Readin': If ya don’t know…
...look it up! The Encyclopedia of Southern Culture was cooked up by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. A wide range of folks contributed to this wise tome, including historians, literary critics, novelists, sociologists, anthropologists, geographers, linguists, theologians, folklorists, architects & newspaper reporters. The encyclopedia’s editors, Charles Reagan Wilson (a Texan) and William Ferris (a Mississippian), organized it around 24 different thematic sections – including music, history, religion, folklore, language, art and architecture, recreation, politics, literature, and the mythic South. The overall goal of this big ‘ol book is to identify the forces that have supported and shaped the Southern way of life – from people and places to ideas, events, rituals and values. The book even garnered some fancy awards when it came out back in 1990, winning the Dartmouth Medal from the American Library Association and the C. Hugh Holman Award from the Society for the Study of Southern Literature, among others.
U.S. News & World Report called it “the first attempt ever to describe every aspect of a region’s life and thought, the impact of its history and policies, its music and literature, its manners and myths, even the iced tea that washes down its catfish and cornbread.” And Esquire called it “a discriminating guide to Dixology.” Pick one up and check it out fo' yerself.
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Readin': Larry Brown
Just finished my first Larry Brown book - Father And Son. A work of art. A vivid and riveting story of gritty, rough and violent life in rural Mississippi.
"The truth of the matter is that Brown is one of the best writers we have, able in a sentence or or two to cut to the heart of things."
- The Washington Post
From Lisa Guidarini's blog: Bluestalking-
"Father and Son positively seethes with anger, with a particular brand of vengeful anger laced with blind ignorance that's so sinister and frightening to watch. At the start of the book Glen Davis has been released from prison after serving three years for killing a child he'd hit with his car while under the influence of alcohol. Returning home to the small Mississippi town he grew up in he's bent on vengeance against those he sees as having wronged him. As the book progresses he goes on a murderous rampage, seeking his own justice. The prose is brilliant and masterful, creating suspense in a sparing way:
"He cocked the hammer now and swung the barrel up to this father's head and held the black and yawning muzzle of it an inch away. He tightened his fingers on the checkered pistol grip. The old man slept on, father and son. Some sense of foreboding told him to pull back and undo all of this before it was done. Yet he put his finger on the trigger, just touched it. He already knew what it would look like. Virgil moved in his sleep, made a small sound almost like a cough. The puppy whined outside. The house was quiet but for that. He raised the barrel and caught the hammer with this thumb and eased back on the trigger, letting it down. He went out the door, lighting a cigarette, hurrying."
Here's a bit from Wiki on Brown:
Larry Brown (July 9, 1951–November 24, 2004) was an American writer who was born and lived in Oxford, Mississippi. Brown wrote fiction and nonfiction. He graduated from high school in Oxford but did not go to college. Many years later, he took a creative writing class from the Mississippi novelist Ellen Douglas. Brown served in the United States Marine Corps from 1970 to 1972. On his return to Oxford, he worked at a small stove company before joining the city fire department.
An avid reader, Brown began writing in his spare time while he worked as a firefighter (at City Station No.1 on North Lamar Blvd.) in Oxford in 1980. The nonfiction book On Fire describes how Brown, having trouble with sleeping at the fire station, would stay up to read and write while the other firefighters slept. His duties as a firefighter included answering fire alarms at Rowan Oak--the home of William Faulkner, now a museum--and the University of Mississippi campus. By his own account, Brown wrote five unpublished novels, including one that he always used as an example to younger writers about a man-eating bear loose in Yellowstone Park, and hundreds of short stories before he began to publish. His first published work was a short story that appeared in the June 1982 issue of biker magazine Easyriders. His first books were two collections of short stories: Facing the Music (1988) and Big Bad Love (1990). After 1990, Brown turned to writing full time and increasingly turned to the novel as his primary form. Brown's novels include Dirty Work (1989), Father and Son (1996), Joe (1991), Fay (2000), and The Rabbit Factory (2003).
In March 2007, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill published Brown's unfinished novel A Miracle of Catfish. Although Brown died before finishing the book, the final page of the published version includes his notes about how he wanted the novel to end. The novel also includes a lengthy introduction by Brown's editor, Shannon Ravenel, discussing her work on the project and her work with Brown over the years. Except for the novel The Rabbit Factory, all of Brown's books were published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, a division of Workman Publishing. The paperback editions of Brown's early works were published by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, although other paperback houses picked up his later works.
