#Southern Literature

[xxrrisxx]

There is something terrible in me sometimes at night I could see it grinning at me.

William Faulkner

[dzgrizzle]

“Whenever I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one. To be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man, and in the South the general conception of man is still, in the main, theological. That is a large statement, and it is dangerous to make it, for almost anything you say about Southern belief can be denied in the next breath with equal propriety. But approaching the subject from the standpoint of the writer, I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted. The Southerner, who isn't convinced of it, is very much afraid that he may have been formed in the image and likeness of God. Ghosts can be very fierce and instructive. They cast strange shadows, particularly in our literature. In any case, it is when the freak can be sensed as a figure for our essential displacement that he attains some depth in literature.”

~ Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

[bones-ivy-breath]

Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews

[agirlnamedbone]

"Dorothy Allison: Tender to the Bone" in Guernica

[edwardian-girl-next-door]

"The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in the abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation."

art: Frank Weston Benson, "Summer Day" (1911)

quote: Kate Chopin, The Awakening (1901)

[belespritbooks]

My first read of 2024! (well the first book I’ve finished, anyway.)

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ + 1/2

Thoughts:

Mixed bag. Structure wise, this book was a very interesting read. I read this book for one of my classes, and we briefly touched upon how Faulkner's writing in this work seems to be much more geared towards showing off his literary skills. And in my opinion, I think this was the driving force of the novel rather than the message. To me, as a book worm, nerd, and student of literature, of course literary skill is impressive and important in great literary works, but I find that the most impactful books are ones that you put down and are truly moved by the story or the language. This book I was simply quite confused.

I'll explain why I feel this way for a few reasons: first the structure. The book being split into different parts with different narration (and different narrative styles) was, stylistically, very intriguing and impressive. Readers encountered Benjy's unique lens of the world, which didn't provide us much context or structure. This could either completely repel readers, or intrigue them further by the mystery Faulkner sets up. We are then introduced to Quentin's section, which I'll get into detail for in a second. The narration here is slightly less confusing, but because of his unique character, it is still quite broken and confusing. In Jason's section, the narration is much more clear and we're provided more context for the Compson's family relations, such as Caddy's daughter, Quentin, living with Jason and their mother. On pages 212 to 214, we're also given insight on the terrible way Jason treats his sister, as well as her crumbling life: begging for contact with her daughter, and begging for some money. Finally in the last section, readers are provided with a third-person omniscient narrator (and the writing in this section was GORGEOUS). Because there were four distinct types of narration, it seems to me Faulker was more focused on style than the message. Of course there was an important message, but because the style was so insanely confusing at times, I'm not sure how much of the message readers truly receive by the end of the book. Which is the beauty of literature: some books are so incredibly written it takes three or four reads to truly understand the point. But for me, since two sections of this book had incredibly difficult narrative styles, I'm not even sure how much I grasped of the plot or the family dynamic, never mind the meaning behind these relations. It was almost so stylistically impressive that it's just too frustrating to understand.

Though I would like to add: the different narration styles had a point: Faulkner was trying to express the same idea or feeling in each section, with four different methods of writing. In interviews, he shared that he saw this book as a failure; saying he was never truly able to get his message across, no matter which narrative style he chose. That is the beauty of this novel: Faulkner deliberately demonstrates the limits of language. My favorite example of this is the church sermon at the end of the novel, from pages 292-296. On page 292, Faulkner describes the church to look like a painting: “the whole scene was as flat and without perspective as a painted cardboard set upon the ultimate edge of the flat earth…” These descriptions of the scene as painted signify how Faulkner’s words on the page are flat and two dimensional. During the sermon, the preacher barely says anything, but the church goers have a transcendental experience just being in the room: experience allows one to transcend language itself. The only way to truly grasp human truths is to transcend language itself; it limits us, whereas experience frees us. The preacher seems to communicate to the crowd through empathy and emotion rather than words. It is the spaces in between the words where the emotion is felt, where the meaning is given to the crowd, just like in literature. The greatest authors know how to infuse meaning into a page, in between the words, not having to state it in their language.

To touch upon Faulkner's writing style: it is quite beautiful. I really loved Quentin's section now that I understand it better. His narration is confusing and patchy due to his deteriorating mental health and him grappling with past memories he cannot get out of his head. In class, I could not get away from pages 150 and 151, which is dialogue Quentin is remembering from the past before he left for Harvard. Here is just a snippet:

"hes crossed all the oceans all around the world...

do you love him

her hand came out I didnt move it fumbled down my arm and she held my hand flat against her chest her heart thudding

no no

did he make you then he made you do it"

The dialogue not having any quotations, punctuation, or pointing out who is speaking, represents Quentin's scrambled thoughts as this scene is from a long time ago: when remembering specific conversations years after, its almost impossible to remember exact words and phrases. That is why it feels so scrambled. Also significant is that this long period of dialogue pops up right in the middle of Quentin's present storyline, and when readers jump back to the present, we've missed Quentin being in a fight, because we were caught up in his past thoughts overtaking him.

