Introduction‪.‬

The idea for this issue arose as I read Richard Gray's A Web of Words: The Great Dialogue of Southern Literature. Gray argues that there are "conversations of and between southern texts" since "books come from and talk to other books," so that each new book "echoes and argues with at least some of its predecessors" (10). Gray treats that conversation in Faulkner's work, of course, and a range of other works, from the Agrarians to Toni Morrison. Given Faulkner's worldwide reputation, I thought it natural to ask if the "conversations" contemporary writers enter into with Faulkner extend beyond the scope Gray focuses on, the American South. As responses to The Faulkner Journal's call for papers and the articles selected for this issue demonstrate, the great conversation between Faulkner's texts and other texts crosses all boundaries of region, nation, race, language, and ethnicity. Kathaleen Amende begins the issue's exploration of contemporary fiction's conversations with Faulkner's texts by examining similarities in setting, plot, and theme in Amos Oz's "Nomad and Viper" (1964) and Faulkner's "Dry September" (1931). In setting, the stories share times of hot droughts that aggravate the tensions that already exist between cultural communities. In plot, they share the rape fantasies of the central female characters and the cultural violence the dominant communities carry out against minority communities they deem "other."