SOURCE: "Life on the Flip Side," in The New Republic, Vol. 159, November 23, 1968, pp. 35-8.

In the following review of Limestone and Other Stories, Segal explains what makes these stories moving and beautiful.

David Luke, the excellent translator of Adalbert Stifter's stories, has, in his introduction [to Limestone and Other Stories], "placed" the Austrian writer for the English speaking reader: Stifter was a contemporary of Metternich and a disciple of Goethe, working in the post-romantic era, in the classic, idyllic mode of the German literary tradition.

This allows the reviewer to come to the material as a modern reader, and it is hard not to feel a little that we know better. In Stifter's world fathers are austere and kind, sons respectful, manly, truthful and athletic, households orderly and punctual and God and government benificent and competent to run the world. We know Stifter knew better also: An idyll...