in "Form and Fable in American Fiction," Daniel Hoffman demonstrated the relationship between the literary imagination in America and our myths, fables, and folktales. Reasserting and deepening the thesis of that study in "Faulkner's Country Matters," Hoffman provides rich readings of "The Unvanquished," "The Hamlet," and "Go Down, Moses," and at the same time offers a moving, often profound meditation on the American sense of history as myth and myth as history. Appearing at a moment when Faulker studies are dominated by a rage for theorizing about literature, Hoffman's new book returns us to the actual source of the author's imagination.