The Fruits of the LOA.

This article examines the Library of America’s (LOA) role as a middlebrow publisher that claims to define and preserve the canon of American literature while navigating tensions between marketing, scholarship, and editorial practice. It highlights contradictions in LOA’s brand identity, which simultaneously appeals to middle-class readers by promoting “great literature” and to academics by asserting rigorous textual scholarship. Focusing on LOA’s recent volume *William Faulkner: Stories*, edited by Theresa M. Towner, the article contrasts her editorial approach—which privileges Faulkner’s stories as published during his lifetime and does not restore magazine edits—with the more manuscript-based, scholarly methods used by Joseph Blotner and Noel Polk in LOA’s earlier Faulkner novel editions. The article raises concerns about the new edition’s textual authority due to editorial decisions that overlook key manuscript and typesetting evidence, suggesting that LOA’s claims of producing definitive texts are uneven across its publications.