[Goyen] differs markedly from his contemporaries in his lyrical, poetic translation of material into his imagined world. Mood finally supplants place. When the specifications of place and people fade, the violence becomes grotesqueness. The shadowy, elusive figures drop the forthrightness of violence and take on the half-lights, the mysteries, and the freakishness of the grotesque. Although their existence often seems other-worldly, these ghosts are related to the fear of crass industrialism and standardization which haunts or has haunted many Southerners. (p. 131)

Each [of Goyen's five books] is a collection of short pieces related in theme and mood. [The Fair Sister (1963)] is the briefest and the most unified, having been developed from a single story. (pp. 131-32)

Foremost in Goyen's work is a sense that human life now has no integrity. People are isolated from one another and from the past. They have lost their purpose, their ideals, and...