Early in his career, John Leonard wrote in The New York Times, "He is that rare young novelist who writes equally well about action and ideas.
"[This quote needs a citation] David Black, a reviewer for The Nation wrote, "Burton and Speke…has a quality that is even rarer than excellence: it is a likable book, one of those uncommon novels you will carry with you in your imagination long after turning the final page.
He later attended Vanderbilt University where he studied to teach comparative religion at the divinity school, but once again he began to write and made lifelong friends in the Department of English.
After a year teaching in North Carolina at Atlantic Christian College, he moved his young family to Iowa where he studied in the creative writing program for ten months.
His heroes were Anton Chekhov, Joseph Conrad, Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and John Cheever, but he taught hundreds of fine authors in his classes and offered seminars on James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov, Federico Fellini and others.