SOURCE: An interview, edited by Ashby Bland Crowder, in The Southern Quarterly, Vol. XXVI, No. 2, Winter, 1988, pp. 12-26.

Following is an excerpt from a lecture Price gave at Hendrix College in Arkansas where he answered questions from the faculty and staff. Price discusses his relationship to the setting and characters in "Waiting at Dachau " and offers insights into the characters and events of the story.

"Waiting at Dachau" is the fourth story in a volume of Reynolds Price's short stories entitled Permanent Errors (1970) and is grouped with three other stories—"The Happiness of Others," "A Dog's Death" and "Scars"—which together constitute the first division of the book, "Fool's Education." This "fool" is an American living in England working on a university degree and on becoming a writer. The fool, Charles Tamplin, is involved in a relationship with a girl named Sara, and some years after the Third...