Appropriately, I finished Sanctuary around five in the morning between two of the last blazing hot days in August. A few years ago I tried and failed to read Absalom, Absalom! but really wanted to give Faulkner another chance after watching Paul Newman simmer through The (very Tennessee Williams-influenced, very Hollywood) Long, Hot Summer. The poster for that barks: "The people of Faulkner...the language of Faulkner...the world of Faulkner!" Well, that's a gross over-simplification.
While Sanctuary's more straight-forward plot is accessible, his writing still caused me to trip in a way his Nobel Prize in Literature still doesn't convince THIS humble Missourian is entirely artistic and intentional. It gives the impression of a disorienting, kleidoscopic whirl, where not even the characters speaking to each other in the same world seem to be able to connect. Or maybe that was the moonshine.
The plot is gripping, though, and frightening. It concerns Temple Drake, a college girl who hops from dances with collegiate boys to car dates with the townies. After one of her dates drunkenly crashes his car on the way to a bootlegger, Temple is stranded among dissolute lowlifes in a ruined plantation house. The following events are nightmarish and the novel deals unflinchingly with the aftermath. It's honestly still a shocking, disturbing read, full of sex, violence, and the thankless struggle for justice and love. If you want a "cleaned up" version, the first movie adaptation with Miriam Hopkins is fantastic: The Story of Temple Drake.
-Michael G.