Also, I chose this part of the dialogue to discuss how Quentin refused to believe Caddy had lost her virginity and instead made up a narrative in his head that she was raped. Quentin's feelings represent the values of the old South; he didn't want to believe Caddy had become impure before marriage or that a young woman was freely making sexual choices. Therefore, he wanted to believe he could protect her virginity by saying she was raped and "killing" her rapist. I could talk about Quentin's section forever: it was my favorite part.

However, it was still so confusing. I had actually thought Caddy was raped until we discussed it in class, because we are so trapped in his head in the book, and his narration is so broken with no explanation. Such as how he would frequently break his present narration (in the beginning of his section) and reflect on a memory in italics of him telling his father he had committed incest with Caddy. This was a made-up story to again excuse Caddy becoming impure in Quentin's eyes, but I wouldn't have put that together on my own, and likely not through a second time reading.

[nicklloydnow]

Walker Percy statue in Bogue Falaya Park, Covington, Louisiana

“A Talk with Walker Percy

Zoltán Abádi-Nagy

The Southern Literary Journal, 6 (Fall 1973)

Q: You maintain that perhaps the best way of writing about America in general is to write with authenticity about one particular part of America. By extension this means that, likewise, your attitude and reaction toward philosophical questions of universal human importance— toward the question of the human predicament, to use the term of your philosophy—will be that of an American. Is that correct?

A: I think that is true. My novels have more a European origin than American. They are so-called philosophical novels which is probably a bad word. But you know that the first half of your question is quite true. The greatest exponent of this was Faulkner who concentrated on a small village in Mississippi. It is true that I am interested in philosophical, religious issues and in my novels I use the particular in order to get at the general issues. For example, The Moviegoer is about New Orleans, one part in New Orleans, a young man in New Orleans. The conflict is a hidden ideological conflict involving, on the one hand, what I call Southern stoicism. I have an uncle whose hero was Marcus Aurelius. The other ideology is Christian Catholic. The third: the protagonist is in an existentialist predicament, alienated from both cultures.

Q: What in your view is it in America that makes an existentialist today? What facets of the American intellectual climate, of the American existence in general, are favorable to existentialist thinking?

A: I think in America the revolt is less overtly philosophical. It is a feeling of alienation from American suburban life, the suburb, the country-club, the business community. There is a difference between my protagonists and the so-called counter culture. Many young people revolt in a purely negative way, oppose their parents' culture; whereas the leading characters in my books are much more consciously embarked on some sort of search. I am telling you that because I would not want you to confuse the characters of the counter culture with my characters. One of their beliefs is that the American scene is phony, and their revolt is to seek authenticity in drugs, sex, or in a different kind of communal existence. The characters in my books are embarked on a much more serious search for meaning.

(…)

Q: Your view of life in your literary works is very close to the absurdist view, but the term 'absurd' and the whole Camus terminology hardly ever appears in your philosophical essays. Does this coincide with your preference for Marcel's Catholic version of existentialism as opposed to the post-Christian character of the meaninglessness of Sisyphus' situation?

A: Yes, that is correct. I identity philosophically with people like Gabriel Marcel. And if you want to call me a philosophical Catholic existentialist, I would not object, although the term existentialist is being so abused now that it means very little. But stylistically mainly two French novels affected me: Sartre's La Nausée and Camus' L'etranger. I agree with their novelistic technique but not with their absurdist view.

Q: Is not your third novel, Love in the Ruins, with its Layer I and Layer II—the social self and the inner, individual self—a comic attempt to solve Marcel's dilemma about this separation?

A: You are right. This is a comic device to get at what, ever since Kierkegaard, has been called the modern sickness: the disease of abstraction. I think in the novel Dr. More calls the illness angelism-bestialism. There is nothing new about this. It had been mentioned by many writers in various ways. Pascal said that man is both not quite as high as an angel and not quite as low as a beast. So Dr. More is aware of this schism in consciousness. He talks about the modem mind which, as he sees it, abstracts from the world, from itself, and manages to lose touch with reality.

(…)

Q: Much of it, especially in Love in the Ruins, seems to be a social problem viewed from an existentialist viewpoint of the human predicament. Actually, this is a kind of movement I notice in your works: an increasing awareness of how much the social predicament has to do with the human predicament. If Binx in The Moviegoer was suffocating in an adverse climate of malaise which was a social phenomenon, he was not much aware of its having to do with society; he was not concentrating on things like the social self as later Dr. More is in Love in the Ruins. Was this an intentional change on your part or was the movement towards the concept of malaise as a social product spontaneously developing through the inner logics of these relations?

