SOURCE: Winchell, Mark Royden. “A Golden Ball of Thread: The Achievement of Elizabeth Spencer.” Sewanee Review 97, no. 4 (October 1989): 580-86.

In the following essay, Winchell offers an overview of Spencer's works.

Running away from home may be the great theme of American literature. As Leslie Fiedler has been telling us for the past forty years, the novels we most honor embody the boy's dream of escaping what Irving called “petticoat government” for the freedom of an idealized masculine wilderness—whether it be the gothic forests of Cooper, the mythic oceans of Melville, the pastoral river of Twain, or the therapeutic fishing holes of Hemingway. When the praises of home are sung, it is likely to occur in the sentimental romances bought in supermarket checkout lines and viewed on television soap operas. If we allow for obvious exceptions and qualifications, this dichotomy holds for most regions and periods of American...