I think Juan stopped short - he got halfway to the destination and got off the train. He is certainly an excellent writer and a good person, but I'm not a nationalist.
Taking on challenging projects is the way that one grows and extends one's range as a writer, one's technical command, so I consider the time well-spent.
So I'm not a Southern writer in the commonly held sense of the term, like Faulkner or Eudora Welty, who took the South for their entire literary environment and subject matter.