A: It was a conscious change. Love in the Ruins was intended to take a certain point of view of Dr. More's and from it to see the social and political situation in America. Unlike Binx, whose difficulties were more personal, Dr. More finds himself involved in contemporary issues: the black-white conflict and the problem of science, scientific technology which is treated as a sociological reality today. Both the good and bad of it. I really use this to say what I wanted to say about contemporary issues. About polarization; there are half a dozen of them: black-white, North-South, young-old, affluent-poor, etc. And do not forget that at the end of Love in the Ruins there is a suggestion of a new community, new reconciliation. It has been called a pessimistic novel but I do not think it is. A renewed community is suggested. The suggestion is in the last scene which takes place in a midnight mass between a Christmas Saturday and Sunday. The Catholics, the Jews come to the midnight mass, also the unbelievers in the same community. The great difference between Dr. More and the other heroes is that Dr. More has no philosophical problems. He knows what he believes.

Q: Is it a religious reconciliation then?

A: Yes, that is the case. This was meant for Southerners in particular and for Americans in general.

Q: Binx in The Moviegoer and Barrett in The Last Gentleman do not seem to have the set of positive values needed for absurd creation as conceived by Camus to create their own meaning in meaninglessness. Is this connected with your idea of the aesthetic reversion of alienation, i.e. by communicating their alienation they get rid of it?

A: Yes, there is something there. In the case of Binx it is left open. The ending is ambiguous. It is not made clear whether he returns to his mother's religion or takes on his aunt's stoic values. But he does manage to make a life by going into medicine, helping Kate by marrying her. I suppose Sartre and Camus would look on this as a bourgeois retreat he had made.

Q: How do you look on it?

A: Well, I think he probably . . . as a matter of fact the last two pages of The Moviegoer were meant as a conscious salute to Dostoevski, in particular to the last few pages of The Brothers Karamazov. Very few people notice this.

Q: To me the most striking difference between the European and the American absurdist view is the ability of the American to couple the grim seriousness with hilarious humor, to turn apocalypse into farce. In comparison, Beckett, for all the grim comedy which is there, is a sheer tragic affair. Can you think of some explanation for this?

A: That is a good question and I can only quote Kierkegaard, who said something that astounded me and that I did not understand for a long time. He spoke of the three stages of existence: the aesthetic, the ethical, the religious. When you pass the first two you find yourself in an existentialist predicament which can be open to the religious or the absurd. He equated religion with the absurdity. He called it the leap into the absurd. But what he said and was puzzling to me was that, after the first two, the closest thing to the third stage is humor. I thought about that for a long time. I cannot explain it except I know it is true.

There is another explanation, too, of course. Hemingway once said: all good American novels come from one novel written by a man named Mark Twain. With Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain established the tradition of this very broad and satirical humor. I think the American writer finds it natural to use humor both in his satire and in describing even the worst predicament of his main character. In this country we call it black humor: disproportion between the gravity of the character's predicament and the hilarity of the humor with which it is treated. Vonnegut uses this a good deal.

Q: Richard B. Hauck in A Cheerful Nihilism points out how Franklin, Melville, Twain, Faulkner have shown that the response to the absurd sense can be laughter. At one point Binx becomes aware of the similarity of his predicament to that of the Jews. "I accept my exile," he says. Whether we accept this as his affirmation of life in its absurdity or not, what follows is comedy. Could you agree that this comedy as well as Franklin's, Melville's and the others' could be regarded as the absurd creation of the American Sisyphus as opposed to the serious defiance of Camus' king?

A: I do not know if I would go that far. It may be much simpler. There is an old American saying that the one way to stop crying is to laugh. Binx says, "I feel more homeless than the Jews." Between him and the Camus and Sartrean heroes of the absurd there is a difference. Camus would probably say the hero has to create his own values whether absurd or not, whereas Binx does not accept that the world is absurd; so he embarks on a search. So to him the Jews are a sign. I think he said, "Lately when I see a Jew on a street I am amazed nobody finds it remarkable. But I find it remarkable. But to me it is like seeing Friday's footprint in the beach. " Of course, he is not sure what it is the sign of. Sartre's Roquentin in La Nausée or Camus' Meursault in L'etranger would not find anything remarkable about a Jew, they would not be interested in him.

Q: In your philosophical essay, "The Man on the Train," you stress the speakability of the commuter's alienation and the fact that the commuter rejoices in this speakability. We can probably add: laughability. Incidentally, you do mention in the same article how Kafka and his friends were roaring with laughter when Kafka read his work aloud to them. Again if we had the answer to how alienation can become a laughing-matter, we would have the key to much of what is recently called black humor.

