Warren, Robert Penn (Vol. 1) - Warren, Robert Penn 1905–

Warren, Robert Penn 1905–

An American poet, novelist, playwright, critic, and man of letters, Warren has won two Pulitzer Prizes and the National Book Award. His best-known novel is All the King's Men. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 13-14.)

Warren … is that very rare phenomenon among American writers, a successful novelist who is also a sophisticated, self-conscious, all-round man of letters…. But Warren, for all his qualities, falls considerably short of greatness. Here is a man whose talent leaps out at the reader from every page that he writes, who truly commands the English language, who has mastered the novelist's craft, and who can create characters. And yet we come to the end of his books with a feeling that somehow we have just missed having that superlative reading experience which a genuinely superior novel provides. Why?

Surely the answer does not lie in Warren's material—the kind of people and the kind...

[The entire page is 5212 words long]

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