Buried in Light in August is a brief and easily overlooked account of police torture. In a cryptic novel replete with murder, a threatened lynching, and castration, the interlude of police torture fades into the background. It was a piece with the thread of violence in both Faulkner’s oeuvre. But Faulkner’s exploration of police torture was much more than a reworking of familiar tropes; it was decidedly rooted in the historical moment in which he wrote. His incorporation of and attention to violence was evidence of his modernist literary sensibilities. It also was a reflection of the evolving concern about both torture and lynching in the modern United States. Light in August, in short, is more than a testament to Faulkner’s acute interest in and grasp of his region’s history, it also suggests Faulkner’s sensitivity to contemporary anxieties
