![]() ![]() When Larry and Dean met him at Ole Miss, Barry was playing with a Bowie knife. Morris’ rival celebrity and teacher of creative writing, Barry Hannah, author of 13 celebrated works of fiction, was not so lovable, but was certainly a character, often a volatile drunk. Willie Morris, author of North Toward Home (1967), came to teach writing at the University of Mississippi and became a lovable but alcoholic town character. With lyric grace and wit, Larry Wells, a talented writer of fiction and nonfiction, tells the story of many writers who came to Oxford, Mississippi, to stand for a while or for a decade in Faulkner’s shadow. In 2009, Dean Faulkner Wells, stricken with COPD, rushed to write about her own life as Faulkner’s favored niece in Every Day by the Sun, published in 2011, the year of her death. ![]() ![]() Since 1988, I’ve known Larry and his late wife, Dean, and how and why they, like myself as a novelist and critic and most of the literary dramatic personae of this book, have lived in Faulkner’s monumental shadow. Lawrence Wells’ In Faulkner’s Shadow: A Memoir is a startling example. At almost 88, when I open a book I wish to review, I never know whether I am going to read my own life between the lines. ![]()
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