Go Down, Moses

For range of effect, philosophical weight, originality of style, variety of characterization, humor, and tragic intensity, [Faulkner s works] are without equal in our time and country. Robert Penn Warren
 
He is the greatest artist the South has produced. . . . Indeed, through his many novels and short stories, Faulkner fights out the moral problem which was repressed after the nineteenth century [yet] for all his concern with the South, Faulkner was actually seeking out the nature of man. Thus we must turn to him for that continuity of moral purpose which made for greatness of our classics. Ralph Ellison