Lord Byron, and Sir Walter Scott: Newark–on–Trent, Nottinghamshire, England

Sometimes you can do things in far-off places – as I did a few months ago when searching around for literary landmarks in seven Southern states (see 2009 below) – and still miss things on your own doorstep. Like this plaque that remembers the first works of the young George Gordon (1788–1824), the sixth Lord Byron (who of course never grew old anyway), printed by S. and J. Ridge in the Market Place, Newark–on–Trent, Nottinghamshire, England, which records:

'Here were published Lord Byron's first poems "Fugitive Pieces" Nov. 1806 [and] "Hours of Idleness" July 1807'.

The printing press is on exhibit in Newark and Sherwood District Council’s Millgate Museum, Newark–on–Trent.

Also in the Market Place stood the imposing inn, the Saracens Head, which is now just retail outlets. Below the bust representing a saracen are the words:

'"Saracens Head" Hotel

'Licensed in the reign of Edward III. This is the 18th cent. building at which "Jeannie [sic] Deans" ("Heart of Midlothian" by [Sir Walter] Scott [1771–1832]) stayed on her way to London about 1733. An important posting inn during coaching days.'

Below is the relevant passage from The Heart of Midlothian (1818):

'At noon the hundred-armed Trent, and the blackened ruins of Newark Castle, demolished in the great civil war, lay before her. It may easily be supposed, that Jeanie had no curiosity to make antiquarian researches, but, entering the town, went straight to the inn to which she had been directed at Ferrybridge. While she procured some refreshment, she observed the girl who brought it to her, looked at her several times with fixed and peculiar interest, and at last, to her infinite surprise, inquired if her name was not Deans, and if she was not a Scotchwoman, going to London upon justice business. Jeanie, with all her simplicity of character, had some of the caution of her country, and, according to Scottish universal custom, she answered the question by another, requesting the girl would tell her why she asked these questions?

'The Maritornes of the Saracen's Head, Newark, replied, "Two women had passed that morning, who had made inquiries after one Jeanie Deans, travelling to London on such an errand, and could scarce be persuaded that she had not passed on."

'Much surprised and somewhat alarmed (for what is inexplicable is usually alarming), Jeanie questioned the wench about the particular appearance of these two women, but could only learn that the one was aged, and the other young; that the latter was the taller, and that the former spoke most, and seemed to maintain an authority over her companion, and that both spoke with the Scottish accent.

'This conveyed no information whatever, and with an indescribable presentiment of evil designed towards her, Jeanie adopted the resolution of taking post-horses for the next stage. In this, however, she could not be gratified; some accidental circumstances had occasioned what is called a run upon the road, and the landlord could not accommodate her with a guide and horses. After waiting some time, in hopes that a pair of horses that had gone southward would return in time for her use, she at length, feeling ashamed at her own pusillanimity, resolved to prosecute her journey in her usual manner.

'"It was all plain road," she was assured, "except a high mountain called Gunnerby Hill, about three miles from Grantham, which was her stage for the night.

'"I'm glad to hear there's a hill," said Jeanie, "for baith my sight and my very feet are weary o' sic tracts o' level ground – it looks a' the way between this and York as if a' the land had been trenched and levelled, whilk is very wearisome to my Scotch een. When I lost sight of a muckle blue hill they ca' Ingleboro', I thought I hadna a friend left in this strange land."

'"As for the matter of that, young woman," said mine host, "an you be so fond o' hill, I carena an thou couldst carry Gunnerby away with thee in thy lap, for it's a murder to post-horses. But here's to thy journey, and mayst thou win well through it, for thou is a bold and a canny lass."

'So saying, he took a powerful pull at a solemn tankard of home-brewed ale.

'"I hope there is nae bad company on the road, sir?" said Jeanie.

'"Why, when it's clean without them I'll thatch Groby pool wi' pancakes. But there arena sae mony now; and since they hae lost Jim the Rat, they hold together no better than the men of Marsham when they lost their common. Take a drop ere thou goest," he concluded, offering her the tankard; "thou wilt get naething at night save Grantham gruel, nine grots and a gallon of water."

'Jeanie courteously declined the tankard, and inquired what was her "lawing?"

'"Thy lawing! Heaven help thee, wench! what ca'st thou that?"

'"It is – I was wanting to ken what was to pay," replied Jeanie.

'"Pay? Lord help thee! – why nought, woman – we hae drawn no liquor but a gill o' beer, and the Saracen's Head can spare a mouthful o' meat to a stranger like o' thee, that cannot speak Christian language. So here's to thee once more. The same again, quoth Mark of Bellgrave," and he took another profound pull at the tankard.

'The travellers who have visited Newark more lately, will not fail to remember the remarkably civil and gentlemanly manners of the person who now keeps the principal inn there, and may find some amusement in contrasting them with those of his more rough predecessor. But we believe it will be found that the polish has worn off none of the real worth of the metal.'

King Street, Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, England

It's sometimes odd, what can greet you when you turn a corner – either metaphorically or physically – but I was pleasantly surprised to find the artwork of Ben Coode–Adams in King Street, Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, which depicts various elements of the town.

Mike Leigh: Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)

The film director Mike Leigh was perhaps originally best known for his BBC Plays for Today Nuts in May (1976) and, perhaps above all, Abigail's Party (1977). I had the privilege of seeing Mike Leigh answer questions about his first feature film, Bleak Moments (1971), at Broadway, Nottingham, which in those days was called the Nottingham Film Theatre. I was greatly impressed by Bleak Moments as it is a study in almost pathological shyness, and I can't think of anyone (apart from Jean Rhys in the world of fiction) who had previously dealt with such a subject, although there must, I imagine, be many – yes, hello, Kafka.

But – long after Morrissey of The Smiths had turned shyness and other odd traits into a badge of outsiderdom – Leigh continues to portray not necessarily shy characters, but those who are somehow out of kilter with what many automatically perceive as consensus reality. Leigh's Life Is Sweet (1991) mainly concerns an unemployed man who buys a clapped-out mobile fast food van in any attempt to make a living, and his friend, a non-family man with visions of becoming a celebrity chef by opening a restaurant called 'The Regrette Rien' after his idol Edith Piaf. These ventures are of course doomed to failure, as were the ventures of so many victims of Thatcher's insane ideas about people getting rich quick on the proceeds of their redundancy money - often by establishing businesses built on their own obsessions - from the industries that her government had in effect terminated.

