I read this book because I had never read any Faulkner before. I guess I thought I was missing something in my library or maybe it was time to lay off the nonfiction I mostly read.

I found Faulkner's style and word choices difficult at first. He assumes the reader is not lazy and will keep up with him and his stream of consciousness approach. I must admit I read half the book, became disinterested and put it down for several weeks. I then made up my mind to give it a second chance and really enjoyed it.

The story is dark and slightly twisted. There are very few admirable characters but I found myself sympathizing with most of the characters. Everyone except maybe Temple Drake has reasons for their misdeeds. I felt Faulkner was trying to convey the injustice of the time and just plain bad luck as reasons for the poor behavior or lack of optimism of the characters.

I highly recommend this book. It is gripping and real. The story got to me.

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.

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.

repetition and revenge:a speculative reading of faulkne

Irwin's book was recommended by a professor years ago, when I was reading Light in August. I bought it then but I found I needed to read Absalom! Absalom! and The Sound and the Fury closely before I could get anywhere with this book. Though Freud is pivotal in Irwin's review, his use of Freud is flexible, not dogmatic. Jungian snippets (the shadow nature of the unconscious)emerge from time to time as well. The book is essentially an investigation into Quentin Compson's struggles with incest and impotence that leads to his suicide, yet it also applies to the South's loss of the Civil War and general outrages resulting from human frustration.
Irwin's connections between S&F and Absalom are most helpful to my understanding of Faulkner's larger vision of generation and life. Irwin is a true scholar of Faulkner, well read in Freud, tragedy, and of course William Faulkner. I have not seen a better portrayal of the problem of revenge against time and Oedipal fury in any other book. Elements of Nietzsche are coupled with Freud-- Irwin is well aware of the connections between these two-- and the connections between fate and the psyche's imprisonment in endless repetitive frustrations are very well developed. I hate to use the cliche "a must read", so I'll say that Faulkner readers who need a little something extra -- not pedantic, nor too academic, but informative-- will want to read this one.

Thsi book is vaulable to anyone who has an interest in Leps. No other book covers the Baja California area, and because of the many species that cross the border, it is also a good form of information for Southern California lep people.

Seelye's short work, travels through a considerable amount of major works and authors, including Poe, Stowe, Chopin, and George Washington Cable among others. He describes many of the antipathies with which these authors regard New England cicles of thought (including Poe's distaste for the Transcendentalism of Emerson and Thoreau), arguing a reactionary position for Southern authors. He concludes that Southern literature is not original but rather an extension of New England and other American literary models. The work is useful for quickly surveying some regional literature; however, invoking such literary milestones and treating them rather briefly, leaves a certain "something" wanting that a fuller arguement might provide.