The short and very short stories in this collection are Faulkner's first published works of prose, from 1925, and they are quite uneven. "Out of Nazareth" is an homage to "David," a 17-year-old hobo ("I have no destination. Why should I hurry?") who gives the narrator a sample of his writing, quoted in its entirety. Can this be said to foreshadow Faulkner's encouragement to young writers in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech of 1950? "The Liar" demonstrates Faulkner's extraordinary ear for the dialects of rural Southern whites, with a surprise twist on the power of lying. Other stories like "Jealousy" are powerfully written, but "Country Mice" is a strange tale about bootleggers and a biplane, and "Yo Ho and Two Bottles of Rum" is racist: superficially anti-Chinese, but deeply anti-British-lower-class. Despite the title, there is very little in *New Orleans Sketches* about New Orleans culture and traditions. The racetrack touts, petty criminals and tough cops could have inhabited any city of the 1920's. The stories were first published in the New Orleans *Times-Picayune*. The even shorter "sketches" are from the New Orleans literary magazine *The Double Dealer*. Editor Carvel Collins, a professor at Notre Dame, re-collected them and amplified on them with a preface. He added a short essay by Faulkner on the works of Sherwood Anderson, originally published in 1925 in the Dallas *Morning News*. The essay contains surprisingly blunt criticism, given Anderson was an important mentor and friend of Faulkner. ( )