Wendy (Alison Steadman), in Life Is Sweet , comments towards the end of the film that her husband Andy (Jim Broadbent) has not given up. I understand that what Jim has not given up is life, which their anarchist and probably anorexic daughter Nicola (Jane Horrocks) appears to treat with almost suicidal disdain.

Happy-Go-Lucky was seen by some reviewers as a somewhat more optimistic Leigh, although Poppy (Sally Hawkins) still seems, to me at least, to be deferring thinking by side-lining it, evading it, pretending it doesn't exist. But then, isn't that what so many people do all the time? How many of us have seen – in other people's houses – the ever-present TV set that acts as wallpaper to prevent any thinking from taking place? Mike Leigh remains a major figure of British cinema.

The Genius of Steve Bell

It seems like many years that Steve Bell has been keeping many of us sane, in an insane world, with his particular brand of literate humour. Here, Tony Blair, due at the Chilcot enquiry today, is seen as Richard III, the monster many associate with killing two children, as the monster Blair is seen by many of us as responsible for killing many more in Iraq. Nice how Shakespeare's 'son of York' becomes 'pie of pork', indicating that Blair, as always, will inevitably continue to lie and lie. We can only hope that Blair, the consummate actor, will not escape this time. Justice is badly needed to redress this crime against humanity.

Cartoon from yesterday's Guardian (g2).

Haitian Literature: Frankétienne

Toussaint L'Ouverture, the leader of the Haitian revolution. The Haitian writer and artist Frankétienne, dubbed ’Monsieur Haiti’ by none other than Aimé Césaire, lost his house completely in the earthquake, but survived, saying: ‘I don’t believe in reincarnation, but if offered a return ticket, I’ll certainly ask to come back to this shithole’: This link is to a French inteview with him: Frankétienne

Caroline Herring and Si Kahn

Only very rarely is it almost an epiphanic moment when I discover a writer or singer I'd never heard of before, but I felt such a moment when I received this quarter's edition of Oxford American, a journal originally published by Ole Miss, but now produced by the University of Central Arkansas. This issue is the 11th Southern music one, and contains two CDs with a wealth of singers I was totally unaware of. I was particularly impressed by Caroline Herring's 'The Dozens' from her Golden Apples of the Sun (2009) album. Herring comes from the small town of Canton just north of Vicksburg, Mississippi. She wrote this song in memory of her friend Larry Levine, author of Black Culture and Black Consciousness (1977). The Dozens is a toughening game in which blacks take turns to insult others playing the game, and frequently insult the mothers of the others. The winner is the person who keeps his cool. The full words from the album are available on Herring's website.

The Austin Chronicle called Lantana (2008), her previous album, 'the best modern Southern Gothic album since Lucinda Williams’ Sweet Old World', although her style has now changed from country-influenced to folk. Her website mentions Judy Collins as a major influence, but I frequently hear Joan Baez in there, and Joni Mitchell too very occasionally. She doesn't write all her own songs, but those she does often have a definite literary background, as with 'The Dozens', and she also makes references on her current album to Wendell Berry, Pablo Neruda, and - more obviously, of course - W. B. Yeats. But you'll have a hard time finding any mention of her MA in Southern Literature from Old Miss, or her PhD in American Studies from Austin, Texas.

Another song on Golden Apples of the Sun is 'Tales of the Islander', which she wrote about the startling artist and writer Walter Anderson (1903-65), of the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Beautiful stuff.

And another singer who impressed me on one of the CDs is Si Kahn, who lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, and who is also a folk singer, but more in the left-wing protest style of Pete Seeger or Phil Ochs. Much concerned with civil rights, picket line songs, etc, Kahn is well known for such anthemic songs as 'Gone, Gonna Rise Again', 'Aragon Mill', and 'Wild Rose'.

Other songs I really like include:'Hutto', about T. Don Hutto's detention centre in Taylor, Texas, where the young children of illegal immigrants are detained with their parents.'Clarence Kailin', a tribute to the then 95-year-old veteran left-winger, and a sample of which is:

'Ask Clarence how to lead a life of purpose and direction
He simply says you have to make a left at every intersection.'

Nottingham Contemporary – David Hockney and Frances Stark

The widely advertised art gallery Notingham Contemporary opened its doors on 14 November 2009, but due to a mixture of circumstances - the enormous initial queues and the recent bad weather being just two of them - I was unable to visit the David Hockney and Frances Stark exhibitions until last Saturday, the day before they closed. Entry was free, and we were greatly impressed by what we saw. The above 88-page book, David Hockney 1960-1968: A Marriage of Styles, is linked to the Hockney exhibition, and although it was far from free, it serves as a good introduction to his early work for those unfamiliar with it. And the reproductions of the paintings and sketches are excellent. The strong argument I have with it concerns the text: red print on red paper and blue print on blue paper just do not blend well, and I find it very strange indeed that anyone should so much have entertained the idea of using them, let alone actually have done so.

Reviews of the Hockney exhibition have suggested that it is rather odd to launch a significant new 'contemporary' art gallery with a 1960s retrospective of Hockney's work, and in the above book, Alex Farquharson, the director of the Nottingham Contemporary, tries to explain this apparent oddness by suggesting that Hockney's work of this period 'resonates with significant aspects of art in the 1990s.' Perhaps so, but in reality the choice of the main opening exhibition has much more to do with crowd pulling: Hockney, in spite of the length of his (continuing) artistic career, is still associated with the 'Swinging Sixties' in the popular eye (particularly with his LA swimming pool paintings) like an umbilical cord that's never been severed, and therefore is likely to attract a large number of viewers.

The other exhibition - 'But what of Frances Stark, standing by itself, a naked name, bare as a ghost to whom one would like to lend a sheet?', introduced me to a more, er, contemporary artist. Frances Stark was born in 1967 in Newport Beach, California, and now lives in LA (as Hockney of course once did, but now finds Bridlington(!) more comfortable). As Hockney's numerous literary references here tend to the gay poets Walt Whitman and C. P. Cavafy, Emily Dickinson is Stark's primary literary reference. And as for music, Hockney's references to Cliff Richard probably made many people wince even in the sixities, but Stark's references to Mark E. Smith of The Fall seem very much healthier.

Great. What's next?

Stanley Middleton (revisited)

lastingtribute.co.uk, a website where people leave tributes to the dead, states 'We offer a trusted brand which is part of the Daily Mail group, and run in partnership with the regional press publisher Northcliffe Media.' The Nottingham Evening Post belongs to Northcliffe Media, and on the death of the novelist Stanley Middleton encouraged its readers to leave a tribute there. Which I did, although I'm rather surprised that only two other people did. A few days ago, a former student of his at High Pavement Grammar School, as it was then called, contacted me to share his impressions of Stan with me. I'm glad he did, and take this opportunity to share these words on my blog.

