William Faulkner: Sanctuary

“I think I had forgotten about Sanctuary , just as you might forget about anything made for an immediate purpose, which did not come off. As I Lay Dying was published and I didn’t remember the mss. of Sanctuary until Smith sent me the galleys. Then I saw that it was so terrible that there were but two things to do: tear it up or rewrite it. I thought again, ‘It might sell; maybe 10,000 of them will buy it.’ So I tore the galleys down and rewrote the book. It had been already set up once, so I had to pay for the privilege of rewriting it, trying to make out of it something which would not shame The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying too much and I made a fair job and I hope you will buy it and tell your friends and I hope they will buy it too.”

2.

Kinston] A fictional town in the Mississippi Delta (that part of the river’s flood plain extending roughly from Memphis, Tenn., to Vicksburg, Miss.) about twenty miles west of Water Valley, not Kingston, Miss., which is southeast of Natchez.

3.

Jefferson] The seat of Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County, resembling Oxford of Lafayette County, where Faulkner spent most of his life, and which is bounded on the south by the Yocona River. Some early maps transliterated the river’s Chickasaw name as Yockney-Patafa. According to Faulkner, it meant “water runs slow through flat land.”

4.

that … mouth] In Gustave Flaubert’s

Madame Bovary

(1856), Emma Bovary kills herself by taking arsenic. When her head is momentarily raised in her coffin, a black liquid flows from her mouth. (Part III, Ch. 9.)

5.

Delta] See note

2.

6.

orange stick] A pointed stick of orangewood, used in manicuring.

7.

F.F.V.] A member of one of the “First Families of Virginia.”

8.

Starkville] A town seventy miles southeast of Oxford, the seat of what was then Mississippi Agricultural and Mechanical College, traditional athletic rival of the University of Mississippi.

9.

“The Shack’ll be open,”] The Shack was operated at one time by Faulkner’s lifelong friend, Miss Ella Somerville.

10.

use in] To live in, or stay in.

11.

heaven-tree] The princess tree, or royal paulownia (

Paulownia tomentosa

).

12.

loblollies] Mud-puddles.

13.

Yoknapatawpha county] See note

2.

14.

was hael] An archaic drinking toast, meaning literally “be in good health,” that became associated with Christmas, particularly Twelfth Night festivities. Now generally spelled “wassail.”

15.

Gordon hall] The men’s dining hall at the University of Mississippi when Faulkner worked at the post office there.

16.

The Gayoso hotel] At this time Memphis’s most notable hotel.

17.

kissing your elbow] That if you could actually do it, you could change your sex.

18.

John Gilbert] A popular leading man who scored his greatest success in romantic silent films.

19.

monkey glands] Dr. Eugen Steinach experimented with the transplantation of sex glands to produce rejuvenation.

20.

Delsarte-ish] François Delsarte invented a system to produce graceful speech and elocution.

21.

O tempora! O mores!] “Oh what times! Oh what standards!” Marcus Tullius Cicero,

In Catilinam

, I, 1.

22.

Less oft is peace.] From Percy Bysshe Shelley, “To Jane: The Recollection” (1822).

23.

“Ed Pinaud.”] A line of toilet preparations was marketed under this name.

WILLIAM FAULKNER

(1897–1962)

William Cuthbert Faulkner was born in 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi, the first of four sons of Murry and Maud Butler Falkner (he later added the ‘u’ to the family name himself). In 1904 the family moved to the university town of Oxford, Mississippi, where Faulkner was to spend most of his life. He was named for his great-grandfather ‘The Old Colonel,’ a Civil War veteran who built a railroad, wrote a bestselling romantic novel called The White Rose of Memphis , became a Mississippi state legislator, and was eventually killed in what may or may not have been a duel with a disgruntled business partner. Faulkner identified with this robust and energetic ancestor and often said that he inherited the ‘ink stain’ from him.

Never fond of school, Faulkner left at the end of football season his senior year of high school, and began working at his grandfather’s bank. In 1918, after his plans to marry his sweetheart Estelle Oldham were squashed by their families, he tried to enlist as a pilot in the U.S. Army but was rejected because he did not meet the height and weight requirements. He went to Canada, where he pretended to be an Englishman and joined the RAF training program there. Although he did not complete his training until after the war ended and never saw combat, he returned to his hometown in uniform, boasting of war wounds. He briefly attended the University of Mississippi, where he began to publish his poetry.

After spending a short time living in New York, he again returned to Oxford, where he worked at the university post office. His first book, a collection of poetry, The Marble Faun , was published at Faulkner’s own expense in 1924. The writer Sherwood Anderson, whom he met in New Orleans in 1925, encouraged him to try writing fiction, and his first novel, Soldier’s Pay , was published in 1926. It was followed by Mosquitoes . His next novel, which he titled Flags in the Dust , was rejected by his publisher and twelve others to whom he submitted it. It was eventually published in drastically edited form as Sartoris (the original version was not issued until after his death). Meanwhile, he was writing The Sound and the Fury , which, after being rejected by one publisher, came out in 1929 and received many ecstatic reviews, although it sold poorly. Yet again, a new novel, Sanctuary , was initially rejected by his publisher, this time as ‘too shocking.’ While working on the night shift at a power plant, Faulkner wrote what he was determined would be his masterpiece, As I Lay Dying . He finished it in about seven weeks, and it was published in 1930, again to generally good reviews and mediocre sales.

In 1929 Faulkner had finally married his childhood sweetheart, Estelle, after her divorce from her first husband. They had a premature daughter, Alabama, who died ten days after birth in 1931; a second daughter, Jill, was born in 1933.

With the eventual publication of his most sensational and violent (as well as, up till then, most successful) novel, Sanctuary (1931), Faulkner was invited to write scripts for MGM and Warner Brothers, where he was responsible for much of the dialogue in the film versions of Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not and Chandler’s The Big Sleep , and many other films. He continued to write novels and published many stories in the popular magazines. Light in August (1932) was his first attempt to address the racial issues of the South, an effort continued in Absalom, Absalom! (1936), and Go Down, Moses (1942). By 1946, most of Faulkner’s novels were out of print in the United States (although they remained well-regarded in Europe), and he was seen as a minor, regional writer. But then the influential editor and critic Malcolm Cowley, who had earlier championed Hemingway and Fitzgerald and others of their generation, put together The Portable Faulkner , and once again Faulkner’s genius was recognized, this time for good. He received the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature as well as many other awards and accolades, including the National Book Award and the Gold Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and France’s Legion of Honor.