I think The Serpent and the Swan is perhaps my most inspired book, even if it is deeply flawed. Faulkner used to call the favorite among the books he had written “a most perfect failure.” Well, my book may not be a perfect anything, but I feel a bit that way about it. All through graduate school I had been cautioned that scholars should not take on great themes, but I could not restrain myself any more. I had uncovered some new information about the development of the animal bride legend, and I used that as an excuse for all sorts of meditations on the relation between nature and humankind, as well as between men and women. At times, I pretended to be writing just another “scholarly monograph,” but I never fooled a soul.

Boria Sax