A: I think you are right. In "The Man on the Train" I was talking about the aesthetic reversal: the alienated commuter feeling totally alienated when reading a book about alienation feels better because there is a communication between himself and the writer.

Q: The forms of alienation you are concerned with in your fiction are all results of the objectification, mechanization of the subjective. Does not this view meet somewhere at a point with Bergson's view of the comic as the mechanical manifested in a living human being?

A: It sounds reasonable but I cannot enlarge on that. I am not familiar enough with Bergson. But to your previous question. Let me finish. It is the first time it occurs to me. You brought it up. Maybe, a person like Sartre spent a lot of time writing in a café about alienated people, the lack of communication, etc., and yet, in doing so, he became the least alienated person in France. By writing he performs a superb act of communication for which he has many readers. So you have a complete reversal. He writes about one thing and reverses it through communication. Here we have the American writer locked in his alienation. But I can envision the American writer getting onto it; by seeing the possibility of communication, exhilaration, his alienation becomes speakable. There can be a tremendous release from that. I have never thought of this before. Nobody knows what is going on when you communicate the unspeakable. This all-important step from unspeakability to speakability is such a triumph that in his own exhilaration the American writer finds it natural to use the Mark Twain tradition of the funny, the humorous.

(…)

Q: Religion reminds me of another tendency I notice in your novels from Binx through Dr. Sutter to Dr. More: the scientist Dr. Percy showing in the novels much more than the Catholic. How would you comment on your religious presence in the philosophical essays the—whole idea of the islander opening all those bottles hoping for 'the message'—and on the absence of practical religion from the novels. I know that religion is there as a theme but with no commitment of the writer in any direction.

A: Well, that is very simple. James Joyce said that an artist must be above all things cunning and guileful and must use every trick in the bag to achieve his purpose. In my view the language of religion, the very words themselves, are almost bankrupt. If you are writing a technical article on philosophy you can use the correct word for the correct meaning. But writing a novel is something different. In my view you have to be wary of using words like 'religion,' 'God,' 'sin,' 'salvation,' ‘baptism' because the words are almost worn out. The themes have to be implicit rather than explicit. I think I am conscious of the danger of the novelist trying to draw a moral. What Kierkegaard called 'edifying' would be a fatal step for a novelist. But the novelist cannot help but be informed by his own anthropology, the nature of man. In this respect I use 'anthropology' in the European philosophical sense. Camus, Sartre, Marcel in this sense can all be called anthropologists. In America people think of somebody going out and measuring skulls, digging up ruins when you mention 'an-thropology.' I call mine philosophical anthropology. I am not talking about God. I am not a theologian.

Q: What I meant was not the question of style and technique explicit or implicit but the religious commitment which is there in your philosophical writings but absent from the novels or always left open at best.

A: As it should be left open in the novel.

(…)

Q: None of the main characters in your three books have problems in making a living. Binx is a successful broker, Barrett inherited from his father, Dr. More from his wife. Do you do this to contrast seeming affluence with emptiness under it?

A: I had not thought about it. Maybe so, maybe also to use it as a device to reinforce the rootlessness. After all if these fellows had been day-laborers working very hard they would have had no time for various speculations.

Q: Does that mean that existentialism has no comment on those who are without these economic means and consequently perhaps in a much more serious predicament—because they have no time for speculations?

A: To that Marx would have an answer, Henry Ford would have an answer, Chaplin would have another, etc. Marx invented the term alienation. . .

Q: He reinterpreted an older concept, he discovered a new explanation for alienation.

A: But it is now transferred to a different class of society in Sartre, Camus. These desperately alienated people are members of a rootless bourgeoisie, not the exploited proletariat.

Q: Your novels demonstrate that to many questions affluence is no answer. Danger of life and the saving of lives often figure in your work as in many other black humorists', too. One can think of Barth's The Floating Opera, The End of the Road, Giles Goat-Boy, Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan, Mother Night, Cat's Cradle and others, Kesey's two novels, Pynchon's V., Heller's Catch-22 and We Bombed in New Haven, etc. Do you think that this or a similar event of great moment in one's life is necessary to awaken the existentialist hero to his absurd situation and that this somehow is needed to shock him into the feeling of necessity for 'intersubjectivity' and shared consciousness as an escape from 'everydayness'?

A: I think that touches on a subject I have been interested in for a long time—a theme I use in all my novels: the recovery of the real through ordeal. It is some traumatic experience—war, Dr. More's attempted suicide—in each case. You have the paradox here that near death you can become aware of what is real. I did not invent this. Prince Andrey lying at the Battle of Borodino and looking at the clouds, makes a discovery: he sees the clouds for the first time in his life. So Binx is the opposite of Prince Andrey: he watches the dung-beetle crawling three inches from his nose.

