Criminality, Sexuality, and Violence in Faulkner and Wright

This essay suggests Richard Wright, who admired Faulkner’s works, created a novel, The Long Dream, that was likely influenced by his expressed admiration for Faulkner’s achievement in Sanctuary. While utilizing different plot lines, both novels embrace a nexus of transgression, violence, criminality, and misogyny. Corruption is seen by both writers to be rife in all levels of society, including the police, the government, and the judiciary. Both texts locate key scenes in brothels, where the central characters Temple Drake (Faulkner) and Fishbelly Tucker (Wright) become both victimized and corrupted. The theoretical approaches of Bataille, Girard, and preceding Faulkner critics are employed to delineate Wright and Faulkner’s presentation of crime, perversion, the corruptions of capitalism, and the ironies underlying “respectable” society. Concurrently, both writers rely on the conventions of gangster fiction and film, pulp novels, and sensationalist cultural productions to pierce the “frozen” hearts of their readers.