Friday, February 22, 2008

Requiem for a Nun by William Faulkner

This book is an odd hybrid of prose and drama. The prose fills in a lot of backstory on Yoknapatawpha County through the history of the courthouse and the jail. The drama is a play that continues the story of Sanctuary. While the return to Temple Drake's life is painful at best, and a wretchedly bad idea at worst, I think it's telling that Faulkner did choose to return. This renewed consideration of Temple implies that the "base idea" of Sanctuary was not just one conceived to make money, but one that continued to interest Faulkner in later years. Alternatively, one could suppose that Faulkner wanted to make some more money, but if that were the case, he wouldn't have had to include the prose sections.

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