Classic Books Store
Sanctuary: The Corrected Text
RRP: $13.95
Our Price: $11.16
You Save: $ 2.79 ( 20% )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Vintage
Author: William Faulkner
Publisher: Vintage
Average Customer Rating:
Our Price: $11.16
You Save: $ 2.79 ( 20% )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Vintage
Author: William Faulkner
Publisher: Vintage
Average Customer Rating:
Experimental feature: Order Sanctuary: The Corrected Text from the UK, Canada, Germany or France by clicking an appropriate flag below.
Some items available at Amazon.com are not available in all countries.
Some items available at Amazon.com are not available in all countries.
Sanctuary: The Corrected Text Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.52
EAN: 9780679748144
ISBN: 0679748148
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 336
Publication Date: 1993-12-06
Publisher: Vintage
Product Release Date: 1993-12-06
Studio: Vintage
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.52
EAN: 9780679748144
ISBN: 0679748148
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 336
Publication Date: 1993-12-06
Publisher: Vintage
Product Release Date: 1993-12-06
Studio: Vintage
Editorial Review of Sanctuary: The Corrected Text
Customer Reviews of Sanctuary: The Corrected Text
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Faulkner should've stuck with not being a WWI Flying Ace
Review: Faulkner may be an author with many accolades, and maybe some of his other books are brilliant. Sanctuary is just bad.
Let's just start with the title. Why is it called Sanctuary, what is the sanctuary he refers to? Frenchman's Bend, the Memphis brothel, Benbow's house, the jail or the jardin du Luxembourg in Paris? It never comes out; personally I think it's just a ominous, pretentious title, and that Faulkner might have just as well called his book "Ikebana in 30 days".
To give you another example, in the first scene two men meet at a fountain in the middle of nowhere, and Faulkner tells us that, after exchanging a few tense words, they just sit there and stare at each other for literally two hours. What? Why? Which drugs are they on? Again, it never comes out. That scene alone is so absurd that it threw me completely out of the book, and Faulkner just packs in scenes like that.
I was particularly disappointed by the characters. One of the reasons I read this book is because I had heard that Temple Drake was a legendary character and one of the most intriguing females in literary history, but she was a particular dud. Faulkner describes her as a pretty 17-year-old who has many dates but is still a virgin. He then attributes several extreme behaviours to her -- after being raped she suddenly becomes a languid gangster moll and then transmogrifies back into a daddy's girl. I think Faulkner is just trying to bluff his readers by dishing up the most outlandish, far-out, tallest tales he could think of to shock them into submission. And at the same time he is trying really hard to blame the victim, trying to turn this clearly victimised girl into a men-eating femme fatale, when in fact her behaviour only appears erratic because of the author's complete lack of writing skills.
Then the Southrons -- about as subtle as Cletus and Brandine ("Meet my wife and sister!") out of The Simpsons. There's the corrupt senator, the gospel-singing negroes, the fat madam, the local lynchmob and other repulsive stereotypes. The only variation here is that the inbred degenerate suffers from innate syphillis instead of inbreeding this time, and is variously described as a colossal pervert, dreamboat, successful gangster and loving son.
I had read that Faulkner was an alcoholic, and there is a lot of drinking going on in the book, so I at least expected him to be good at those scenes. But again, zero credibility. Faulkner never makes any attempt to convey the notion of drinking to excess, and is probably unable to do so even if he had tried. It's all superficial comic-book clichés.
Faulkner employs a style of writing which is called "Stream Of Consciousness". What this boils down to is terrible dialogues, drawn-out tedious descriptions and the most ludicrous similes I have come across in a long while. Most of the time it is very difficult to figure out what is going on, often it is impossible, and other times it makes absolutely no sense. Faulkner seems to be getting a kick out of describing tedious minutiae in an almost psychedelic way, and then making the dialogues intentionally dire. It all boils down to a massive disregard for the reader.
Faulkner also likes to pepper his writing with an intentionally opaque and cruelly arcane vocabulary, which makes the reading even more of a slog. In fact, Sanctuary is the only example I know for the usage of the word "holocaust" prior to the Nazi genocide of the European Jews, namely -- to also give you a taste of his style -- in this description: "[their] puffy faces [were] washed lightly over as with the paling ultimate stain of a holocaust". In case you wondered, you have just read a description of sleeping train passengers.
I'll come to the end. Sanctuary is an awful book without any redeeming virtues. It's a mess. It is so awful that it is difficult to believe, especially coming from someone who is widely regarded as one of the greatest American authors. The best thing I could say about it is that in maybe three or four scenes, Faulkner gets a sort of flow together and the reading becomes fluent for a few pages, but that's it.
Thanks for reading my review.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Beautiful, Haunting, and then Nothing
Review: 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.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: The Story of Temple Drake
Review: 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.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: That's Why I Only Eat Canned Corn.
