Paul Green's work is still very much in progress. A man of abundant energy and vitality, he has a rich store of as yet unrealized dreams and ideas. His work has shown both consistency and the power to expand: consistency in the underlying theme of compassion for and championship of those who are denied basic human rights; expansion in enlarging these themes to an application beyond the bounds of locality.

From a point of view so near to a living writer, it is impossible to say whether or not his books will supply that lack which Paul Green himself deplored in 1928 when he said: "North Carolina has made no lasting contribution to the art of the world." Even with a consideration of the towering figure of Thomas Wolfe, who burst upon the scene in 1929, it is possible, looking back on the body of Green's work, to say that...