Try This Quiz on Literary Quotations About American Life

Among the many complaints made about the modern American novelist, the loudest, if not the most intelligent, has been the charge that he is not speaking for his country. A few seasons back an editorial in Life magazine asked grandly, “Who speaks for America today?” and was not able to conclude that our novelists, or at least our most gifted ones, did.

This opening paragraph is from an essay titled “The Fiction Writer and His Country” by a writer whose work was influenced by Catholicism, the rural South and peacocks. Who was it?