John Baker’s Blog

Zadie Smith thinks most literary prizes are “only nominally” about literature.
They are really about brand consolidation for beer companies, phone companies, coffee companies and even frozen food companies, she said on the website of the Willesden Herald.
You might have a point there, Zadie. After deciding not to award a prize in this year’s short-story competition, [...]

Although originally published as a series of short stories, Go Down Moses is, in fact, a novel. Like much of Faulkner’s work, it deals with issues of slavery and race, the relationship between man and his environment, stewardship and ownership of land, the vanishing wilderness, and property and inheritance.
The novel plays with the concept of [...]