Ron Gilmour

In the pantheon of Southern literature, the names of Twain and Faulkner stand matched for first place. Thanks to an enjoyable high school experience with As I Lay Dying and an excellent honors seminar on Faulkner as an undergrad, I have a pretty decent familiarity with that Southern luminary. Having less first-hand experience with Twain, I’ve tended to consider his works less “serious.” Faulkner, I thought, was the Michelangelo of The Last Judgment, while Twain was more akin to Norman Rockwell.
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One can hardly undertake a program of American literature without confronting Moby Dick, the quintessential Great American Novel. Perhaps due to its daunting size, or to a dimly remembered aversion to Billy Budd in high school, I have always put off this novel until another day, shamefully admitting with Laurie Anderson, “Moby Dick? Never read it.”
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