William Goyen - Writing Style

Writing Style

Goyen is considered "a writer's writer". His East Texas origins and early childhood had an enduring influence on the speech patterns and cultural characteristics reflected in his writings, which are marked by the rhythms of rural speech, the Bible, and a sense of story and place.

His style has been compared to Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, and Gabriel García Márquez. Biographer Peede notes that his works are known “for their incantatory passages, their fragmented brilliance, but not their seamless design.” Critics have tried to define his style with labels such as Southern, Southern Gothic, modernist, postmodernist, contemporary, and magical realist. But Goyen insisted that his work should be considered outside any genre: “I'm really not very interested in contemporary fiction, anyway. I consider my fiction absolutely separate and apart from and unrelated to “contemporary American fiction.”