title: Amid the Swirling Ghosts and Other Essays
author:  William Caverlee 
description: William Caverlee s writing reminds us that there is always a need for insightful, probing, and eloquent criticism even when talking about works we think we know. Take William Faulkner s The Sound and the Fury. Caverlee s playful approach to this improbable novel and his brisk, lucid insight into Faulkner s ridiculous syntax . . . obsessions, oddities . . . and lofty talk of honor, family, the past suddenly render Faulkner a little more understandable or understandable in a fresh way no mean feat.<br /><br />In taking on another well-known work of Southern literature, Flannery O Connor s 1953 A Good Man Is Hard to Find, Caverlee does the same thing he did with the Faulkner book he ponders the familiar with so much fresh verve and intelligence that he will likely prompt readers to quickly revisit this well-worn masterpiece.<br /><br />Caverlee is a writer of vast enthusiasms and range. His general essays, which cover everything from the assassination of Bonnie and Clyde to the mundane evolution of the staple, are as thoughtfully delightful as his literary criticism. It just so happens that I m a sucker for penetrating and well-written literary criticism. I ve learned that there s something oddly enduring about that kind of literary criticism: it can last as long as the literature it examines, and it can even take on the name of literature itself. <br /><br />Read on and see for yourself. --Marc Smirnoff, editor of the The Oxford American
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  JOHN BYRNE
  
  
  FEARBOOK
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Prologue
  
  
  
  
  
  In the darkness he was not alone.
  
  
  Around him there were sounds. Scuttlings. Scrapings. The slosh and drip of
  noisome, stagnant water. There were cobwebs matted against his hair, his face
  wet with cold sweat. When he tried to brush them off his fingers left trails
  of slime across his brow.
  
  
  As his jacket dried-he’d fallen full length in the foul, constant pool at the
  foot of the short stairs-it lifted from his back. It seemed to draw decaying
  fingertips across his flesh; like the fingers he was expecting.
  
  
  All his senses were wound tight. The hair on his neck bristled at the
  slightest movement of air. His nostrils twitched as the mixture of foul odours
  wafted around him. Fragments of the darkness drew closer. Against the grimy
  walls old dirt shifted, perhaps from its own sodden weight, perhaps not. When
  he moved, it set off a chain reaction of sounds; the darkness came alive with
  rustlings. When a floorboard c