The words below are John McGregor's and I thank him very much for this information, as there are certainly several snippets here that I either never knew of, or perhaps, simply, had forgotten.

'Many moons ago when I was at secondary school, my English teacher for two separate years was called Stanley Middleton. "Stan" as we called him behind his back was a quirky character who always walked to school, a considerable distance as he lived not far from me at the time. We passed him on bus or bike, and often saw him turn down lifts from fellow teachers. The reason for this I later found out was that Stanley Middleton was a prolific author, and used the walking time to write his novels in his head. He wrote over 40 books in his time and in 1974 he won the Booker prize for his novel Holiday.

'I watched David Tennant in Hamlet over Christmas, and recalled the time when Stan got us to do the final climatic scene at the school Speech Day in 1964. I played Osric, the page who opens the scene with a 42 word explanation of what is to come, and I loved every second of the rehearsals and the play itself on the day. Our school was very scientifically-based, I wasn’t and revelled in the poorly-supported arts. Stan was a great teacher whose gift was to make you think. I now wish I’d gone in the arts direction from school. But that’s another story, no complaints about how my life worked out.

'Stan’s odd way of dealing with you always sticks in my memory, on a one-to-one he would put his head on one side as he asked you a question in a friendly manner. One day he gazed at one long-haired youth (in 1964 hair was becoming very important, but not officially at our school), and offered the wonderful observation.

"You’re looking particularly hirsute today, Jackson". When we asked him what it meant he told us to look it up. We did. The fashion at that time to lug your school books around in was not satchels, they were very uncool, but ex-army haversacks were all the rage. The large covering flap gave you a platform, an easel on which to paint your message to the world, usually carried out in Fat Smith’s art class. For months afterwards their were suitably hairy portraits on various haversacks entitled "An hirsute youth" or "Phil the hirsute" displayed to the world. The word has stuck with me through the years.'

John McGregor

Edwidge Danticat

Edwidge Danticat (1969- ) was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and was twelve years old when she left with her family for New York. She writes in English and her first novel was Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994), which in part concerns the young Haitian girl Sophie's relationship with her mother, who is speaking here about the 'testing', a degrading old custom to which she subjects Sophie:

'When I was a girl, my mother used to test us to see if we were virgins. She would put her finger in our very private parts and see if it would go inside. Your Tante Atie hated it. She used to scream like a pig in a slaugherhouse. The way my mother was raised, a mother was supposed to do that to her daughter until the daughter is married. It is her responsibilty to keep her pure.'*

Her mother describes her rape and the conception of Sophie rather more laconically, but no less dramatically for that: 'A man grabbed me from the side of the road, pulled me into a cane field, and put you in my body.'

Krik? Krak! (1996) refers to a storyteller asking if he can tell a story, and the enthusiastic reply. It is a book of stories of the myths of Haiti, the family, the horrors of the tontons macoutes, the contrasts between the poorest country in the western hemisphere and the riches of north-east America, but most of all it is a series of stories about stories. In the longest story, 'Caroline's Wedding', the narrator Grace remembers a story told by her father about the Haitian dictator Papa Doc:

'God once called a conference of world leaders. He invited the president of France, the president of the United States, the president of Russia, Italy, Germany, and China, as well as our own president, His Excellency, the President for Life Papa Doc Duvalier. When the president of France reached the gates of Heaven, God got up from his throne to greet him. When the president of the United States reached the gates of Heaven, God got up to greet him as well. So, too, with the presidents of Russia, Italy, Germany, and China.

'When it was our president's turn, His Excellency, the president for Life Papa Doc Duvalier, God did not get up from his throne to greet him. All the angels were stunned and puzzled. They did not understand God's rude behavior. So they elected a representative to go up to God and question Him.

'"God", said the representative, "you have been so cordial to all the other presidents. You have gotten up from your throne to greet them at the gates of heaven as soon as they have entered. Why do you not get up for Papa Doc Duvalier? Is it because he is a black president? You have always told us to overlook the color of men. Why have you chosen to treat the black president, Papa Doc Duvalier, in this fashion?"

'God looked at the representative angel as though He was about to admit something He did not want to.

'"Look, he said. "I am not getting up for Papa Doc Duvalier because I am afraid that if I get up, he will take my throne and will never give it back."'

Edwidge Danticat is a great storyteller. Only a fool would read this 'joke' as a racist statement, and only a fool would fail to see that this story illustrates just as much the tragedy that is Haiti as the hell that Haiti is now undergoing.

*The structure of the title Breath, Eyes, Memory, written by a 24-year-old Danticat, invokes another very powerful book about Haiti, the suppressed Amour, colère et folie (1968) by Marie Chauvet, who died when Danticat was seven. Simone de Beauvoir was greatly impressed by that strong criticism of the Duvalier regime, but as a result of its publication, Chauvet was forced to flee to New York.

Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia (2003), ed. by Sandra L. Ballard and Patricia L. Hudson

Ballard and Hudson's Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia is a wonderful, nearly 700-page feast of a book, containing writings of 105 women with strong Appalachian connections, and is an important stand against the cultural hegemony of the American north-east. They define 'Appalachian' as the south-east mountains and their foothills, and include parts of Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama.

Ballard and Hudson searched The Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States (1995), and found only eight of these 105 women listed in it. It would have been interesting to know how many male Appalachian authors are listed in that book, as I strongly suspect that it would be far greater than eight.

But why is Appalachia neglected so much? The editors quote from Lee Smith's 'White Columns and Marble Generals' (2002):

'Appalachia is to the South what the South is to the rest of the country.* That is: lesser than, backward, marginal. Other. Look at the stereotypes: "Hee Haw", "Deliverance", "Dogpatch", and "The Dukes of Hazzard". A bunch of hillbillies sitting on a rickety old porch drinking moonshine and living on welfare, right? Wrong.'

When I think of Appalachian writing I'm reminded of the study I made into the working-class literature of the UK in the interwar years, of how it has just been airbrushed from literary history. This is the full list of the Appalachian writers Ballard Hudson include in their anthology, many of whom are contemporary, but many others who have been part of the airbrushing process:

[Under construction.]

