Customer Reviews

William Faulkner Manuscripts 8: Sanctuary, Volume I: The Holograph Manuscript and Miscellaneous Pages

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In SANCTUARY-- an ironic title if there ever was one-- we see what happens when a genius writes a potboiler. We have one terrific roller coaster ride. Faulkner said he wrote this novel to make money after the disappointing sales of THE SOUND AND THE FURY and AS I LAY DYING. About SANCTUARY, published in 1931, he wrote: "I began to think of books in terms of possible money. . . . I took a little time out, and speculated what a person in Mississippi would believe to be current trends, chose what I thought was the right answer and invented the most horrific tale I could imagine. . ." This novel was the biggest seller of all Faulkner's works during his lifetime.

We are introduced to a whole slew of unforgettable characters: Temple Drake, the seventeen-year-old daughter of a local judge; the monster Popeye; Gowan, the frat-boy drunk who "learned" to handle his alcohol while a student in Virginia; the tragic Ruby; Miss Reba, the Memphis madam; the obnoxious Senator Snopes; Horace Benbow, et al. In the hands of a lesser writer, some of these people would have become stereotypes. Instead we have a remarkable and tragic story of small town justice where a man is convicted for who is is, rather than what he is accused of doing. Horace Benbow, an attorney who reads books, is the moral center of the novel who believes that sometimes a man "might do something just because he knew it was right, necessary to the harmony of things that it be done."

Unlike many of Faulkner's more difficult works, SANCTUARY is a very straight-forward novel-- an easy but fascinating read. As always, Faulkner's language can be beautifully descriptive: "When he waked a narrow rosy pencil of sunlight fell level through the window." And "Within the black-and-silver tunnel of cedars fireflies drifted in fatuous pinpricks." He is also razor-sharp with his use of colloquial language. At one point Virgil Snopes says, "Look and see if they taken anything of yourn." Virgil and his brother Fonzo provide some much-needed humor in this rather horrific tale. They, young hick barber students, check into a house of ill repute in Memphis, thinking it is an ordinary hotel and then go to another "whorehouse" for their own earthly delights.

While SANCTUARY is certainly not THE SOUND AND THE FURY, it is a necessary read for Faulkner lovers.

William Faulkner stands in my mind with only a few authors whose writing does not seem like writing. His novels seem more moments of real life. While I was reading "Sanctuary" you forget you are reading a book and the characters take on a virtual reality in your mind. Like all of Faulkner's books, this one is disorienting at first, simply by the author's strength of vision. The main plot revolves around Temple Drake, a coquettish college girl who likes to secretly sneak out of her college dorm to attend dances. One of her rides back from one of these dances is a boy named Gowan Stevens. He decides to stop off at an illegal moonshine operation and promptly sets about getting drunk. Temple is trapped at the house surrounded by all sorts of shady characters you would associate with such an operation. One of these is named Popeye, and trust me he is not a hero, he rapes Temple. One of the things I found slightly disturbing was the sense that Temple is a flirt and you get the sense that Faulkner felt that eventually some sex crime was going to be committed against her. She could get away with things around college boys but she fails to realize that with criminals, its a very bad move. It's the beginning of her great moral slide that was always just waiting to happen. There are other subplots going on around it. The owner of the moonshine operation is a convict and his wife supported herself through prostitution while he was in the joint, which is a source of tension between them. Horace Benbow is a lawyer who has left his wife simply because he recognizes the hollowness of his marriage. These characters are connected by the crime against Temple. The depressing thing about this novel is that noone really gets a sanctuary. The ending is not pretty. That's what makes it so powerful and so real. This book is right up there with Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky in sheer power of vision.

For many readers, "Sanctuary" doesn't seem to fit into Faulkner's canon. Although the prose is recognizably his, the tone and subject matter seem more appropriate to the genre of pulp fiction--closer to Hammett than to O'Connor. And, for the time it was published, it is shockingly gruesome and graphic. (Arnold Bennett said that it was a "terrible" book and "a great novel.") Once you figure out who everyone is and what's going on, however, it's an unlikely page-turner. Faulkner presents his tale not simply as a mystery but as a puzzle of characters who can barely figure out their own roles and who challenge the reader to sort out their stories

The central plot revolves around Temple Drake, a well-off, fast-living college student who gets wowed by Gowan Stevens, a handsome young alcoholic who takes her to the inaccessible estate of a backwoods bootlegger. Gowan soon passes out, and the traumatized Temple suddenly understands she is stuck in a situation from which she can't easily extract herself--and her circumstances worsen when Gowan abandons her to the gangsters and drunks bumming around the house.

