the use of
two distinctly different styles. One page would use a
straightforward and direct Hemingway style, and the next page
would be dripping with simile and metaphor. Faulkner revised
the book extensively before it was printed, so there must be
some rhyme or reason to the style transitions which my
mediocre literary senses were unable to identify.
Another thing I noted was Faulkner's decision to avoid
writing several important scenes of violence. I assume he
considered this artistic technique. The same technique is
seen further down the road. Edward Anderson used it in his
1937 novel, THIEVES LIKE US.
William Faulkner was born in 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi.
When he was still a child, his family moved to Oxford,
Mississippi, where he lived for most of his life. Rejected by
the U.S. army for being too short, he joined the Royal
Canadian Air Force during World War I. He saw no action.
After the war, he studied literature at the University of
Mississippi, but left without a degree. His first book, THE
MARBLE FAUN, a collection of poems, was published in 1924. It
was not a success. He wrote several novels before SANCTUARY,
including the masterpiece THE SOUND AND THE FURY in
1929.
Like many hardboiled authors of the time, he made his way out
to Hollywood and worked on screenplays, including a stint
with the director Howard Hawks. The story goes that when
Hemingway refused to work with Hawks on the movie adaptation
of TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT, Hawks told him, "I'll get Faulkner
to do it; he can write better than you can anyway." During
the Hollywood years Faulkner drank heavily and had several
affairs, while his wife slipped into drug addiction and poor
health. In 1949 Faulkner was awarded a Nobel prize in
literature. Thirteen years later, in the summer of 1962,
Faulkner was thrown from a horse. He died a few weeks
later.
Geoffrey O'Brien states in his excellent critique of the
genre, HARDBOILED AMERICA, that Faulkner had a profound
effect upon the genre. Another critic stated "Mr. Faulkner's
writings showed an obsession with murder, rape, incest,
suicide, greed and general depravity..." Can you imagine a
better recommendation? Read SANCTUARY.
miker
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