ABSTRACT
Faulkner pits the language of criminality against the bodies of both the perpetrators and the victims. While this tension between language and the body is not new in Faulkner scholarship, its connection to crime and modernity allows us to think of it within a particular historical location and moment. By privileging narrative over cognition, Faulkner allows the language of crime to trump the commission of crime. This chapter argues that Faulkner took his revenge (along with the money) for his forays into mystery/crime fiction by imbricating it with many of the conventions of high modernism. Andrew J. Wilson, examining the connection between voyeurism and detection in the novel, writes, "In Sanctuary, Faulkner reveals only by persistently veiling a part of what he uncovers". Through his shifting narrative lines and linguistic virtuosity, Faulkner reminds us that crime fiction can be a much more complicated enterprise than simply figuring out who done it.
