Friday, April 24, 2026

Pulp Faulkner (2)

[William Faulkner, Sanctuary (1931) and Requiem for a Nun (1951). New York: New American Library, 1961.]

The film adaptation Sanctuary (dir. Tony Richardson, 1961) starred Lee Remick, seen here fore and aft. Same page count, same tiny type as the 1954 paperback. According to Wikipedia, the first film adaptation of Sanctuary, The Story of Temple Drake (dir. Stephen Roberts, 1933), has been “credited with spurring the strict enforcement of the Hays Code.”

See also Nobel Prize Pulp (with another Sanctuary ) at Dreamers Rise.

More pulp Faulkner on Monday, with the oddest one I’ve got.

And to the anonymous reader or readers alerting me to typos I’ve missed: thank you! I am grateful for the corrections.

Related posts
Dickens, 45¢ : Pulp Faulkner (1) : Pulp Faulkner (3) : Pulp Faulkner (4) : Pulp Hammett

comments: 6

Anonymous said...

fantastic covers! and i would pick these up based on the covers alone! when did book cover design become so boring? my library will have displays of books based on a topic -- i rarely pick any of them as most of the covers don't draw me in at all.
kirsten

Michael Leddy said...

Lots of covers now are wearily similar — big white type on a multicolored background being one standard style. These are meant to pull in the person idly spinning the rack. Stop! Look! Buy!

Sean Crawford said...

As a boy, accustomed to adult books with serious covers (classics would have brown paintings, never a Renoir) I never knew whether to be scandalized or appreciative of how the volumes of Readers Digest condensed books had lots of picture.
They even had colour pictures Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, for which they only included the first fews chapters. (A special edition?) I always thought if it was illustrated it would be with charcoal pictures.

Michael Leddy said...

I had no idea that the RD books were illustrated. And I remember now that as a kid I was never quite sure what condensed books were. (My aunt and uncle had them.)

Anonymous said...

“expiate” in a paperback blurb!

—Fresca

Michael Leddy said...

Yeah, it’s funny to see it there. (For anyone who hasn’t read Faulkner, it really is a key idea in Requiem.)