Even though it was published after "As I Lay Dying," which he completed at the end of 1929, "Sanctuary" could be considered Faulkner's fifth novel rather than his sixth. Earlier that year, he sent the manuscript for "Sanctuary" to his publisher. It seems likely he had been toying with it in some form for quite a while, since at least one passage has been found in his papers with a date of 1925.

There are a number of colorful tales surrounding the history of this book's publication--some of them possibly apocryphal and probably invented by Faulkner himself. (A fuller accounting can be found in Joseph Blotner's invaluable biography of Faulkner.) Faulkner later wrote that he "invented the most horrific tale I could imagine," and he claimed that his publisher told him after reading it, "Good God, I can't publish this. We'd both be in jail." Whatever the reason for the delay, the publisher changed his mind and--to Faulkner's surprise--ultimately set the book into galleys. The interval of nearly two years convinced Faulkner that the book couldn't be published in its current form, so he heavily revised and rearranged the book in proof.

Faulkner also claimed that he "began to think of books in terms of possible money." Although the book did indeed sell well--better than any of his books until "The Wild Palms"--some scholars contend that Faulkner is being somewhat coy about his motives for writing this particular book. (Reading his correspondence, one gets the impression that that he was always writing with an eye towards his financial situation.)

So how is it? The easy answer is that "Sanctuary" is not "Sound and the Fury," "As I Lay Dying," or "Light in August." But judged as a piece of noir, I think it's as good as the best Depression-era crime novels. As in many of Faulkner's other books, the story leaps back and forth across time, and often the same scene is described from the perspective of different characters. Although the use of jump cuts, flashbacks, and misdirection can be a challenge, I thought the technique heightened the suspense and made the characters more intriguing. Faulkner probably could not have published this book if he had described its scenes more straightforwardly; even the end requires close reading to figure out exactly what happened to Temple at the bootlegger's homestead (in part because it's so horrific). If you like the type of book that makes you turn back through the pages digging up the clues you missed along the way, I'd recommend this one.

Even when Faulkner is writing to sell books, as he admits he is doing with "Sanctuary," the master of impressionistic Southern fiction can be quite sublime. The novel's racy subject matter and lightning-strike narrative have the feel of pulp fiction, but the rich descriptions and illustrious prose reveal that Faulkner never strays far from the top of his form. As expected, its base locale is Mississippi's Yoknapatawpha County, that endless wellspring of Faulkner's imagination.

It's prohibition, and business is good for moonshiners like Lee Goodwin, living in a large but decrepit antebellum house with his "wife" Ruby and baby son, who is kept in a box hidden behind the stove to protect him from rats. Goodwin, while not a bad man himself, associates with a number of hoodlums, including a sympathetic young man named Tommy and a cruel cretin called Popeye who harbors a nasty secret about his past and his libido.

One night, a drunk named Gowan Stevens and his girlfriend Temple Drake, the privileged daughter of a judge in Jackson and a college girl with a wild side, get into a car accident and end up spending the night at Goodwin's house, where Gowan had been planning to buy some whiskey. Temple, warned by Ruby that the house is no place for a girl like her, and abandoned by Gowan the next day, finds herself in a nightmarish predicament when Popeye brutally robs her of whatever innocence she had, drives her to Memphis, and puts her up at a cathouse fronting as a respectable hotel, run by a careworn but charitable madam named Miss Reba.

But Popeye and Temple have to answer for the murder of Tommy, who was shot around the time they left. Goodwin gets arrested, and a friendly lawyer named Horace Benbow, himself on vacation from his nagging wife, decides to defend him at the trial. This leads to some detective work to find Temple, who is being held prisoner by Popeye in that Memphis hotel and would provide valuable witness testimony. The manner in which Benbow manages to do this proves Faulkner's skill in characterization, as he employs two members of the infamous Snopes family to comic as well as narrative effect.

"Sanctuary" has two very memorable morbid, but poetic, images: the first involving Flaubert's doomed Madame Bovary, of all people; and the second describing a funeral for a small-time hoodlum that is transformed into a bacchanalian celebration by the fatalistic sensibilities of the Memphis underworld. This is a scene which could be conjured only by a William Faulkner (or a Nathanael West).

