SOURCE: "Fathers and Sons in the Fiction of Reynolds Price: A Sense of Crucial Ambiguity," in The Southern Review, Louisiana State University, Vol. 29, No. 1, January, 1993, pp. 16-29.

Schiff is an American educator and critic. In the following excerpt, he examines the bond between fathers and sons in Price's fiction and reveals the characterisitic role of eroticism established in "The Names and Faces of Heroes. "

Since the 1962 publication of his first novel, A Long and Happy Life, which not only won the Faulkner Award but was also printed in its entirety in Harper's, Reynolds Price has been a visible presence in contemporary American letters, yet for some critics the promise of his career has never been fully realized. Though this attitude has changed somewhat in recent years, particularly with the publication of Kate Waiden in 1986, Price still has not received a great deal of critical attention—certainly less than...