T. S. Stribling [seeks] to extract and analyze the essence of the real South, to find out through thoughtful examination what has made it what it is, and by implication at any rate, to prescribe a remedy. His limitations as a writer are serious, yet he has to a surprising extent been successful in capturing mercurial, amorphous America and containing it in recognizable form—given the will to recognition, of course. While he is a novelist of one area, his works are painfully relevant to American life generally and thus, by extension, to the world…. Stark in his outlines, cutting in irony, frequently grotesque in portraiture, Stribling has from the start been an unwelcome dweller in the Southern mansion. He has not merely sneered at domestic altars; he has overturned them, ripping up a few retouched family portraits for good measure. (pp. 204-05)

[Stribling's] Southern novels are all...