As a probing psychologist he is the unrivalled master among all livingBritish andAmerican novelists. Neither do any of his colleagues possess his fantastic imaginative powers and his ability to create characters. His subhuman and superhuman figures, tragic or comic in a macabre way, emerge from his mind with a reality that few existing people — even those nearest to us — can give us, and they move in a milieu whose odors of subtropical plants, ladies’ perfumes, Negro sweat, and the smell of horses and mules penetrate immediately even into a Scandinavian’s warm and cosy den.As a painter of landscapes he has the hunter’s intimate knowledge of his own hunting-ground, the topographer’s accuracy, and the impressionist’s sensitivity. Moreover — side by side with Joyce and perhaps even more so — Faulkner is the great experimentalist among twentieth-century novelists. Scarcely two of his novels are similar technically. It seems as if by this continuous renewal he wanted to achieve the increased breadth which his limited world, both in geography and in subject matter, cannot give him.