“What is evident in this first novel is an eagerness and a sincerity which ought to have been served by an able and understanding editor. Mr. Styron however had no Maxwell Perkins to guide him, with the result that he has written here a serious work of fiction which should not have exceeded 300 pages in length, and which need not have been done in so turgid and often confused a manner…Mr. Styron leaves his readers curiously unsympathetic.”
August Derleth, Chicago Tribune
Excerpted from: Barnard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
Mark's Text Terminal 