Review: 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.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Sanctuary
Review: Perhaps it is because I get extremely bored when I read "stream of conscious" types of books. This book simply bored me to death. The technique is written in prose form, I respect it, to some degrees, it is a type of art. However, the backcover of this book did a poor job of explaining what this book was supposed to convey. Maybe it is because there's nothing to review about! All said, this book showed the heart of evil as well as violence through the bleak characters of Popeye, Gowan and Red. They kidnapped the promiscous girl named Temple and took her to Memphis, where we meet a even more feared underground criminal gangs and bootleggars.
Overall, I'm really disappointed in this book because I thought that William Faulkner, one of the best writers in the last century, should've done better. A lot of has to do with the style that he writes in, but overall, a very boring book.
Review Summary: Faulkner should've stuck with not being a WWI Flying Ace
Review: Faulkner may be an author with many accolades, and maybe some of his other books are brilliant. Sanctuary is just bad.
Let's just start with the title. Why is it called Sanctuary, what is the sanctuary he refers to? Frenchman's Bend, the Memphis brothel, Benbow's house, the jail or the jardin du Luxembourg in Paris? It never comes out; personally I think it's just a ominous, pretentious title, and that Faulkner might have just as well called his book "Ikebana in 30 days".
To give you another example, in the first scene two men meet at a fountain in the middle of nowhere, and Faulkner tells us that, after exchanging a few tense words, they just sit there and stare at each other for literally two hours. What? Why? Which drugs are they on? Again, it never comes out. That scene alone is so absurd that it threw me completely out of the book, and Faulkner just packs in scenes like that.
I was particularly disappointed by the characters. One of the reasons I read this book is because I had heard that Temple Drake was a legendary character and one of the most intriguing females in literary history, but she was a particular dud. Faulkner describes her as a pretty 17-year-old who has many dates but is still a virgin. He then attributes several extreme behaviours to her -- after being raped she suddenly becomes a languid gangster moll and then transmogrifies back into a daddy's girl. I think Faulkner is just trying to bluff his readers by dishing up the most outlandish, far-out, tallest tales he could think of to shock them into submission. And at the same time he is trying really hard to blame the victim, trying to turn this clearly victimised girl into a men-eating femme fatale, when in fact her behaviour only appears erratic because of the author's complete lack of writing skills.
Then the Southrons -- about as subtle as Cletus and Brandine ("Meet my wife and sister!") out of The Simpsons. There's the corrupt senator, the gospel-singing negroes, the fat madam, the local lynchmob and other repulsive stereotypes. The only variation here is that the inbred degenerate suffers from innate syphillis instead of inbreeding this time, and is variously described as a colossal pervert, dreamboat, successful gangster and loving son.
I had read that Faulkner was an alcoholic, and there is a lot of drinking going on in the book, so I at least expected him to be good at those scenes. But again, zero credibility. Faulkner never makes any attempt to convey the notion of drinking to excess, and is probably unable to do so even if he had tried. It's all superficial comic-book clichés.
Faulkner employs a style of writing which is called "Stream Of Consciousness". What this boils down to is terrible dialogues, drawn-out tedious descriptions and the most ludicrous similes I have come across in a long while. Most of the time it is very difficult to figure out what is going on, often it is impossible, and other times it makes absolutely no sense. Faulkner seems to be getting a kick out of describing tedious minutiae in an almost psychedelic way, and then making the dialogues intentionally dire. It all boils down to a massive disregard for the reader.
Faulkner also likes to pepper his writing with an intentionally opaque and cruelly arcane vocabulary, which makes the reading even more of a slog. In fact, Sanctuary is the only example I know for the usage of the word "holocaust" prior to the Nazi genocide of the European Jews, namely -- to also give you a taste of his style -- in this description: "[their] puffy faces [were] washed lightly over as with the paling ultimate stain of a holocaust". In case you wondered, you have just read a description of sleeping train passengers.
I'll come to the end. Sanctuary is an awful book without any redeeming virtues. It's a mess. It is so awful that it is difficult to believe, especially coming from someone who is widely regarded as one of the greatest American authors. The best thing I could say about it is that in maybe three or four scenes, Faulkner gets a sort of flow together and the reading becomes fluent for a few pages, but that's it.
Thanks for reading my review.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Beautiful, Haunting, and then Nothing
Review: 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.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: The Story of Temple Drake
Review: 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.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: That's Why I Only Eat Canned Corn.
Review: 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.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Sanctuary
Review: Perhaps it is because I get extremely bored when I read "stream of conscious" types of books. This book simply bored me to death. The technique is written in prose form, I respect it, to some degrees, it is a type of art. However, the backcover of this book did a poor job of explaining what this book was supposed to convey. Maybe it is because there's nothing to review about! All said, this book showed the heart of evil as well as violence through the bleak characters of Popeye, Gowan and Red. They kidnapped the promiscous girl named Temple and took her to Memphis, where we meet a even more feared underground criminal gangs and bootleggars.
Overall, I'm really disappointed in this book because I thought that William Faulkner, one of the best writers in the last century, should've done better. A lot of has to do with the style that he writes in, but overall, a very boring book.