The Best American Mystery Stories 2002

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On a recent trip to one of the South’s literary meccas, Oxford, Mississippi, I had the pleasure of spending a great deal of time with literary folks — authors, booksellers, editors, publishers, professors — who take books and writing very seriously. Included with visits to William Faulkner’s home, the University of Mississippi’s special collections library, Square Books (at which John Grisham happened to be doing a signing), were many hours spent with good wine, cold beer, and conversation.

This wasn’t ordinary conversation, at least not to me. It was among people who love literature as much as I do and who care about it passionately. The talk swung freely: a writer is described as “a little full of himself” but is then quickly conceded to be one of the best writers in the state, a discussion immediately followed by a roundtable argument of which of his books is the best and which is the worst, with more than one drinker — oops, I mean conversationalist — cogently quoting beautiful lines from his work.

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