Right. So, it's now eight years. I've many, many notebooks, but what I see when I examine the notebooks now are phases of development toward the work I'm doing at present. I see it in embryonic stages early on, and I begin to see what I thought were simply notes, because they didn't resemble my earlier work, were, actually in early form, the work that I have now begun to do … the new work, in other words. I didn't recognize it at first. I thought it was failed old work.

The work of Caroline Gordon as a writer of fiction appears to have suffered a curious lack of appreciation when compared to the lively admiration which has greeted the efforts of some other Southern women writers during the last two decades. It is my impression that of the group of talented Southern women, including Katherine Anne Porter, Carson...