SOURCE: "The Choral Voice of Homewood," in New York Times Book Review, Vol. 97, June 14, 1992, p. 13.

Gorra is an American educator and critic. In the following review he draws comparisons between Wideman and William Faulkner, and applauds Wideman's characterizations and narrative skills in The Stories of John Edgar Wideman.

Any American fiction writer who sets the bulk of his work in the same place, or who draws repeatedly on the same characters, inevitably faces comparison with William Faulkner. With John Edgar Wideman's inner city Pittsburgh neighborhood of Homewood that comparison is particularly apt, though not for those simple reasons alone.

It is appropriate because the stretched-to-the-breaking-point syntax with which Mr. Wideman captures his characters' inner lives seems at times an echo of Faulknerese. It is appropriate because both are concerned with the life of a community over time. It is appropriate because they both have a feel for the...