This novel is an odd brew. It feels messy yet still exhibits an unquestionable professionalism; its characters are grotesque but all the more interesting because of it. Faulkner's writing is never explicit; you must be attentive to clues and details because you'll be expected to piece together the puzzle later. This is the main challenge confronting his readers, but understanding Faulkner means being willing to accept this challenge.

"Sanctuary" has a double meaning in this novel -- the sanctuary we seek against the cruel events that occur in life and sanctuary against those things in ourselves that are most primitive, volatile and evil. Faulkner's characters here are in search of sanctuary in both meanings, although the theme is not well-developed and the plot is so misshapen that it detracts from the overall impact of the main theme.

"Sanctuary" is Faulkner's stab at writing noir-ish detective fiction. You'd figure he would take to the genre like a duck to water (at least I did) given its emphasis on mood, place and moral struggle. All of these elements show up in the novel, but haphazardly. I think Faulkner was probably prevented from writing the noir novel he really wanted by the spirit of the times, which weren't supportive of the degree of brutality he intended to display in the novel (We get a glimpse of this when we see the stained corncob that Popeye used to violate Temple Drake). He would later half-heartedly repudiate "Sanctuary" as a failed attempt to make some money, an excuse probably designed to get his neighbors in Oxford, Miss., off his back and to satisfy the sob sisters in the national media who were ready to crucify him for writing a novel containing violence of almost pornographic intensity.

When reading "Sanctuary," think about how each one of the characters -- save for Popeye, Mrs. Goodwin and DA Eustace Graham -- loses himself or herself in some form of self-delusion to avoid dwelling on the worst parts of their own character and existence. Even Horace Benbow's courageous decision to defend Mr. Graham against charges of murder is little more than an attempt to distract himself from his marital woes and the fact that he is so obviously out of place in his own home town now.

"Sanctuary" could have been Faulkner's masterpiece and some current-day critics suggest that perhaps it is. It's not. Faulkner should have re-written the book, smoothed the plot, fleshed out the characters far more than they are in the current text and allowed for a more leisurely examination of man's struggle for safe haven, both physically and spiritually. "Sanctuary" is a very powerful examination of the evil that men and women do and, in that sense, it is a very Catholic novel. I would not recommend its use in high school or lower-level college undergraduate survey courses. It's simply too intricate to be useful for students at those levels. But for an upper-level course in American lit, American culture, religion or philosophy, "Sanctuary" is an appropriate text with quite a bit to say about modern man and the chains that bind his soul.

While _Heart Of Darkness_ portrays the bleakness of the unchecked human spirit, it is Faulkner's _Sanctuary_ that places it squarely in our noses, our ears, our eyes as well as our hearts and souls. In this purely American novel we see not "adventurers" in Conrad's traditional sense, but American debutantes causually thrust into the orbit of the Memphis Prohibition underworld.

As in _Sound and the Fury_ Faulkner uses his "shadow of the branch" approach to the narrative keeping the reader guessing as to what actually takes place at the "Frenchman's Place"; and when the reader finally "gets it" -- or, more accurately -- when this reader "got it," the experience was as shocking as anything to be seen in Doestoyevsky, Conrad or Bauldelaire.

I wrote my thesis on this work five years ago and its effect on me, as I flippantly spew these remarks are as vivid as the first time I encountered Popeye with his face like "tin," and Temple Drake.

Highly recommended for those not afraid of impingement, because _Sanctuary_ will impinge on whatever the reader's threshold for true darkness and horror may be.

Imagine it's 1929 and you're reading a book about bootlegging, couples living in sin, rape, whorehouses, with near-explicit sex scenes. Faulkner's SANCTUARY must have been mind-blowing to the genteel masses. They were reading material that they still don't show on network television today, in an age where such things are so commonly discussed in the media that we hardly look sideways at it. This book must have arrived like an explosion, shaking the sensibilities of readers everywhere, daring booksellers to put it on their shelves.

SANCTUARY is not an easy book. You'll find yourself, if you're like me, rereading passages to understand exactly what's going on. The characters, though precisely described, can be difficult to picture in your mind, especially as we move further away from the Jazz Age, with its unusual expressions, costume, and mores. Imagine Tennessee and Mississippi when cars were relatively new to the roads, when the various social strata -- some wearing suits, some overalls -- began mixing together more easily. Imagine being a teenage girl acting as a woman trapped in a moonshiner's shack, far away from the protection of her home, encountering men like creatures in a horrific play who drink liquor and watch her lie under the covers, her only protector passed out beside her.

