After his participation in the Agrarian symposium I'll Take My Stand in 1930, Andrew Lytle set himself to the task of learning the craft of fiction. Working slowly and carefully, he produced by 1958 four novels, a novella, and a small collection of short stories. This achievement, culminating in the excellent novel, The Velvet Horn, demonstrates almost ideally the growth of an artist toward mastery, but it has not received the attention that it deserves. One reason for this neglect may be that Lytle stopped writing novels after the publication of The Velvet Horn (1957). Another perhaps is the bias of critics who disapprove of the conservative social and religious views that Lytle has expressed in critical essays and in various public utterances. This tendency to associate his fiction with his personal conservatism is unfortunate since Lytle has refrained conscientiously from using fiction as a pulpit. "Polemics is one thing," he...