pages before the end, the skies opened up and the fire trucks came

Today I finished Sanctuary by William Faulkner (yes, I am still on this kick).
Actually, no, it's not a kick it's just something I cannot stop doing. Reading Faulkner that is.

But Sanctuary. It is unlike many of the other Faulkner novels I have read. It is salacious, it is racy, it is in your face alcohol, rape, prostitution, murder, bloody corncobs..

That being said, I still recommend it. It is easier to read than a lot of Faulkner's stuff (I started reading the Sound and the Fury three times over three years) and he is slightly less subtle about what actually takes place in this story than his usual cryptic what-just-happened-i'm-totally-lost style. So in Sanctuary, you'll probably follow about 80 percent of what is actually happening to the characters.

I don't want to give away the story so I'll sell you on it with the name of one of the main characters: Temple Drake.
Temple.
Drake.
    Reading Faulkner, as one should, with Christianity in the back of my mind, I am brought here:
    If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which [temple] ye are. 1 Corinthians 3:17.
Jesus' sole noted use of violent force in the bible is when he cleared the temple of vendors and salesman calling it a "den of thieves." Its violation makes him very angry and aggressive.
Drake to me sounds like how one might say "drank" with a certain more southern accent, and in a way Like the collision of events and bad timing that surrounds Temple Drake expels her from what was a privileged sheltered life at university. Her own violation evokes Jesus' reaction as it was described in the gospels and might cause you to put down the book a few times.

We remeet Horace Benbow from Flags in the Dust-- who gosh darned really means well, but is too ignorant of the tone and ilk of his own home town to see the obvious, inevitable events to follow the doomed court case he plays lawyer in, defending a penniless black bootlegger accused of murder and more.

If summer does not already have you sweating, this book will light a fire under you. Crime fiction and summer-- a natural pairing that I recommend. I was barely able to finish this book, sitting by the Charles river on page 305 of 309 (Vintage edition, 1958) before a force of nature overtook my hurried reading and a menacing downpour sent me fleeing for shelter at the Dunster/Mather shuttle stop. A fire alarm had gone off at the apartments across the street and soon three firetrucks blared in front of me. The rain picked up and I knew this was not the place or time to finish Sanctuary.

Later on I did get to page 309. And it felt... I don't know. I was not relieved, nor was I sad. There is little resolved at the end for most of the characters I grew attached to. That which about them that was screwed up remained so and I have to be satisfied with that. Typical Faulkner.

"mmmm yeah, so what's your point?"

Comments

[James Marks]

I like your little quotation underneath the man here. I don't want to ask exactly the same question of you (nor, do I think, in the same tone), but perhaps something similar. You say you'd "still" recommend it (despite certain content), and then that it's easier than most Faulkner. I wonder, recommendation aside, what your experience of that ease is. Does this feel like a totally different Faulkner to you? Why did he make this one "easier", and is it nevertheless as compelling to you as his other work? I guess the experience of the last four pages did feel familiar to you, in that unresolved, unsatisfying sort of way. It's interesting - you do indeed seem something resembling unsatisfied, and yet you seem to keep coming back for more. So there's that part of you that "has to be satisfied with that" (and by implication is not fully so), and then there's that part of you that eats it up. Or is it that the style and structure and story of a Faulkner novel make up for what remains unsettled in the end? Or is there something about that kind of ending - even if perhaps not fully satisfying, especially considering the expectations we've come to have as consumers, etc - that strikes you as somehow true or worthwhile or "satisfying" in a less conventional sense?

[James Marks]

PS awesome post title.

PPS one of these days I'll have to read the damn Bible. Help me through it?