SHEILA KEY ADAMS (1953- )
Short stories:
Come Go Home with Me (1995)


DOROTHY ALLISON (1949- )
Novels:
Cavedweller (1998)
Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)



LISA ALTHER (1944- )
Novels:
Five Minutes in Heaven (1995)
Bedrock (1990)
Other Women (1984)
Original Sins (1981)
Kinflicks (1975)


MAGGIE ANDERSON (1948- )
Poems:
Windfall: New and Selected Poems (2000)
A space Filled with Moving (1992)
Cold Comfort (1986)
Years That Answer (1980)


ANNE W. ARMSTRONG (1872-1958)
Novels:
This Day and Time (1930)
The Seas of God (1915)



HARRIETTE SIMPSON ARNOW (1908-86)
Novels:
Between the Flowers (1999)
The Kentucky Trace (1974)
Weedkiller's Daughter (1970)
The Dollmaker (1954)
Hunter's Horn (1949)
Mountain Path (1936)


SYLVIA TRENT AUXIER (1900-67)
Poems:
With thorn and Stone: New and Selected Poems (1968)
No Stranger to the Earth (1957)
The grace of the Bough (1957)
Love-Vine (1954)
Meadow-Rue (1948)


MARILOU AWIAKTA (1936- )
Novella:
Rising Fawn and the Fire Mystery (1984)

Poetry and Prose:
Selu: Seeking the Corn-Mother's Wisdom (1993)
Abiding Appalachia: Where Mountain and Atom Meet (1978)


ARTIE ANN BATES (1953- )
Children's:
Ragsdale (1995)


FRANCES COURTENAY BAYLOR (1848-1920)
Novels:
The Ladder of Fortune (1900)
Miss Nina Barrow (1897)
Claudia Hyde (1894)
Juan and Juanita (1888)
Behind the Blue Ridge: A Homely Narrative (1887)
On Both Sides (1885)

Short stories:
A Shocking Example and Other Sketches (1889)


SUE ELLEN BRIDGERS (1942- )
Novels:
All We Know of Heaven (1996)
Keeping Christina (1993)
Permanent Connections (1987)
Sara Will (1985)
Notes for Another Life (1981)
All Together Now (1979)
Home Before Dark (1976)


FLORENCE COPE BUSH (1933- )
Non-Fiction:
Dorie: Woman of the Mountains (1992)
If Life Gives You Scraps, Make a Quilt (1992)
Ocona Lufta Baptist: Pioneer Church of the Smokies, 1836-1939 (1990)


KATHRYN STRIPLING BYER (1944- )
Poetry:
Catching Light (2002)
Evelyn (1999)
Black Shawl (1998)
Wildwood Flower (1992)
The Girl in the Midst of the Harvest (1986)
Alma (1983)
Search Party (1979)


CANDIE CARAWAN (1939- )
Non-Fiction:
Sing for Freedom: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement Through Its Songs (1990)
Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Songs of the Freedom Movement (1968)
Ain't You Got a right to the Tree of Life?: The People of John's Island, South Carolina, Their Faces, Their Words, and Their Songs (1966)


JO CARSON (1946- )
Short stories:
The Last of the 'Waltz Across Texas'and Other Stories (1993)

Poetry:
Stories I Ain't Told Nobody Yet (1989)

Drama:
Whispering to Horses (1996-97)
The Bear Facts (1993)
Daytrips (1991)
Preacher with a Horse to Ride (1990)

Children's:
The Great Shaking: An Account of the Earthquakes in 1811 and 1812 (1994)
You Hold Me and I'll Hold You (1992)
Pulling My Leg (1990)


FEBECCA CAUDILL (1899-1985)
Children's: numerous

Non-Fiction:
My Appalachia: A Reminiscence (1966)


LILLIE D. CHAFFIN (1925-1993)
Poetry:
8th Day, 13th Moon (1974)
Star following (1976)
Lines and Points (1966)
A Stone for Sisyphus (1967)
First Notes (1969)


LOLETTA CLOUSE (1948- )
Novel:
Wilder (1990)


ANN COBB (1885-1960)
Poetry:
Kinfolks: Kentucky Mountain Rhymes (1922)

Children:
An English Christmas (1978)


LIAS COFFMAN (1963- )
Poetry:
Likely (1996)


AMY TIPTON CORTNER (1955- )
Poetry:
The Hillbilly Vampire (1990)


LOU V. D. CRABTREE (1913- )
Short stories:
Sweet Hollow (1984)

Poetry:
The River Hills & Beyond (1998)

Drama:
Calling on Lou (1984)


OLIVE TILFORD DARGAN (FIELDING BURKE) (1869-1968)
Novels:
Highland Annals (1925)
Call Home the Heart (1932)
A Stone Came Rolling (1935)
From My Highest Hill (1941)
Sons of the Stranger (1947)

Short stories:
Innocent Bigamy and Other Stories (1962)

Poetry:
Path Flower and Other Verses (1914)
The Cycle's Rim (1916)
The Spotted Hawk (1958)

Drama:
The Mortal Gods and Other Plays (1912)
The Flutter of the Goldleaf, and Other Plays (1922)


DORIS DAVENPORT (1949- )
Poetry:
it's like this (1980)
eat thunder & drink rain (1982)
voodoo chile: slight return (1991)
Soque Street Poems (1991)
madness like morning glory: poems (2004)


REBECCA HARDING DAVIS (1831-1910)
Novels:
Margaret Howth: A Story of To-day (1862)
Dallas Galbraith (1868)
Pro Aris et Foci: A Plea for Our Altars and Hearths (1870)
John Andross (1874)
Kitty's Choice: A Story of Berrytown (1874)
A Law unto Herself (1878)
Natasqua (1887)
Kent Hampden (1892)
Silhouettes of American Life (1892)
Doctor Warwick's Daughters (1896)
Frances Waldeaux (1897)

Novella:
Life in the Iron Mills (1861)

Autobiography:
Bits of Gossip (1904)


ANN DEAGON (1930- )
Novel:
The Diver's Tomb (1984)

Short stories:
Habitats (1982)

Poetry:
Carbon 14 (1974)
Poetics South (1974)
Indian Summer (1975)
Women and Children First (1976)
There Is No Balm in Birmingham (1978)
The Polo Poems (1990)


ANGELYN DEBORD (1949- )
Drama:
Praise House (1990)
Stubborn Memories (1993)
Homemade Tales: Songs and sayings of Florida Slone (1993)
Lessons on Becoming a Woman (1996)


ANNIE DILLARD (1945- )
Novel:
The Living (1992)

Poetry:
Tickets for a Prayer Wheel (1974)
Mornings Like This: found Poems (1995)

Non-Fiction:
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974)
Holy the Firm (1977)
Living by Fiction (1982)
Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters (1982)
Encounters with Chinese Writers (1984)
An American Childhood (1987)
The Writing Life (1989)
The Annie Dillard Reader (1994)
For the Time Being (1999)


HILDA DOWNER (1956- )
Poetry:
Bandana Creek (1979)
Down to the Wire (200?)


