SOURCE: Campbell, Hilbert. “Fred Chappell's Urn of Memory: I Am One of You Forever.” Southern Literary Journal 25, no. 2 (spring 1993): 103-11.

In the following essay, Campbell assesses the various structural attributes in I Am One of You Forever, noting the role that memory and childhood play in the novel.

Ah happy happy boughs! That cannot shed Your leaves, nor ever bid the spring adieu; And, happy melodist, unwearied, Forever piping songs forever new. 

—Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”

Fred Chappell's 1985 novel I Am One of You Forever should certainly come in the future to be acknowledged as a classic of American literature. For this is a book by a master storyteller and humorist, absolutely in control of his language and of the nuances of charged moments and telling gestures. But it is likewise a magical book, suggestive of the miraculous, the mysterious, and the transcendent in our lives...