Q: Correct me if I overinterpret the difference but now that you make this comparison it occurs to me that perhaps there is some irony here in the way it is an opening up of vision for Andrey towards the clouds, the sky, some magnificence suggested by these, and in the way Binx zooms down on an ugly little dung-beetle.

A: Maybe there is a little twist there. But the point is that a little creature as the dung-beetle is just as valuable as a cloud.

(…)

Q: Ordeal is one existentialist solution to escape from the malaise. How effective do you think the others, rotation and repetition, can be? Is it possible that their effect can be more than temporary?

A: To use Kierkegaard's term, they are simply aesthetic relief, therefore temporary.

Q: Friedman says that distortion can be found on the front page of any newspaper in America today. It is not the black humorist who distorts; life is distorted. Does everyday American reality stir you to write with similar directness? I ask this because once in an interview you appreciated the way Dostoevski was stirred to writing by a news item in a daily paper and because once in connection with Faulkner and Eudora Welty you referred to the social involvement of the writer as useful because social likes and dislikes, you said, can be the passion and energy you write from.

A: I see what Friedman means. Right. The danger with newspapers and TV is that it is all trivial. You remember in Camus' The Fall: we spend our lifetime "fornicating and reading the newspapers.” I think the danger is that you can spend your life reading the New York Times and never get below the surface of current events; whereas in Dostoevski's case—The Possessed—the whole was inspired by a news story in a Russian newspaper. I would contrast the inveterate newspaper reader and TV watcher who watches and watches and nothing happens—he is formed by the media. Dostoevski reads one news story, gets angry and this triggers a creative process.

Q: Intersubjectivity is an escape for Binx from everydayness and the other forms of the malaise, he is certainly not formed by the media. But are his aunt's values cars, a nice home, university degree—somehow recreated through intersubjectivity so that he can go back to these formerly rejected values?

A: Yes, sure. The question is, how much? And whether he did not go a good deal beyond intersubjectivity when he regained his mother's religion. Binx says at the end that what he believes is not the reader's business, he cuts the reader loose, refuses to be edifying. This is Kierkegaard going back to Socrates, "I want no disciples."

Q: But in the next paragraph he says, "Further: I am a member of my mother's family after all and so naturally shy away from the subject of religion (a peculiar word this in the first place, religion; it is something to be suspicious of)." This means, it seems to me, that Binx definitely objects to being edifying, especially in a religious way.

A: Yes, if you like.

(…)

Q: I wonder why it is necessary to bring the mental sickness of these characters into such a sharp focus? Is it to perplex the world with the old enigma: are these sick people in a normal world or normal people in a sick world? Or is it the interest of the medical doctor? Or both?

A: It is partly therapeutic, medical interest but also goes deeper than that. The view of Pascal and some others who were interested in the human condition was that there is something wrong with mankind. So it is always undecided in my novels. This is the main question of the novels. Here is a hero who is afflicted, shows malaise, dislocation, and he is surrounded by apparently happy and sane people, particularly Dr. More, who lives in Paradise Estates. So who is crazy, the people apparently happy or those radically dislocated characters?

(…)

Q: Although I know you have been frequently asked about the position of the writer in the South, I would like to ask you to summarize your view on this question for the Hungarian reader for whom this talk is primarily intended and for whom your view of the writer in the South will be a novelty.

A: The position of the Southern writer now, as opposed to thirty years ago when Faulkner was writing, is more and more on a level with other writers' in other parts of the country. In other words the United States is becoming more and more homogenized. America is becoming more alike. Towns in the South lose their distinctive character. And yet, I think, in spite of this, there remains and probably there will remain a unique community in the South between black and white, so that there is much more communication, strangely enough, between middle-class white and black people in the South than there is between intellectual black and white in the North. In the South they have lived in physically intimate terms for 300 years. And whatever might have been the evils of this system, there still exists a strong historical basis of communication. I think it will continue to exist.

Q: Speaking about America, it occurs to me to ask you at this point if you have ever thought of rotation in historical aspect? Of America as a historical experience in rotation? What the settlers did coming from Europe, or the pioneers did going west was, it seems to me, as exactly zone-crossing as anything in the existentialist meaning of the term—even though the term came much later. If I may go one step further, how can you comment on the effectiveness of this rotation in the light of what you say on the first pages of Love in the Ruins: "our beloved old U.S.A. is in a bad way." And later, "now the blessing or the luck is over, the machinery clanks, the chain catches hold . . .”?

A: I did not think of rotation in an historical aspect. But if rotation is temporary it should run out. That makes it tough. There are more suicides in San Francisco today than in other cities; that is why the rotation has run out, which may or may not be significant. That is what Kierkegaard calls aesthetic damnation—living by rotation.”

