Robert Penn Warren's novella, Circus in the Attic, describes the frustrated and ultimately sterile life of Bolton Lovehart, a man who may have had the talent and intellectual ability to become a major artist. Describing the years from the late nineteenth century to the end of World War II, Warren's story presents both the unproductive life of Lovehart and the equally empty life of Bardsville, the home town to which he is ever bound by his inability to escape the psychological domination of his mother. Lovehart's thwarted imagination is channeled into the creation of a toy circus, which for a time becomes his secret passion in the family attic, hidden not only from the townspeople of Bardsville but from his possessive mother. Thus Warren's novella offers a study of talent destroyed by the failure to break away from family heritage and the environment.

According to Warren's...