MURIEL MILLER DRESSLER (1918-2000)
Poetry:
Appalachia, My Land (1973)
Appalachia (1977)


WILL ALLEN DROMGOOLE (1860-1934)
Fiction:
The Sunny Side of Cumberland (as Will Allen) (1886)
The Malungeons (1891)
The Heart of Old Hickory and Other Stories of Tennessee (1895)
The Valley Path (1898)
Rare Old Chums (1898)
A Moonshiner's Son (1898)
Hero-Chums (1898)
Cinch, And Other Stories: Tales of Tenessee (1898)
Harum-Scarum Joe (1899)
The Island of Beautiful Things: A Romance of the South (1912)
Short Stories (1970)


WILMA DYKEMAN (1920)
Novels:
The Tall Woman (1962)
The Far Family (1964)
Return to the Innocent Earth (1973)

Non-Fiction: numerous

SARAH BARNWELL ELLIOTT (1848-1928)
Novels:
The Felmeres (1879)
A Simple Heart (1887)
Jerry (1891)
John Paget (1893)
The Durket Sperret (1898)
The Making of Jane (1901)

Short stories:
An Incident and Other Happenings (1899)


SIDNEY SAYLOR FARR (1932- )
Poetry:
Headwaters (1995)

Non-Fiction:
More than Moonshine: Appalachian Recipes and Recollections (1983)


NIKKY FINNEY (1957- )
Short stories:
Heartwood (1997)

Poetry:
On Wings Made of Gauze (1985)
Rice (1995)


LUCY FURMAN (1870-1958)
Novels:
Sight to the Blind (1914)
The Quare Women (1923)
The Glass Window (1925)
The Lonesome Road (1927)

Short stories:
Stories of a Sanctified Town (1897)
Mothering on Perilous (1913)


DENISE GIARDINA (1951- )
Novels:
Good King Harry (1984)
Storming Heaven (1987)
The Unquiet Earth (1992)
Saints and Villains (1998)
Fallam's Secret (2003)


JANICE HOLT GILES (1909-1979)
Novels:
The Enduring Hills (1950)
Tara's Healing (1951)
The Kentuckians (1953)
The Plum Thicket (1954)
Hill Man (1954)
Hannah Fowler (1956)
The Land Beyond the Mountains (1958)
Johnny Osage (1960)
Savannah (1961)
voyage to Santa Fe (1962)
Run Me a River (1964)
The Great Adventure: A Novel (1966)
Six-Horse Hitch (1971)
Miss Willie (1971)
The Kinta Years (1973)
Well-spring (1975)
The Believers (1976)
Shady Grove (1978)
Act of Contrition (2001)


NIKKI GIOVANNI (1943- )
Poetry:
Black Feeling, Black Talk (1967)
Black Judgement (1968)
Re: Creation (1970)
My House (1972)
The Women and The Men (1975)
Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day (1978)
Those Who Ride The Night Winds (1983)
The Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni (1996)
Love Poems (1997)
Blues: For All the Changes (1999)
Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea: Poems and Not Quite Poems (2002)
The Prosaic Soul of Nikki Giovanni (2003)
The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni (2003)
Acolytes (2007)
Bicycles: Love Poems (2009)

Children's: numerous


GAIL GODWIN (1937- )
Novels:
A Sorrowful Woman (1971)
Glass People (1972)
The Odd Woman (1974)
Violet Clay (1978)
A Mother and Two Daughters (1982)
The Finishing School (1984)
A Southern Family (1987)
Father Melancholy’s Daughter (1991)
The Good Husband
Evensong (1999)
Evenings at Five (2003)
Queen of the Underworld (2006)

Short stories:
Dream Children (1976)
Mr. Bedford and the Muses (1983)

Non-Fiction:
Heart (2001)


CONNIE JORDAN GREEN (1938- )
Novels:
The War at Home (1989)
Emmy (1992)


VIRGINIA HAMILTON (1936-2002)
Children's:
Zeely (1967)
The Planet of Junior Brown (1971)
M.C. Higgins the Great (1975)
Justice And Her Brothers (1978)
Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush (1983)
Willie Bea and the Time the Martians Landed (1983)
The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales (1985)
A White Romance (1987)
Anthony Burnes (1988)
Cousins (1990)
Drylongso (1992)
Plain City (1998)
Second Cousins (1998)
Bluish: A Novel (1999)
The Girl Who Spun Gold (2000)


PAULETTA HANSEN (1959- )
Poetry:
Divining (2001)


CORRA HARRIS (1869-1935)
Novels:
The Jessica Letters (1904), with Paul Elmer More.
A Circuit Rider's Wife (1910)
Eve's Second Husband (1910)
The Recording Angel (1912)
In Search of a Husband (1913)
The Co-Citizens (1915)
Justice (1915)
A Circuit Rider's Widow (1916)
Making Her His Wife (1918)
From Sunup to Sundown (1919)
In Search of a Husband (1919)
Happily Married (1920)
My Son (1921)
The Eyes of Love (1922)
A Daughter of Adam (1923)
The House of Helen (1923)
My Book and My Heart (1924)
As a Woman Thinks (1925)
The Happy Pilgrimage (1926)


MILDRED HAUN (1911-66)
Short stories:
The Hawk's Done Gone (1940)
The Hawk's done Gone and Other Stories (1968)


ELLESA CLAY HIGH (1948- )
Non-fiction:
Past Titan rock: Journeys into an Appalachian Valley (1984)


MARY BOZEMAN HODGES (1944- )
Short stories:
Tough Customers and Other Stories (1999)


GLORIA HOUSTON
Children's:
Bright Freedom's Song: A Story of the Underground Railroad (1998)
Littlejim's Dreams (1997)
Littlejim's gift: An Appalachian Christmas Story (1994)
Mountain Valor (1994)
My Great-Aunt Arizona (1992)
But No Candy (1992)
Littlejim (1990)
The Year of the perfect Christmas Tree (1988)
My Brother Joey Died (1982)


LEE HOWARD
Poetry:
The Last Unmined Vein (1980)