[theoxfordamerican]

Donna Tartt: An OA Retrospective

Oxford American has been a window to the American South for over a quarter-century and has racked up quite a roster of contributing authors and artists. So, why not feature some of our past and present OA contributors whose work has proved foundational to the story of our magazine? First up, Donna Tartt, an audacious literary figure who has found a new generation of ardent readers with the surge of “dark academia” aesthetics on the internet. 

Born in Greenwood, Mississippi, Tartt has always connected intimately to the South. She is perhaps best known for her debut novel, 1992’s The Secret History. Her sophomore effort, The Little Friend (2002), took readers on a journey into the heart of a Southern family grappling with an unsolved murder. Over a decade later, she returned with The Goldfinch (2013), which earned her the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Tartt first attended Ole Miss, where her talent caught the eye of Willie Morris, another OA contributor and venerable Southern literary figure. Morris would serve as a friend and mentor for years to come.

Now, you may be asking yourself, what exactly is dark academia? In a 2023 article for English Studies, Prof. Simone Murray concisely defined it as a “vibrant online subculture centered upon readers’ performances of bookishness.” Think leather-bound books, neogothic architecture, and tweed jackets. Tartt’s The Secret History could be considered a sacred text. Although Tartt attended Ole Miss and Bennington College in the 1980s (and writes of that era), the narrative has struck a chord with younger generations over thirty years later. Case in point: #DarkAcademia has over 2.3 million posts on Instagram and over 5.2 billion views on TikTok. 

And yet, some of Tartt’s contemporary fans probably have no idea of the treasure trove that is the OA archives! Here is a list of the various Tartt contributions featured in our issues. Do you have these on your shelf? 

Issue 2: Basketball Season: Requiem of a Mississippi Cheerleader Issue 4: “True Crime” (poem)  Issue 6: In Melbourne Issue 11: Murder & Imagination Issue 26: The Belle and the Lady Issue 29: Tribute: Willie Morris Issue 30: Spirituality in the Modern Novel Issue 41: Spanish Grandeur in Mississippi Issue 72: Tribute: Barry Hannah

[satin-carmin]

The strange part about going through a house destroyed by a hurricane is how much of it is still there but in the wrong places. The roof is still there, but in pieces in the yard. The windows are still there, but they’re in shards in the sink or scattered on the floor. The stuff is all moved around inside and bloated full of floodwater and made unrecognizable. It gets to be hard to remember where things were supposed to be in the first place. And then there are other things that are just gone, disappeared with the water or the wind, and it becomes hard to say if they ever were there to begin with.

Wyatt Williams, Lucinda Williams and the idea of Louisiana

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

In a scene filmed at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Ala., Michael W. Twitty, author of “The Cooking Gene,” reads aloud from placards describing the “crimes” for which Black men were lynched. “I want you to think about what the last meals of these men and women were,” he says. “What does it mean to be a Black woman who cooks on a plantation, who bears your slaveholder’s children? What is the kitchen at that point? The kitchen becomes a space of trauma and turmoil, not just a space where you make good food. These are the narratives that get woven out of the glorification of the South as a moonlight-and-magnolias place.”

Other storytellers in this documentary may seem, on the surface, to have almost nothing to do with the Southern past. Their art responds nevertheless to those historical forces, if only because they grew up in a place that was shaped by them. The screenwriter Qui Nguyen, who grew up in Arkansas as the son of Vietnamese refugees, believes that many people have a “stereotyped idea of what a Southerner looks like, or feels like, or sounds like.” A lot of them, he says, “probably wouldn’t guess this face being a part of it, and yet I’m completely a part of the Southern fabric.”

No writer has a lock on what it means to be Southern, but collectively these voices — straight and queer, old and young, Black and white and brown; writing in fiction and nonfiction, in poetry and song — are telling us an important story about what the South is and what it has been, whether we understand it or not. As the singer-songwriter Adia Victoria says, “Being a Southerner is a strange thing. You ponder about it. You gnaw on it. But you never can quite get to the heart of the South.”

Even more than the region’s oral tradition, that truth explains why this place has raised up far more than its share of storytellers. And why the stories will always, always keep coming.

Margaret Renkl, a contributing Opinion writer, is the author of the books “Graceland, at Last” and “Late Migrations.” Her next book, “The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year,” will be published in October.

[importantwomensbirthdays]

Ellen Douglas

Josephine Ayres Haxton, better known by her pen name, Ellen Douglas, was born in 1921 in Natchez, Mississippi. Douglas' first novel, A Family's Affairs, was published in 1961. She won an O. Henry Prize for her short story "On the Lake", and her novel Apostles of Light was a finalist for the 1974 National Book Award. In 2008, Douglas received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters.

