With [Selected Poems 1923–1975] and his … novel A Place to Come to Robert Penn Warren continues to run both poetry and fiction toward the ring of Truth (often his ostensible, even ostentatious, subject). The race in unequal. His fiction is lame and always has been. And for a long time the poetry too was but fair-to-middling down the stretch. But as if more and more goaded by the cheers of death, it has gained speed, mass, power, grandeur. (p. 71)

The novels are dispiriting in every way—personally, morally, aesthetically. They are given over to a somewhat thin, raspy consciousness. The self-loathing of the male narrators glances up against things gracelessly. Something rotten in the South … some compensating "fine woman" worship. Throughout, the novels display what fiction can hardly tolerate, social awkwardness. They lack urbanity: the dialogue is a solopsist's rough copy, the tone is one long discomfort … the reader...