Constance Eakins the man lived to live; Constance Eakins the writer lived to write. But when it came to the publication of his work, the rites of publishing, the actual act of printing the books on paper, of selling them in stores, of receiving critical evaluation, of fostering scholarship: this, to Eakins, represented Death itself. Nevertheless, a massive critical and commercial apparatus erected itself around his work, long before his disappearance.

—Conroy