Fifteen years ago Cleanth Brooks published William Faulkner: The Yoknapatawpha Country. It was then and remains now the best single critical work on the novels of Faulkner's fictional saga. In the years that followed, many of Brooks's readers looked forward to the promised companion volume that would deal with the works Faulkner set beyond the boundaries of his apocryphal county. From time to time essays appeared which gave previews, essays ranging from Faulkner's poetry to his view of history. Now at last he has gathered most of them together, revised them, and added new chapters, appendices, and notes to form William Faulkner: Toward Yoknapatawpha and Beyond. It was worth waiting for. (p. 145)

[Brooks] has read a great deal of [Faulkner] criticism and put it to excellent use. But the very abundance of bad or indifferent criticism makes this new volume, like its fellow, not only particularly welcome but...