["The Long Night"] will probably rank with Mr. John Peale Bishop's "Act of Darkness" as the best fictional performance of the Southern Agrarians. It is, however, more strictly in the Agrarian tradition than was Mr. Bishop's novel: deriving its importance, not so much from the story it has to tell, as from Andrew (Nelson) Lytle 1902– Photograph by Lyn Hutchinsonits reconstruction of a vanished way of life whose essence, if not actuality, the Agrarians seek to recapture.

We have had many such reconstructions: in prose and in poetry. An examination of this Agrarian literature shows that each member of the group, while paying tribute to the Good Life of the 50's, has created his own special kind of past. There has developed, because of this, a division in the Agrarian ranks that has been consistently overlooked. While it is ture that a haze of nostalgic romanticism tends to...