Comments on: More of My Favorite Books About the South

By: 1minutebookreviewswordpresscom

1minutebookreviewswordpresscom — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:02:13 +0000

“A great topic for a dissertation”: Yes! Even teenage reluctant readers might enjoy reading some of these books or stories because they are so fascinated right now by the intersection of the realms of the living and dead, as in the “Twilight” series.

Thanks for adding to the list.
Jan

By: Kat

Kat — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 15:51:43 +0000

I’ve been mulling this over, and I keep thinking of other instances in southern folklore and humor where a dead body becomes a character in the narrative. (I mentally excluded stories with ghost characters – which are countless – and limited my thinking to stories with actual corpses.) Examples: the folktale “Old Dry Frye” which is both very funny and very morbid; the tale called “Sitting Up With the Dead” or some variant of that title, which is really an extended joke. Most of these have been collected in the written record, but originated as oral traditions. So I can’t say if Childress was influenced by Faulkner, or if it’s more a case of both of them being influenced by the oral tradition of the south. This would make a great topic for a dissertation.

By: 1minutebookreviewswordpresscom

1minutebookreviewswordpresscom — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:00:28 +0000

Do you think Childress was influenced by the corpse who speaks in As I Lay Dying? Your example and mine both seem to reflect a certain turn of mind on the part of their authors.

Flannery O’Connor called it “the grotesque,” but she wasn’t using that word pejoratively, just as way of describing something that ordinary people won’t see in their lifetimes.

Jan

By: Kat

Kat — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 17:01:48 +0000

Regarding Childress, any writer who can tell the story of a woman carrying a human head around in a tupperware bowl and make it seem like a reasonable, logical course of action for that person in that situation has some real characterization skills!

By: 1minutebookreviewswordpresscom

1minutebookreviewswordpresscom — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 19:59:46 +0000

John and Lady Sankofa: Thank you both for these suggestions. Ellen Gilchrist is still best known to some people for her Victory Over Japan, so I’m glad to have comments on her other books.

Jan

By: LadySankofa

LadySankofa — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 19:39:19 +0000

I would include a number of pieces by Ellen Gilchrist, starting with “The Anna Papers” and including “The Annunciation”. Some of her story collections as well.

By: 1minutebookreviewswordpresscom

1minutebookreviewswordpresscom — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 20:58:17 +0000

Kat –
Thanks for the reminder about Crazy in Alabama. How can I never have read Childress his name appears on so many “best writers of the South list”? And how can I have only dipped into the work of Sams and White?

Part of the explanation for the gaps is that when I was the book editor of The Plain Dealer, I worked with many good freelancers who had a strong interest in Southern literature. So often instead of reviewing novels from the region myself, I’d assign them out.

I have some catching up to do and appreciate your suggestions!
Jan

By: Kat

Kat — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 17:12:06 +0000

Oh, and The Widow’s Mite by Ferrol Sams. It is a collection of short stories, and he is better known as a novelist (Run with the Horsemen, Whiper of the River) but I like his short stories better.

By: Kat

Kat — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 17:08:59 +0000

All the ones you’ve mentioned, plus:
Crazy in Alabama by Mark Childress
Mama Makes Up Her Mind and Other Dangers of Southern Living by Bailey White.

By: 1minutebookreviewswordpresscom

1minutebookreviewswordpresscom — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 05:01:18 +0000

Did you know Bragg has a new book out? I haven’t read it yet, because it seems just to have arrived in the past week or two.

By: 1minutebookreviewswordpresscom

1minutebookreviewswordpresscom — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 22:33:24 +0000

It sounds as though “The Angry Raisins” might have been the standard title in Japan for a while. That could explain how both Steinbeck’s widow (who has told the anecdote I mentioned) and your teacher’s friend might have seen it. Wonder how long it took to get a new translation

By: UmmFarouq

UmmFarouq — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 17:59:48 +0000

I will second To Kill a Mockingbird as one of my all-time favorites. I also enjoyed Ava’s Man, by Rick Bragg, set in rural Alabama. I liked As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, as well as any of Tennessee Williams’ plays. I cannot leave A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole off of this list of faves.