M. Thomas Inge (1936–2021)

I've been working through this fantastic collection of criticism on Faulkner and his influence for about a year and a half now. Some of the pieces I've read more than once. They range from contemporary reviews of his novels by the likes of Lillian Hellman, Arnold Bennett and Edwin Muir, to analyses of his form and technique by Wallace Stegner and Conrad Aiken, to broader overviews of his work from a later perspective, most impressive among the latter being the contributions of George show more Garrett, Robert Penn Warren and Willie Morris. Even John Grisham chimes in on the futility of comparing every author from Oxford to the peerless, but dead, legend. I absolutely love Grisham's snarky response to an earnest young interviewer who insisted on suggesting it "must be intimidating writing under the shadow of Faulkner": "I swear he's dead. I've seen his grave. Died thirty years ago when I was in the second grade" and "I'm not a Southern writer...I'm a commercial writer who lives in the South." Critics and biographers who made a long and serious study of Faulkner (Red Warren notwithstanding) and published their own full length works on Faulkner are not much represented here. If you have the interest to read this much on the subject, you probably know some of their names and can seek them out. (Oh, OK....Noel Polk, Cleanth Brooks, Olga Vickery, Jay Parini, Joseph Blotner, Malcolm Cowley). But if you've read a couple Faulkner novels, and think you'd like to understand him a little better, you could do much worse than to sample this collection. I know I'll never be completely finished with it, even now that I've read all of it at least once. show less

This is a good book with interviews and articles about Faulkner. I like the way he is, just a curmudgeon who wants to be left alone. Every once in a while, he opens up and talks about the craft of writing, and then he is brilliant.

This book consists of 11 essays, amply illustrated, on various topics that relate the comic strips to American culture. The essays are interesting, literate and informative, and cover a wide range of topics. An interesting book for the well-informed fan of the comics, who would like to relate that knowledge to changes in American society.

Fantastic collection of interviews with Schulz.

Provides a great deal of insight into how he thought.