Faulkner's reintroduced introduction is a godsend that will help you decipher the book somewhat. The editor's notes at the end of the book will help you understand much of the jargon and the motivation of the characters.

A good read in any age.

In "Wild Palms" it was a manifest literary technique, but in "Sanctuary" it's a desperate attempt to weave together a story from different plotlines. I am a Faulkner buff, and have always felt tricked by this one: everything that goes on at "the house" prior to the "event" (I'm trying not to give too much away) is some of the master's best. It is a world apart, relating not to "the south", as some wrote, nor to any other referent world; its inherent danger and unexpectedness and possibilities depend on that. Alas, the story then focuses on the character that it ultimately chose for its true protagonist, a well-intentioned yet incompetent lawyer (you'll recognize him from other works -- F really overplayed this character), and an uninteresting one at that. As soon as the narrative moves into the cities it looses its force, revived at times only by such comic giveaways as the provincial youngsters who frequent a brothel in Memphis, never realizing that they reside in another. I can almost imagine Faulkner cutting & pasting that from some draft, soberly thinking, "I got to liven this up a bit". And it goes from bad to worse. All that befalls Popeye after his last encounter with Red seems artificial; it recalls Hollywood's standards for treating villains, owing more to comodification of morality than to narrative integrity. Do we learn something about Popeye that makes him a more interesting character than in the first part? Hardly. Yet with all of that, the writing itself was rarely surpassed in American prose. Faulkner has that uncanny ability to get us involved in his nontransparent language all the while keeping it away from the fore, first and foremost using it to tell his story (as opposed to Joyce or Dickens). For that alone this book is a joy; but on the narrative scale one feels, ultimately, cheated out of a good story.

This novel was written in perhaps Faulkner's most creative period. Simultaneously, he was writing, re-writing, or revising The Sound and the Fury, Flags in the Dust (Sartoris), As I Lay Dying, and several major short stories. It is not surprising that elements of these other works find their way into Sanctuary. Although Faulkner maligned the original text and the published novel quickly gained a reputation for senationalism and a certain lasciviousness, it is an important work which probably ranks right behind the author's masterpieces.

When Faulkner began to revise the galleys of the original text, he was supposed to have been upset at the poor quality of the novel and concerned about possible legal suits from a puritanical reading public. His revision was to remedy both deficiencies. However, if a comparison between the original and revised text is made it becomes clear that Faulkner left all the lasciviousness in but worked hard to change the way in which the narrative was told. In the original version, flashback was the main instrument of narration (indeed, in many cases flashback within flashbacks) and bore an uncanny similarity to the style of Flags in the Dust (the original text of Sartoris). The revised version attains something of the feel of a detective novel: straightforward prose with concrete nouns and strong verbs, action, stock characters and sex.

However, when Faulkner re-worked his galleys and centered the action around Temple Drake, the character of Horace Benbow is relegated to a supporting role and I think that in the end, this change in emphasis robbed the novel of some of its complexity and deprived readers of some of Faulkner's most serpentine prose, prose as thick and profound as the wisteria Faulkner describes growing around the eaves of the Benbow family home.

SANCTUARY is, by all standards, an odd book. A minor work by a major talent, it blends elements of Greek tragedy and tawdry potboiler to create an unusual amalgam. Faulkner himself was quite up front about it being his great attempt to write a bestseller, lathing the book with a bevy of cheap effects, yet still to imbuing page after page with one striking phrase after another.

Although not major Faulkner, it is still Faulkner, and is definitely worth reading. It is set in Yoknapatawpha county, and features many characters who either appear in other books or whose relatives appear in other books. Furthermore, the key female character in the book, Temple Drake, reappears as the major character in REQUIEM FOR A NUN, written twenty years after this one. While I do not rate this anywhere nearly as highly as many of his other books, being something of an oddity, it is nonetheless absolutely not a waste of time. While there are many sensationalist elements, there are still many magnificent sentences that read more like poetry than prose, and many of the characters are memorable.

If one is wanting to read only one or two books by Faulkner, I would not recommend this one. I would recommend instead AS I LAY DYING or, if one is feeling more ambitious, ABSALOM, ABSALOM. But if one is planning on reading all of the major works of Faulkner, then this is a book one should not skip. Minor Faulkner is better than the major works of many other writers.