MARY JOHNSTON (1870-1936)
Novels:
Prisoners of Hope (1898)
To Have and to Hold (1900)
Audrey (1902)
Pioneers of the Old South (1903)
Sir Mortimer (1904)
The Goddess of Reason (1907)
Lewis Rand (1908)
The Long Roll (1911)
Cease Firing (1912)
Hagar (1913)
The Witch (1914)
The Fortunes of Garin (1915)
The Wanderers (1917)
Foes (1918)
Michael Forth (1919)
Sweet Rocket (1920)
Silver Cross (1921)
1492 (1922)
The Great Valley (1926)
The Exile (1927)
Miss Delicia Allen (1932)


MARY HARRIS 'MOTHER' JONES (1837-1930)
The Autobiography of Mother Jones (1995)
The Speeches and Writings of Mother Jones (1988)
The Correspondence of Mother Jones (1985)


JANE WILSON JOYCE (1947- )
Poetry:
Beyond the Blue Mountains (1992)


MAY JUSTUS (1898-1989)
Children's: numerous

EDITH SUMMERS KELLEY (1884-1956)
Novels:
The Devil's Hand (1974)
Weeds (1923)


LEATHA KENDRICK (1949- )
Poetry:
Second Opinion (2008)
Heart Cake (2000)



BARBARA KINGSOLVER (1955- )
Novels:
The Lacuna (2009)
Prodigal Summer (2000)
The Poisonwood Bible (1998)
High Tide in Tucson (1995)
Pigs in Heaven (1993)
Another America (1992)
Animal Dreams (1990)
The Bean Trees (1988)

Short stories:
Homeland and Other Stories (1989)

Essays:
Small Wonder: Essays (2002)


LISA KOGER (1953- )
Short stories:
Farlanburg Stories (1990)

CATHERINE LANDIS (1956- )
Novel:
Some Days There's Pie (2002)
Harvest (2004)


LILY MAY LEDFORD (1917-85)
Autobiography:
Coon Creek Girl (1980)


GRACE LUMPKIN (1891-1980)
Novels:
Full Circle (1962)
The Wedding (1939)
A Sign for Cain (1935)
To Make My Bread (1932)


GEORGE ELLA LYON
Novels:
With a Hammer for My Heart (1996)
Here and Then (1994)
Catalpa (1993)
Red Rover (1989) (published as The Stranger I Left behind Me, 1997)
Borrowed Children (1988)


Poetry:
Growing Light (1987)
Mountain (1983)


LINDA PARSONS MARION (1953- )
Poetry:
Home Fires (1997)


CATHERINE MARSHALL (1914-83)
Fiction:
Julie (1984)
Christy (1967)


BELINDA ANN MASON (1958-91)
Drama:
Gifts of the Spirit (1988)


KATHY L. MAY (1952- )
Poetry:
Door to the River (1992)


TRUDA WILLIAMS McCOY (1902-74)
Poetry:
Till the Frost (1962)
The Tempter's Harvest (1954)

Non-fiction:
The McCoys: Their Story as Told to the Author by Eye Witnesses and Descendants (1976)


SHARYN McCRUMB (1948- )
Novels (Ballad Series):
Ghost Riders (2003)
The Songcatcher (2001)
The Ballad of Frankie Silver (1998)
The Rosewood Casket (1996)
She Walks These Hills (1994)
The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter (1992)
If every I return, Pretty Peggie-O (1990)

Selah Saterstrom's The Pink Institution (2004)

In the world of Southern literature, Southern Gothic is by no means rare, and indeed continues to be strong, but although Southern Gothic is stange and disorienting, it isn't 'experimental', by which I mean that the form and the style don't challenge existing literary norms. But unfortunately many people simply don't see Southern literature in the same serious way that they see other literatures in the U.S., and I've banged on about north-eastern literary hegemony for some years.

And the general misconception of Southern literature as 'realist' is as wrong-headed as the conception of working-class literature as 'realist' is, and in the case of Southern literature this label neglects, for example, such writers as William Faulkner, Frances Newman, Barry Hannah, and Padgett Powell.

And Selah Saterstrom. Saterstrom's first novel, The Pink Institution, is a short book that must be read very slowly, as its revelations aren't digested easily.

The novel is divided into five main parts. The first is extremely fragmented in that it contains four sections introduced by what appear to be (partly obliterated) thoughts on 'The Confederate Ball Program Guide 1938': these sections all contain large white spaces between the words, and there is frequent incoherence. The second part is as long as the first and divided into three sections: 'Childhood Objects', 'Maidenhood Objects', and 'Motherhood Objects', which are in regular prose but each contain information about the family. The third part is very brief, but the only titled one - PSALTER: (Birth Interim). Part four takes us up to the present day. The final part five is a kind of coda.

The novel, in effect, is a very short four-generation saga - from post-bellum decay and the attendant social problems of (self)-abuse, through to trailer park hell. Via any route you can think of. This is a very powerful, and very disturbing, novel.

I'll comment on Selah Saterstrom's second novel, The Meat and Spirit Plan, in due course, but I hope it's as accomplished as this is.

Madison Jones's Tennessee

So we pulled into a rest area on our way from Savannah, Tennessee, and were greatly impressed by this adjacent view of Nickajack Lake. We were on our way an unknown hotel in an unknown town that would be close enough to Clayton in the extreme north of Georgia to give us enough time to have a look at Lillian Smith’s home before resting again for the night before moving on to North Carolina. As it happened that town was Cleveland just to the north-east of Chattanooga, which was not impressive at all.

Now, though, I'm beginning to wonder if we should have been so impressed, as I’ve just read a chapter on the novelist Madison Jones in Paul Binding’s Separate Countries: A Literary Journey through the American South (New York: Paddington Press, 1979), and things suddenly don’t seem so idyllic. Madison Jones is one of the Southern writers I hadn’t gotten round to reading, but shall be doing so as soon as possible. As it was written relatively early in Jones’s career as a novelist – he published a book, The Adventures of Nicholas Bragg, for instance, as recently as 2008 – Binding was a little too early to mention a number of his books. However, Binding does speak of the conversation he had with Jones in which his third novel, A Buried Land (1963), was brought up, and the novel was written partly through his anger with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) over the flooding of large areas of land in Tennessee and northern Alabama. Binding says that he ‘wanted to write a novel in which destruction by flood (TVA-authorized) played a key part’. He goes on to say that Jones was interested in ’to what extent would the physical destruction of a place entail its spritual destruction, i.e., of the life, joy, guilt and relationships created within it.’ It would appear that ‘beautiful’ Nickajack Lake is just the kind of thing Madison Jones is protesting about. The lake is a number of miles to the west of Chattanooga. This link provides a little information about Nickajack Lake.

