It is time to stop thinking of Edward Dahlberg as a sport in American letters, whose principal achievement would appear to be his unique style. When critics today talk about Dahlberg's style, they are usually referring to his late work; his early work of the Thirties is usually regarded as a stylistic phase that Dahlberg had to outgrow in order to achieve his maturity. The mature style reveals itself to best effect in Because I Was Flesh … in a prose a-dazzle with rich metaphor, erudite allusions to religious and pagan mythologies, passionate attention to the rhythms and music of the periods…. Dahlberg's mature style is a strategy for distancing himself from and yet, paradoxically, possessing the myth of his life; and that this purposeful use of an ornate, idiosyncratic style is one characteristic he shares with, say, Walt Whitman, Augie March, and scores of other American writers and...