Sanctuary

Rating:
Summary: She sells Sanctuary
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: It does not Synerge: on Being Cheated Out of a Good Story
Review: 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. Halas, the story then focuses on the character that it ultimately chose for its true protagonist, a well-intentioned yet incompetent lawyer, 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.

Rating:
Summary: Powerhouse novel
Review: One of Faulkner's fastest moving and most exciting tales, written in lucid and brilliant prose thay will hit you between the eyes.

Rating:
Summary: Amazingly Twisted A++++++
Review: Sanctuary is another brilliant tale that reveals exactly how amazing Faulkner is as an author. This story, by far, is one of the most "twisted" tales; the unexpected occurs throughout. All through the book, I was in complete awe and in disbelief. By the end of this book, I was in complete shock. What occurred in the last 50 or 100 pages left me in surprise and in utter astonishment. I had never suspected any of what had occurred. How Faulkner was able to conjure up such an original story is beyond me!

In short, the story is about the kidnapping of a rich girl of 18 and the trial of a man accused of murder. However, the plots are not nearly this simplistic. Faulkner ventures into life and its evils, revealing that it does not matter how a person is raised, the choice of evil is his own; sometimes those of low class are more true and kind than those of high society. This is a book that, I believe, breaks the shell between class stereotypes.

This book is a definite must read. Not only is it unbelievably entertaining, but it also leaves you thinking. It's a fairly easy read despite the various numbers of characters involved (if you are anything like me, you might want to take notes on who's who). In addition, I would also recommend reading this book closely; don't just give it a skim. You might miss something important!

Rating:
Summary: Amazingly Twisted A++++++
Review: Sanctuary is another brilliant tale that reveals exactly how amazing Faulkner is as an author. This story, by far, is one of the most "twisted" tales; the unexpected occurs throughout. All through the book, I was in complete awe and in disbelief. By the end of this book, I was in complete shock. What occurred in the last 50 or 100 pages left me in surprise and in utter astonishment. I had never suspected any of what had occurred. How Faulkner was able to conjure up such an original story is beyond me!

In short, the story is about the kidnapping of a rich girl of 18 and the trial of a man accused of murder. However, the plots are not nearly this simplistic. Faulkner ventures into life and its evils, revealing that it does not matter how a person is raised, the choice of evil is his own; sometimes those of low class are more true and kind than those of high society. This is a book that, I believe, breaks the shell between class stereotypes.

This book is a definite must read. Not only is it unbelievably entertaining, but it also leaves you thinking. It's a fairly easy read despite the various numbers of characters involved (if you are anything like me, you might want to take notes on who's who). In addition, I would also recommend reading this book closely; don't just give it a skim. You might miss something important!

Rating:
Summary: Not Faulkner at his best, but it's still Faulkner
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Not Faulkner at his best, but it's still Faulkner
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: My Southern reading list
Review: There are too many Southern book to name them all, and even so, not all of them are worth mentioning. But of the many I've come across over the years, a few stand out as absolutely remarkable achievements. They are:

Sanctuary
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
The Bark of the Dogwood
Flannery O'Connor collected stories
To Kill a Mockingbird

I realize others may have a different opinion, but for me, these were the best. Of course, my idea of "the best" changes from year to year, but for now, this is it!

Rating:
Summary: "a logical pattern to evil"
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: The reviews are much better than the book
Review: This was my second shot at trying to appreciate William Faulkner. I read Light in August a few years back and gave it 3 stars. I'm a big fan of Steinbeck, a contemporary of Faulkner's, who is often compared to Faulkner. Some reviews have said if you like Steinbeck you will like Faulkner. I disagree. Steinbeck writes clear and concise stories that are carried by his creativity and a reflection of the life he led. To describe Faulkner's style in Sanctuary, I will borrow from another review that said it was "oblique and distracting". I finished the story with a half-hearted understanding of what I had just read. By reading all of the other reviews on this site I now understand so much more about the book. That's a problem, I don't connect with Faulkner....