ABSTRACT
With Sanctuary, his seventh book and his sixth novel, William Faulkner moves toward the reputation that a few critics predicted for him five years ago when Soldiers' Pay was published. That reputation, based though it is on this his most recent novel, points correctly to the two qualities that are most conspicuous in and most characteristic of all his fiction: his preoccupation with unpleasant subjects and his experimental approach to the novel as a form. Admirers of Sanctuary, now turning back to Mr. Faulkner's earlier writings, are unlikely to be either surprised or disappointed; some of the subjects, they will find, are more horrible and some less,just as the methods are sometimes less ingenious and sometimes more so; but the fundamentals both in content and in form are consistently the same.
