SOURCE: “The Fiction of William Hoffman: An Introduction,” in Hollins Critic, Vol. XXVIII, No. 1, February, 1991, pp. 1-10.

In the following essay, Frank provides an overview of the central themes, regional settings and motifs, prose style, and narrative presentation in Hoffman's fiction. Frank's analysis, which aims to enlarge Hoffman's readership, focuses on several representative works—the novels The Trumpet Unblown, The Land That Drank the Rain, and Godfires, and the short story collection By Land, By Sea.

During the past thirty-five years William Hoffman has published ten novels, two collections of short stories, and over three dozen additional short stories in such quarterlies as the Transatlantic Review, The Virginia Quarterly, and The Sewanee Review; he is perhaps best known to the readers of the latter, for The Sewanee Review has published more short stories by William Hoffman than by any other author. Although Hoffman’s fiction has been the...