Originality" Is Everyone's Aim, And Novel Techniques

Many Poets Write As If They Had Been Decerebrated, And Not Simply Lobotomized, As A Cure For Their Melancholia.

The Novel Is A Prose Narrative Of Some Length That Has Something Wrong With It.

Except From The Americans—but Every Pearl Has Its Oyster.

The Southern Past, The Southern Present, The Southern Future, Concentrated Into Gertrude's Voice, Became One Of Red Clay Pine-barrens, Of Chain-gang Camps, Of Housewives Dressed In Flour Sacks Who Stare All Day Dully Down Into Dirty Sinks.

Underneath All His Writing There Is The Settled Determination To Use Certain Words, To Take Certain Attitudes, To Produce A Certain Atmosphere; What He Is Seeing Or Thinking Or Feeling Has Hardly Any Influence On The Way He Writes. The Reader Can Reply, Ironically, "that's What It Means To Have A Style"; But Few People Have So Much Of One, Or One So Obdurate That You Can Say Of It, "it Is A Style That No Subject Can Change.