All Things Considered

W. Ralph Eubanks is the author of Ever Is a Long Time and The House at the End of the Road. He is director of publishing at the Library of Congress.

The work of William Faulkner looms as a mountain too high to climb for many readers, with his long, complex sentences and shifting point of view. But Faulkner's famously tangled mix of literary techniques meant nothing when I was about 12 years old and picked up a copy of The Reivers.

Transcript

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

It's time now for your Letters, but first a correction. On Friday, in our weekly chat with sportswriter Stefan Fatsis, we talked about Wimbledon. And during the chat, we incorrectly said that player Andy Murray hailed from England when, in fact, Mr. Murray was born in Scotland.

As listener Bob Carter of Cornelius, North Carolina points out: Calling a Scot an Englishman is as quick a way to a bloody nose as would be confusing a Slovenian and a Slovakian, or a German and an Austrian.

Well, now to your Letters.