The twelve essayists in this critical collection examine anew two fundamental concerns of Penn Warren's landmark work, which has as valid a claim to being "The Great American Novel" as any in the literary canon. The first challenging conundrum these critics examine is narrator Jack Burden's adequacy as a historiographer and the impact of his reliability upon his alter-ego-persona-narrative: does Jack succeed in becoming an able historian of his family and of Willie Stark's political career, or does he become self-delusive and resort to a "selectively culled" history to justify himself to his...