[William Faulkner: Toward Yoknapatawpha and Beyond] as a whole is less impressive than The Yoknapatawpha Country because its topics are more diverse and because most of it is concerned with less impressive works. Faulkner's poetry and early prose would not be worth discussing at such length were it not for the light they cast on his literary sources and on qualities he was to develop further in his later writing…. For me, however, the principal value of the book is that it completed Brooks's magisterial study of Faulkner's work as a whole. The two volumes taken together, as they should be taken, are the best-rounded exposition not only of Faulkner but of almost any American author.

Brooks will forgive me, I hope, for some niggling over major and minor points. To start a brief list of differences, his Faulkner study doesn't make sufficient use of his admirable training...