Velvet Horn

I have literally never read a greater American novel -- and this includes Faulkner. The Velvet Horn is an overlooked masterpiece. Lytle's use of metaphor and imagery are never self-conscious or affected - they are inextricably bound to the story proper. Not easy reading - even Lytle said it should be read a few times.

The Velvet Horn is one of those rare unknown novels that lies in the dust of recent antiquity ignored by all except those who have to read it in class at the University of the South. The Horn is Lytle's master work. One feels reading it, that all the author's work and talent gelled in this book. Like Faulkner, and other contemporaries, Lytle strives to embody a rural voice and language from a bygone period in this story, but unlike Faulkner, he is not willfully obtuse. While the language is dense and extremely poetic, one finds it is also carefully economic. Lytle doesn't waste anything. The construction of this book is immaculate.The story centers around a boy becoming a man and grappling with his family history and the apparent suicide of his father. All of this is set in the years just following the defeat of the south in the civil war in a remote reigon of Tennessee.While the story is ,on one hand, classically southern gothic, deeper themes of christ like sacrifice and redemption give the novel powerful scope and feeling. This remains one of a few books that I keep returning to because some pages and passages are so rich as to astonish and they continue to open up vistas that only literature can bring.

The story of a family with dark secrets. I read the book several years ago and I will always remember it as one of the best books I ever read. If Oprah had had her book club in the late 1980's, she would have selected it. I sorry I can't give specifics on the book since my copy is still being shared with friends