Some of the greatest storytellers of our time chronicle twentieth-century southern life.

Rich in irony, sly humor, and vivid, dramatic imagery, the literature of the modern South is a vital amalgam of a once-rural society's storytelling tradition and the painful contradictions and cultural clashes brought about by rapid change. The stories in this collection are as diverse as the region itself, yet they are all connected by a shared history and a uniquely southern strain of American language and narrative. Contributors include Truman Capote, William Faulkner, Carson McCullers, Flannery...

At his death in 1990, Walker Percy left a considerable legacy of uncollected nonfiction. Assembled in Signposts in a Strange Land, these essays on language, literature, philosophy, religion, psychiatry, morality, and life and letters in the South display the imaginative versatility of an author considered by many to be one the greatest modern American writers.

This book gathers together twelve recent and classic essays on Faulkner's Intruder in the Dust, which he termed a mystery-murderwhose theme concerns a relationship between Negro and white, specifically or rather the premise being that the white people in the south, before the North or the govt. or anyone else, owe and must pay a responsibility to the Negro.These essays provide a rich set of resources to teachers who wish to assign this text, as well as to provide food for thought and discussion to individual readers and scholars of Faulkner.

From the time they first met as undergraduates at Columbia College in New York City in the mid-1930s, the noted editor Robert Giroux (1914-2008) and the Trappist monk and writer Thomas Merton (1915-1968) became friends. The Letters of Robert Giroux and Thomas Merton capture their personal and professional relationship, extending from the time of the publication of Merton's 1948 best-selling spiritual autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, until a few months before Merton's untimely death in December 1968. As editor-in-chief at Harcourt, Brace & Company and then at Farrar, Straus & Giroux,...

Flannery O'Connor is considered one of America's greatest fiction writers. The immensely talented Robert Giroux, who acted as editor for much of her work was a devoted friend and admirer. Excerpts from their correspondence, some of which are published here for the first time, reveal much about their collaboration and will interest all readers and students of American literature.