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Yes, this is a great novel, though I personally think the last three pages were a big mistake. But this review is about the "new, corrected edition" by Mr. Polk, which, I'm afraid, is a literary and scholarly travesty. Readers will be well advised to stick with the original 1946 text.; the fact that it has been a force in American life for over 50 years, and that in the 43 years before his death Warren never gave any indication he was dissatisfied with it, should be reason enough. (A cynic would argue that the only reason for the new edition was to extend the copyright.) Polk went back to Warren's original typescript draft to restore many of the passages, phrases, and stylistic features that were changed or deleted in the editorial process before publication (and approved by Warren); and he claims that his editorial decisions have created a superior novel. The first problem is that, except for a very sketchy 10-page essay, Polk gives the reader no help in judging for himself. A respectable scholarly edition would at the least indicate, at the bottom of each page or the back of the book, each instance in which the first edition text has been changed and where the change came from (the draft was edited by several hands, including Warren's). A reader who wants to assess Polk's work will have to have both editions in hand and scan page by page, and even then will not know whose decisions Polk has overruled. Thus Polk puts himself beyond criticism. Polk's essay tries to justify his decisions, but his illustrations are merely anecdotal and offer no consistent editorial principles or methodology. I haven't the space here to go through a critique point by point; suffice it to say, I'm not convinced by any of his examples, including the reversion from Willie Stark to Willie Talos. Polk seems to be one of those editors who believes that the closer you get to the author's very first words on paper, the better or the more authentic your version will be, since then you are closest to the "white heat of creativity." But this is one of the silliest forms of romanticism still in existence. And I suspect it runs directly again Warren's own philosophy of history. Polk may think he has restored history, but in fact he has falsified it, for the history was the event of publication. Polk writes: "Many may feel that Warren's at least tacit approval of the [original] editors' changes-indeed, his gratitude for them-should argue against a new edition. But his `approval' may have come from fatigue, from pressures of one sort or another, from the years of constant work on it. Indeed, his very closeness to the novel may have prevented him from exercising his own good judgment, and in any case this version indicates that he had written better than he knew." Ah, but surely Mr. Polk knows? No, these are the lamest of speculations, for which there is no evidence, and the surest signs that Polk's fantasies are in danger of effacing Warren's work.