Ellen Douglas died in 2012 at the age of 91.

[printsofcats]

I went to the beach because the world was pressing down on me, like an iron and I was the board. Its steam did not satisfy me, it did not shoo away my kinks, it did not straighten me out. It flattened me and snatched me from my own fabric.

So I went to the beach to remember myself again. I went and sat sprawled in the sun. Its warm weight hugged me tight and I felt my bones and my heart stirring again. I could feel the bread of my life rising. I felt the little spirits flitting, racing through the circuits of my veins and celebrating themselves. I read Flannery O’Connor and never once forgot that my heart belongs to her, and that whoever I finally fall in love with will eventually have to reckon with her. The sun hugged me again. It was glad to see me. The sun smiled, happy to see me, and whispered, “close your eyes.” The sun brought me in close so I was the only one who could hear it. My eyes closed without my making them—they followed a higher order.

I went to the beach and remembered myself. I returned to myself and saw all my kinks, beautiful and crooked and unfazed by the world’s hot iron, and I loved them again. I was happy to live in my body again, and I felt home there again, retethered, certain that this body and heart were the ones I needed, ones I couldn’t proceed without. I thanked the sun and the water and the wind for reminding me of myself, and I thanked Flannery O’Connor, smiling, remembering the name of a favorite story: “The Life You Save May Be Your Own.”

[dzgrizzle]

I’m very proud to have a “grit lit” story in Reckon Review, the online journal of Southern literature and culture (“Dirt Road Driving, Jelly Jar Sipping, Dollar General Shopping”). Previous authors published by Reckon Review include Brian Panowich, S.A. Cosby, and Gabino Iglesias. My story, “Judgment Call,” is set in Georgia in 1987, during the AIDS epidemic. Based on a true story. Here's the link:

[free-air-for-fish]

[23] Chapter 16 Review Syndicate: Love and Hot Chicken

I love when I get the opportunity to review queer literature, especially literature from southern authors, as there is still a persistent stigma against the south, and queer authors writing queer fiction and nonfiction face a double blink situation in that they are exponentially overlooked, so I’m always very excited to be able to share some queer southern lit. with others. Love and Hot Chicken,…

[agirlnamedbone]

“I fell into shame like a suicide throws herself into a river.”

[niibaataa]

Appalachia, Mon Amour

[Note: there are more extensive lists out there, but through personal criteria, this is what I came up with.]

Map of Appalachia:

Frank X Walker, born in Danville, Kentucky, coined the term "Affrilachia" to refer to African-Americans in the region and give a name to their experiences. He also co-founded the Affrilachian Poets. He offers educational training on his website.

Here is a list of his books. These include known titles like Love House, Affrilachia, and Black Box.

Lisa Alther, from Kingsport, Tennessee, is a prolific fiction writer whose work often contains lesbian and bisexual characters. Several titles are linked below.

Other Women, Kinflicks, Swan Song.

Harriette Simpson Arnow was born in Wayne County, Kentucky. She worked as a teacher and principal in rural Appalachia for two years. She would go on to write her first novel in 1936, drawing on her experiences in the region. Future works would carry story tones of moving and fraught lives which would strike cords with Appalachian readers.

Hunter's Horn, The Dollmaker, The Weedkiller's Daughter.

Pinckney Benedict is a short-story writer, playwright, and novelist. He was born in Greenbriar County, West Virginia. His work is strongly influenced by his Appalachian background. His first novel, Dogs of God, was published in 1995 and he has gone on to publish three short story collections.

Dogs of God, Town Smokes, Wrecking Yard.

Harry M. Caudill was born in Whitesburg, Kentucky. Caudill was a World War 2 veteran critical of the approaches taken in Appalachian mining. He was also critical of the power wielded by northeastern investors in these mines. In his later years he became a eugenicist, believing William Shockley's theory of dysgenics (the idea that "unintelligent" people weaken a race over time). He published multiple books concerning law and his home area of the Cumberlands Plateau.

Night Comes to the Cumberlands, The Watches of The Night, A Darkness at Dawn.

Wilma Dykeman grew up in Buncombe County, North Carolina. She married her husband, James R. Stokely Jr, two months after meeting him. This occurred shortly after her graduation from Northwestern University. She authored multiple novels and family epics, tracing decisions through time. The Wilma Dykeman Award exists to promote writers discussing connection, Appalachia, and religion. Urban News provides support for writers of color.

The Tall Woman, The Far Family, Return the Innocent Earth.

Denise Giardina was born in Bluefield, West Virginia. She grew up in the Black Wolf coal mining camp located in McDowell County. Her family's survival was heavily dependent on the mine's prosperity. Politically active and frequently writing about Appalachian labor conflicts, she experienced clashes with the superiors of an Episcopalian she attempted to lead in West Virginia over her labor views.