Brown was awarded the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters award for fiction. Brown was the first two-time winner of the Southern Book Award for Fiction, which he won in 1992 for his novel, Joe and again in 1997 for his novel Father and Son. In 1998, he received a Lila Wallace-Readers Digest Award, which granted him $35,000 per year for three years to write. In 2000, the State of Mississippi granted him a Governor's Award For Excellence in the Arts. Read More.
Already started my second - Joe - and it's proving to be just as riveting.
Thanks for turnin' us on to Larry Brown, Luther!
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Readin'/Livin': New York Times: Delta Dawn
There was an excellent article in yesterday's New York Times by Dave Gardetta about Mobile, Alabama and how the city is evolving. It's accompanied by some beautiful and telling photography by Katherine Wolkoff. Check it out here...
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Readin': Redneck Haiku
Remember those short little Japanese poems you learned to write in grade school? Maybe not? Well here's what happens when "Bubba Meets Japanese Verse." Some funny outhouse readin' at the very least.
Here's the review of the "Doublewide Edition" from amazon.com:
"This expanded version of the original cult poetry classic contains not only all 106 haiku from the first edition, but also nearly 150 brand-new redneck poems that are sure to generate the same big laughs as the original. Once again, the redneck lifestyle gets the black tie treatment through the hilariously contrasting filter of the formal Japanese haiku. Each of the nearly 250 wickedly funny verses contains just three lines and 17 syllables, yet they address the whole spectrum of redneck culture: RVs, Wal-Mart, beer, pop tarts, pickups, monster trucks, NASCAR, boats, trailers, trailer parks, barns, hunting, shotguns, Las Vegas, the lottery, and more. Readers will laugh until the cows, chickens, and, of course, hound dogs come home."
Here are a few of my favorites:
Southern Comfort gone.
Bottoms up; the last goes down.
Pickup veers to the right.
Turkey fryer bought
from cable shopping channel
burns down trailer park.
Wanda returns to
Laundromat after six-pack.
Where are all her clothes?
Rooster crows before
Mom's morning coffee and now
simmers on the stove.
Go ahead, make yer own! Three line verse, five, seven, five syllables, captures a moment.
Check this out:
Redneck Haiku: Double-Wide Edition
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Eatin'/Readin'/Travelin': Let The Belly Be Your Guide
In Southern Belly: The Ultimate Food Lover's Companion to the South, John T. Edge travels the back roads from Texas to Virginia, from chicken shack to fish camp, from barbecue stand to pie shed, to bring you the most savory food and history the South has to offer. You'll find a South hidden in plain sight, where cooks who've been standing tall by the stove since Eisenhower was in office serve local specialties found nowhere else. The perfect traveling companion, Southern Belly reveals the stories and secrets behind this mouthwatering food and guides you to more than 200 places that have quietly become Southern institutions.
Check this out:
Southern Belly: The Ultimate Food Lover's Companion to the South (Paperback)
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Readin': Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley
Just finished this book. It's the second part in Peter Guralnick's two book series on Elvis. A very interesting and enlightening read for anybody who's been touched by the King. Here's a review from Ron Hogan at Amazon.com:
Until Peter Guralnick came out with Last Train to Memphis in 1994, most biographies of Elvis Presley--especially those written by people with varying degrees of access to his "inner circle"--were filled with starstruck adulation, and those that weren't in awe of their subject invariably went out of their way to take potshots at the rock & roll pioneer (with Albert Goldman's 1981 Elvis reaching now-legendary levels of bile and condescension). Guralnick's exploration of Elvis's childhood and rise to fame was notable for its factual rigorousness and its intimate appreciation of Presley's musical agenda.
Picking up where the first volume left off, Guralnick sees Elvis through his tour of duty with the U.S. Army in Germany, where he first met--and was captivated by--a 14-year-old girl named Priscilla Beaulieu. We may think we know the story from this point: the return to America, the near-decade of B-movies, eventual marriage to Priscilla, a brief flash of glory with the '68 comeback, and the surrealism of "fat Elvis" decked out in bejeweled white jumpsuits, culminating in a bathroom death scene. And while that summary isn't exactly false, Guralnick's account shows how little perspective we've had on Elvis's life until now, how a gross caricature of the final years has come to stand for the life itself. He treats every aspect of Presley's life--including forays into spiritual mysticism and the growing dependency on prescription drugs--with dignity and critical distance. More importantly, Careless Love continues to show that Guralnick "gets" what Presley was trying to do as an artist: "I see him in the same way that I think he saw himself from the start," the introduction states, "as someone whose ambition it was to encompass every strand of the American musical tradition." From rock to blues to country to gospel, Guralnick discusses how, at his finest moments, Elvis was able to fulfill that dream.
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