SOURCE: A review of Permanent Errors, in The New York Times Book Review, October 11, 1970, p. 4.

Davenport is an American scholar, poet, essayist, illustrator, and fiction writer. In the following review, Davenport identifies the problems of intimacy and communication faced by characters in Permanent Errors.

The permanent errors of these bitter stories are suicide, the refusal to forgive and that violation of the heart's privacy whereby we know so much about a person's misery that we cannot know the person. All knowledge of others, Reynolds Price seems to say, is tragic. Then tension between human beings is a matter of distance, both real and psychological. All of these stories are about crossing the perimeters that may not be crossed without terrible responsibilities; love, compassion, confession are wounds, and their scars are permanent.

These stories are not easy to read or to comprehend. Except for "Waiting at Dachau" and "Walking...