BEFUDDLED BIOGRAPHER

Molly Giles’ review of “William Faulkner: American Writer” (Book Review, Aug. 20) stands as the first, to my knowledge, to dig beneath the sheer massiveness of the volume to expose biographer Frederic R. Karl’s destructive bone-picking of a great American novelist.

Giles charitably refrained from pointing out that the biography is largely an appropriation of the published works of recognized Faulkner scholars and that his principal contribution is a warped, far-out psychoanalysis of Faulkner’s personal life, cradle to grave.

The definitive biography of Faulkner has been a work-in-progress for many years by Garvel Collings, who knows more about his subject than any other living American. Giles and the Book Review are to be commended for a brave critical CAT-scan of a grievously flawed biography.

ORIN BORSTEN

STUDIO CITY