Ian Curtis (failed), Elizabeth Gaskell's Knutsford, plus John Ruskin, and, er, Edward Higgins

Too bad that we've not had time to see Ian Curtis's kerbside gravestone, or the house in which he lived in Macclesfield, Cheshire: to compensate, I leave a scan from the cover of Joy Division's album Closer. But if you're on your way to leave your car near Manchester airport before leaving for Atlanta, Georgia, and have a few hours to spare, what better way to spend them than in peaceful Knutsford?

Knutsford is eager to display its strong associations with Elizabeth (Cleghorn) Gaskell (née Stevenson), and many people associate the town with her novel Cranford (1853), of course. The 'Hollingford' of Wives and Daughters (1866) also takes Knutsford as its model, although she is perhaps better known for her 'Condition of England' novels, Mary Barton (1848) and North and South (1855).

Although born in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, London, as a 12-month-old motherless child, Elizabeth Stevenson was taken into the care of her maternal aunt, Hannah Lumb, who lived in the house Heathwaite, in Knutsford. She spent her childhood and early youth there.

Heath House, also on what is now called Gaskell Avenue, is where the highwayman Edward Higgins, who is represented in Gaskell's short story 'The Squire's Tale', and Thomas de Quincey's 'Highwayman'.

The parish church, Knutsford, where Elizabeth Stevenson married the Rev. William Gaskell in 1832. They were both Unitarians, however, and William was a minister at the Cross Street Chapel in Manchester, where they went to live.

The Royal George Hotel in Kings Street in the centre of Knutsford, and was visited by Elizabeth Gaskell.

While I was photographing this tower, a woman on a bicycle dismounted, parked her vehicle and proceeded to tell me all about the Gaskell Memorial Tower and its 'mastermind', Richard Harding Watt. Leaving her bicycle freely leaning against some railings – Knutsford appears to be the kind of place you can do that without worry – she led me across the road to an interpretation panel and spoke more about Watt. I consider myself very lucky to have had this encounter, as she was Joan Leach, a noted local historian and the Secretary of The Gaskell Society. Many thanks for this, Joan!

The side of the tower shows a plaque of Gaskell, with her novels listed above, although – as was pointed out to me by Joan Leach – most of the titles are now obscured by ivy.

Elizabeth Gaskell is buried in the small cemetery in the grounds of Brook Street Unitarian Chapel, Knutsford. Her husband William Gaskell (1805–84) joined her almost twenty years later.

Richard Harding Watt, a great admirer of John Ruskin, named these rooms after him. An interpretation panel records that the architectural assistant resigned following arguments over the chimneys.

'Let every dawn of morning be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close', from Ruskin's Lectures on Art (1870).

'Ruskin Rooms. This building was erected by Richard Harding Watt in his usual Mediterranean style in 1902 as a recreation and reading room for the townspeople. The architect was Walter Aston. Among the various uses to which the building has been put is a fire station and as the headquarters of the British Legion. It was substantially renovated in 1977.'

For much more information on Elizabeth Gaskell, see The Gaskell Society website and Virtual Knutsford.

Reynold Price's Good Hearts (1988)

This is a strange, complex, and disturbing book. At the end of A Long and Happy Life (1962) Rosacoake Mustian, pregnant by Wesley Beavers, is not entirely happily entering a shotgun wedding. But ever since she fell in love with Wesley several years before, when he was up tree and threw pecans down to her, Rosacoake had her eyes on Wesley. Even if it had taken a crude rhyme like 'Pull down your petticoat, pull down your drawers/Give him one look at old Santy Claus' from her one-woman-only brother Milo to encourage her to relinquish her long-preserved virginity, she'd kept her man, hadn't she?

Twenty-six publication years and twenty-eight fictional years later, in Good Hearts (1988), Rosa (who has dropped the 'coake') and Wesley (who now feels dead) are still married. Reynolds Price called this his 'druggy novel' not because of the drug content - which is reduced to a casual comment on the contemporary inappropriate nature of Rosa's original final syllable - but because he wrote this novel on prescribed drugs after he'd been diagnosed with a cancerous tumour. Drugs or not, this is an interesting book.

It helps enormously to be aware of the family politics in Price's novels (in which families are of great importance) although even then things are difficult. Horace is Rosa and Wesley's son and Pris is his wife; Rato is Rosa's brother, and although he has mental problems, this knowledge doesn't make this conversation any easier to understand:

'Rato said "I learned to love spice in Spain. I can't see why it don't work in America."

'Pris said "It does now. At my house anyhow."

'Horace said "She's got me massaged in garlic. I can't see how I grew up without it."

'Rosa said "Well, you did. Somehow against all odds you survived. And look at you now, strong and healthy to watch."'

The key to this is that Rosa hates Pris, and thinks she's far too refined. But generally, people get on in Price's world without gouging each other's eyes out. Brothers-in-law Wesley and Milo have limits concerning how far they can mock each other, and those limits can be stretched greatly, although Wesley almost breaks those bounds when he, a very experienced motor mechanic, is invited by Milo to comment on his new Pontiac, of which he's very proud:

'No, Milo, look - you love your new car. It's exactly what you wanted, and it matches [your wife's] hair. Just roll back, cross both hands on your belly (it's swelling nicely by the way), and try to forget that day by day Wesley works on Mercedes, BMWs, Bentleys, and moviestar-customized Alpha-Romeos. Every now and then I lower my standards, double my prices, and tune up a Jag. But it's been six years since my soft hands ever touched a piece of Detroit tinfoil dogshit'.

But these men know each other's 'destruction buttons', and intend to grow old together: 'old and even more knowing, more nearly each other's mirror-self like the best male friends who stop short of touching'.

Wesley is welcomed into his extended family even after he's walked out on his wife and his job in Raleigh, North Carolina, and driven to Nashville, Tennessee, where he lived with Wilson for three months, a woman half his age, and the sex was great until she told him to get a divorce to leave her free to marry him, or get out of her life. So Wesley returned to his wife, but did supernatural means force him to do this?