Storming Heaven, The Unquiet Earth.

Homer Hadley Hickam Jr was born in Coalwood, West Virginia. He is a Vietnam War veteran, author, and former NASA engineer. His 1998 memoir Rocket Boys was the basis for the 1999 movie October Sky. He has a diverse body of work. His Coalwood series is about Appalachia and consists of memoirs about his hometown.

Rocket Boys, The Coalwood Way, Sky of Stone.

Silas House was born in Corbin, Kentucky, and grew up in nearby Laurel County. He also spent much of his childhood in Leslie County. He is one of the most prominent voices of LGBTQ+ Appalachians and Southerners in Southern literature.

Clay's Quilt, A Parchment of Leaves, The Coal Tattoo.

Sharryn McCrumb is a Southern writer. Born in Wilmington, North Carolina, she is best known for her Appalachian Ballad series, which weaves folklore in with historical events.

If I Ever Return, Pretty Peggy-O, The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter, She Walks These Hills.

Mary Noailles Murfree was born near Murfreesboro, Tennessee on a cotton plantation. She is considered to be Appalachia's first significant female writer. Her work does reinforce negative stereotypes of the region and the influence of her social standing on her work is notable. She wrote under the pen name Charles Egbert Craddock.

The Windfall, In the Tennessee Mountains, In the Clouds.

Karl Dewey Myers was born in Tucker County, West Virginia. He was physically disabled, never walked, and required a special typewriter to write. He was denied formal education, resulting in him being self-taught. His first poetry collection was The Quick Years, analysis of which exists in literary journals.

The Quick Years. Little is written about his second poetry collection, Cross and Crown, published shortly before his death in 1951.

Breece D'J Pancake was a short-story writer born in Milton, West Virginia. The location is the inspiration for his multiple short stories, published in The Atlantic Monthly and other periodicals during his lifetime. He passed due to suicide at age 26. Chuck Palahniuk claims him as an influence.

Stories of Breece D'J Pancake (collected short stories), Trilobites, Time and Again.

Ann Pancake was born in Richmond, Virginia. Her family has strong roots in West Virginia and Appalachia. She grew up in Summersville, West Virginia. Her family includes filmmaker Chet Pancake and actor Sam Pancake. She is a distant relative of the writer Breece Pancake. Writing stories centering rural poverty and the historical roots of poverty in general. She teaches Appalachian fiction and environmental criticism. She recently resigned from West Virginia University in protest of budget cuts.

Strange as This Weather Has Been, Me and My Daddy Listen to Bob Marley (short stories and novellas), Given Ground.

Carter Sickels grew up in Ohio and, as an adult, moved around to various cities. His work captures a homesickness for the place one grew up while balancing any complicated feelings one may have about the area. An interview on the subject by Megan Kruse can be found here.

The Evening Hour, The Prettiest Star.

Hubert Skidmore was a writer born Webster Springs, West Virginia, his twin brother Hobert Skidmore was also a novelist. He is best known for his social protest novel Hawk's Nest. He died in a house fire in 1946.

A list of his other books can be found here.

Crystal Wilkinson was born in Hamilton, Ohio. She is a member of the Affrilachia collective. With experience in media and public relations, her transition to poet and professor of creative writing was smooth. She is the first Black woman to be Kentucky's Poet Laureate, a position she was appointed to in 2021.

Praisesong for Kitchen Ghosts, Blackberries, Blackberries (poetry collection), The Birds of Opulence.

Jim Webb was born in Jenkins, Kentucky, he was an Appalachian poet, writer, and essayist. He was a founding member of the Southern Appalachian Writers Cooperative. Transcriptions of the interviews with founding members can be found here. He spent three decades managing the radio show, "Ridin' Around Listenin' to the Radio With Wiley Quixote", a literary persona he created of a mountain character critical of strip-mining for coal and used self-deprecating humor. Much of his literary output has been destroyed due to three house fires.

Radio component of Appalashop.

SPECIAL FEATURE — CHILDREN'S LIT

Rebecca Caudill was born in Cumberland, Kentucky. She graduated from Wesleyan College in Georgia and received a degree in international relations from Vanderblit University. Her stories about Appalachia are filled with warmth and focused on the pioneer era of the 19th and 20th centuries. She loved the culture of Appalachia.

A list of her books is available here.

Cynthia Rylant was born in Hopewell, West Virginia. She was sent to live with her maternal grandparents in Coal Ridge, West Virgina after her parents divorced. She eventually moved back in with her mother in Beaver, West Virginia. After university, she worked as a librarian and became acquainted with children's books, something absent in her own childhood. She has written dozens of books for children and young readers.

A list of her books is available here.