Marc C. Conner, Lexington, Virginia, is the Ballengee Professor of English and Associate Provost at Washington and Lee University. He is the editor of "The Aesthetics of Toni Morrison"; "Charles Johnson: The Novelist as Philosopher" (both published by University Press of Mississippi); and "The Poetry of James Joyce Reconsidered" . With John Callahan, he is the coeditor of "The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison" and a founding member of the Ralph Ellison Society.