Michael Millgate

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Acknowledgments are due to Chatto and Windus Ltd, and to the following American publishers for permission to reproduce quotations from the works of William Faulkner: Liveright Publishing Corporation (Mosquitoes, Soldiers' Pay); Random House, Inc. (Absalom, Absalom!, As I Lay...

chapter i FAULKNER AND MISSISSIPPI Oxford, Mississippi, county seat of Lafayette County and site of the University of Mississippi, is a town of some four thousand inhabitants lying about seventy-five miles south-east of Memphis, Tennessee, and just to the east of the low rich cotton lands of...

PREFACE Although American society is noted for the high degree of conformity that it imposes on its members and for the materialistic values tliat seem often to take precedence over human ones, it is a significant fact that much of the serious literature of America has since its beginnings been...