From the 1995 Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference, twelve essays that reveal the author in his relationship with his world. What Faulkner once referred to as his "material, the South," possesses the most substantive kind of reality - war and peace, wealth and poverty, racial and sexual identity. Yet this reality is ultimately cultural, for it must be understood in terms of a way of life. The twelve essays in this volume trace some of the significant connections between Faulkner's fiction and his surrounding life and show the ways in which the work of art and the southern context combine to produce meaning.