Beautiful, Haunting, and then Nothing | Sanctuary: The Corrected Text

Mississippi Noir | Sanctuary: The Corrected Text | William Faulkner

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	• Sanctuary: The Corrected Text William Faulkner Vintage, 1993 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 29 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

That's Why I Only Eat Canned Corn.

We can't have any corn cobs lying around.

If you've read the book, you know what I'm alluding to.

Sanctuary is a grimey novel. It deals with grimey people in grimey situations. The story is just so weird; it's almost surrealistic.

Spoilers

Temple Drake is the 17 year old daughter of a judge. She is dating a guy named Gowan Stephens who is a drunk. They end up at some "in the middle of nowhere" house owned by a guy named Lee Goodwin in an attempt for Gowan to get more illegal liquor. Lee Goodwin is a shady character, but nice compared to the company he keeps. Gowan deserts Temple more than once: at first by being passed out from drinking, and then by completely leaving to go home. Once alone, Temple is at the mercy of the shady characters, specifically Popeye. Popeye hasn't had his spinach, therefore he is impotent, mentally and sexually. Temple is attacked and kidnapped by Popeye after witnessing a murder, and is forced into a brothel where she prostitutes herself and hooks up with more shady characters.

This is just a partial summary of the story. There is much more concerning Lee Goodwin, his girlfriend Ruby, and a lawyer named Benbow who has deserted his family.

Bottom Line: A twisted tale woven by a literary master who needed to write something sensationalistic in order to make some money. Certainly not one of his best, but certainly not terrible.

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Beautiful, Haunting, and then Nothing

I am by no means an expert in literature. Most of my reading is the current fiction of today with some non-fiction mixed in. So I decided to try my hand/mind at something written by one of the great authors of yesteryear. A couple of quick thoughts:
- very difficult to read
- extremely difficult to know which characters are talking and which are being talked to.
- imperative re-reading of sections to see if something was missed, because the plot changed directions and I wasn't on the same page.

Now, those things being said, after 100 pages or so, I couldn't wait to get back at the book. The characters are richer and deeper than anything I've read in years (except maybe "The Main" by Trevanian). The short dialogue segments, the way things are said and not said are not found in today's writings and make the characters stick with you after the book is finished. This writing gives us a very real peek into life it the United States in the late `20s and early `30s; it's a slice of Americana that you can hardly read today. The simple text that tells of complex human interactions was beautifully written and therefore I was excited to get to the climax. And then...

There was no climax. The book ended, the story ended and nothing. Emptiness. The conclusion was anticlimactic without the climatic part of the story. So I'm giving it a 3, but I was very close to a 4 just for the beauty of the writing. And it isn't beauty for beauty's sake; it is necessary explanation that tells the story slowly and carefully. You get to pick up things about the characters in this short novel that the fiction novel of today couldn't even come close to. As you forget the books quickly that you read with today's authors, you will likely remember Popeye, Tommy and Temple for long while.

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Mississippi Noir

I have read my fair share of Faulkner although I am hardly a devotee. My main positive reference to him is concerning his role in the screenwriting of one of my favorite films- To Have or To Have Not with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. I have also, obliquely, run into his work as it relates to who should and who should not be in the modern American literary canon. Unusually the criticism centers on his racism and sexism, and occasionally his alcoholism. Of course, if political correctness were the main criterion for good hard writing then we would mainly not be reading anything more provocative or edifying than the daily newspaper, if that.

So much for that though. Faulkner is hardly known as a master of the noir or potboiler but here the genius of his sparse, functional writing (a trait that he shares with the Hemingway of The Killers and the key crime novelists of the 1930's Hammett, think The Red Harvest, and Chandler, think The Big Sleep) gives him entree into that literary form. And he makes the most of it.

The plot revolves around a grotesque cast of characters who are riding out the Jazz Age in the backwaters of Mississippi and its Mecca in Memphis. Take one protected young college student, Temple Drake, looking to get her kicks. Put her with a shabbily gentile frat boy looking for his kicks. Put them on the back roads of Prohibition America and trouble is all you can expect. Add in a bootlegger or two, a stone-crazy killer named Popeye with a little sexual problem and you are on your way.

That way is a little bumpy as Faulkner mixed up the plot, the motives of the characters and an unsure idea of what justice, Southern style, should look like in this situation in the eyes of his main positive character, Horace, the lawyer trying to do the right thing in a dead wrong situation stacked against him. As always with Faulkner follow the dialogue, that will get you through even if you have to do some re-reading (as I have had to do). Interestingly, for a writer steeped in Southern mores, Jim Crow and very vivid descriptions of the ways of the South in the post-Civil War era there is very little of race in this one. The justice meted out here tells us one thing- it is best to be a judge's daughter or a Daughter of the Confederacy if you want a little of that precious commodity. All others watch out. Kudos to Faulkner, whether he wrote this for the cash or not, for taking on some very taboo subjects back in 1931 Mississippi. Does anyone really want to deny him his place in the American literary canon? I think not.

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The Story of Temple Drake

Sanctuary is a shocking book, especially because of the time period in which it was written. Most modern readers have been desensitized to highly sexual themes, but in the early 30s, this book was a best seller.

Here we have the story of a young girl named Temple Drake. She is the daughter of a judge and a tease around town. She dates many men but never loses her morality to them. One day, she meets up with Gowan, a drunk around town. He takes her for a drive, and since he is completely drunk, he smashed up his car. The two take to walking, and they stumble upon a bootlegger's hideout. Gowan proceeds to get drunk there again while Temple fears the nasty stares she gets from the men. The three men Lee, Popeye, and Tommy outnumber the only woman living there. She warns Temple to leave as soon as she can before night falls, but Gowan is uncooperative and Temple too innocent to heed the warning appropriately. She stays, and her life changes forever at the hands of the violent and twisted Popeye.

In the meantime, Horace Benbow takes on the murder case against Lee. The whole town is against him succeeding, but Benbow believes in his client's innocence. He even believes in him after discovering Temple's story.

I decided to read this book in lieu of seeing the film version starring Miriam Hopkins titled The Story of Temple Drake. It is hard to find, but notoriously scandalous. I imagined that the book would be a good substitute.

Unfortunately, the book is significantly slower paced than the average pre-code film, and the descriptions are often slow and erratic. It is sometimes difficult to figure out who is talking and who is doing what. There are also some boring patches due to the writing style. The dismal setting is certainly appropriate, but it brings the mood of the writing down, making it a less exciting read.

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First published in 1931, this classic psychological melodrama has been viewed as more of a social document in his tragic legend of the South than mere story. From Popeye, a moonshining racketeer with no conscience and Temple Drake, beautiful, bored and vulnerable, to Harace Benbow, a lawyer of honor and decency wishing for more in his life, and Gowan Stevens, college student with a weakness for drink, Faulkner writes of changing social values and order. A sinister cast peppered with social outcasts and perverts perform abduction, murder, and mayhem in this harsh and brutal story of sensational and motiveless evil.

Students of Faulkner have found an allegorical interpretation of "Sanctuary" as a comment on the degradation of old South's social order by progressive modernism and materialistic exploitation. Popeye and his co-horts represent this hurling change that is corrupting the historic traditions of the South, symbolized by Horace Stevens, which are no longer able to protect the victimized Negro and poor white trash due to middle-class apathy and inbred violence.

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