SOURCE: "The Farmers' Daughters: A True Story about People," in The Massachusetts Review, Vol. III, No. 2, Winter, 1962, pp. 319-24.

In the following essay, Corman discusses the chief literary qualities of Williams's writing style in The Farmers' Daughters.

Bill was upstairs. (I was visiting 9 Ridge Road, 1954.) Floss was explaining his nervousness whenever the phone rang. He thinks it's for him, a patient. Few seem to realize that 70% of his life has been given to his practice.

She was implying, perhaps, that writing occupied only part of the remaining 30%. But life, like death, has a funny way of getting round percentages. And to read [The Farmers' Daughters: The Collected Stories of William Carlos Williams], without exception relating, directly or indirectly, to his work as a G.P. in and out of his office (at home) in Rutherford, New Jersey, is to realize rather that writing of this order is an...