The main problem the novel has is Wave, who appears towards the end and is a person or a symbol, or perhaps both, but who poses problems in terms of both the plot of the book and to the book's approach to moral concerns. Wave, if he is to be understood as a real character, is some form of sociopath who not only feels no remorse about raping women, but believes that he is performing them a service. But if, on the other hand, Wave is a kind of angel who brings Wesley back together with Rosa, then is this divine intervention entirely acceptable - particularly to a contemporary reader?

Grace Lumpkin's To Make My Bread (1932)

Grace Lumpkin (1891-1980) was born in Milledgeville, Georgia, and at the age of about ten her family moved to Columbia, South Carolina, and later to a farm in Richland County, South Carolina. She became a teacher and spent her summers in the southern Appalachians. She later went to Columbia University, New York, and became interested in Communist politics. Her first novel, To Make My Bread, is usually grouped with five other novels that concern the 1929 Loray textile mill strike in Gastonia, North Carolina, although it is only towards the end of the novel that the strike itself occurs.* Lumpkin's second novel, A Sign of Cain (1935), concerns similar themes, but she became disillusioned with Communist politics and her later novels - The Wedding (1939), and Full Circle (1962) clearly represent a major shift towards the right, and towards religion.

The first half of the book is set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, begins in 1900, and describes the poverty in which the mountain people - centring in particular on Grandpap Kirkland, his granddaughter Emma McClure and her young children as they develop. To Make My Bread won the Maxim Gorky Award for the 'best labour novel' of the year, and the book adheres to the realist literary ideology of the Soviet Union. Poverty is associated with illiteracy, and when, lured to visit the town in the low hills where the streets are said to be paved with gold, Emma wants to visit the toilet when the family rest in the station waiting room, she has to guess where to go:

'"Hit's got to be done", Emma said to herself. She got up and walked straight through the door over which the mysterous word was written.

'The girl who had gone in first was standing at a mirror in there. "Is this?" Emma began. The girl smiled and nodded toward a swinging door.'

The novel also depicts sexual matters frankly, if - necessarily for the time, of course - slightly coyly:

'About this time Emma needed some soft cloth. Bonnie [her daughter] was getting older and it had come upone her. For herself Emma could do with any rag that came along, but for Bonnie she wanted the soft cloth.'

Although To Make My Bread may contain some clichés about mountain people - the moonshine peddling and the feuds seen in abundance in such fiction Mary Noailles Murfree's short stories and novels, and the dime novels of the turn of the century, this work is clearly of a very different order. Lumpkin doesn't gloss over the racial prejudice of the time to make her protagonists appear more sympathetic: on the way to visit the town factory in the low hills, Emma sees some black children drinking from a water pump and is thirsty, but Grandpap says: 'They're niggers, Emma. [...] White and black don't mix.'

The novel covers Southern carpet baggers, the greed and inhumanity of the mountain people's towards their kind, and the destruction of Appalachian culture by mining companies.When the family moves down to the town they find not streets of gold but poverty worse than they experienced in the mountains. On the death of the protagonists Grandpap and Emma, the action increases and the strike gets in full swing. When the newly poiticized Bonnie - modeled on the influential Gastonian leader Ella May Wiggins, who was shot through the chest - is murdered, the Communist movement in this fictional town does not die, but is given fresh impetus.

*The five other novels are Mary Heaton Vorse's Strike! (1930), Olive Tilford Dargan's ('Fielding Burke''s) Call Home the Heart (1932), Myra Page's Gathering Storm: A Story of the Black Belt (1932), Sherwood Anderson's Beyond Desire (1932), and William Rollin's The Shadow Before (1934).

Reynold Price's A Long and Happy Life (1962)

'Just with his body and from inside like a snake, leaning that black motorcycle side to side, cutting in and out of the slow line of cars to get there first, staring due-north through goggles towards Mount Moriah and switching coon tails in everybody's face was Wesley Beavers, and laid against his back like sleep, spraddle-legged on the sheepskin seat behind him was Rosacoke Mustian who was maybe his girl and who had given up looking into the wind and trying to nod at every sad car in the line, and when he even speeded up and passed the truck (lent for the afternoon my Mr. Isaac Alston and driven by Sammy his man, hauling one pine box and one black boy dressed in all he could borrow, set up in a ladder-back chair with flowers banked round him and a foot on the box to steady it) - when he even passed that, Rosacoke said once into his back "Don't" and rested in humiliation, not thinking but with her hands on his hips for dear life and her white blouse blown out behind her like a banner in defeat.'

This amazing first sentence - all 192 words of it - marked the debut of a major novelist: Reynolds Price is from North Carolina, and was praised by, among others, Harper Lee and Eudora Welty for this book, A Long and Happy Life (1962), also the first book in the Mustian trilogy.* Constance Rooke called it 'a clarion call annoucing the start of a long career', and Price continues that distinguished career today, although he is surprisingly little known.

In Understanding Reynolds Price, James A Schiff calls the language 'sexually charged', and although he notes Price's ability to 'cross gender lines', he also realises that Price is in a sense proclaiming, and rejoicing in, his homosexuality in many of his works: 'Price seems far more interested, at least in his Mustian novels, in male sexuality and beauty. The central erotic figure in each Mustian novel is a desirable, handsome, and virile male [...], who attracts the gaze of women and men alike'. Price has turned around the norm: Rosacoake is just as (if not more than) central to the book as Wesley, but it's the male rather than the female body that is seen as sexually exciting.

*The two other novels are A Generous Man (1966), which concentrates on Rosacoake's brother Milo Mustian and is set in 1948, when Milo was nine year younger, and Good Hearts (1988), which is set 28 years after A Long and Happy Life, when Rosa (as she is now called) and Wesley Beavers have been married 28 years. A precursor – the long short story concerning the Mustians, 'A Chain of Love' – was published in 1958, and the play Early Dark (1977) is not a dramatization of A Long and Happy Life so much as it is that novel viewed from a differnet perspective.

Olive Ann Burns: Cold Sassy Tree (1984)

Olive Ann Burns (1924-90) was brought up in Commerce, Georgia, educated in Macon, Georgia, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and spent a number of years working for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It was during her fight with cancer that she decided to write a novel, Cold Sassy Tree, a book set in 1906 and 1907, modeled on Commerce, and published in 1984.
　
How does a person react to a book like this that has all the attributes of a popular novel: it's frequently on school syllabuses, and - horror of horrors - the cover calls it a 'national bestseller': just the kind of thing I normally eschew. But then I began to apply to it what I believe are the special preoccupations of the Southern novel: race, religion, gender, and sexuality. It's rare that all attributes fit, but they do in this case, and this is in fact a fascinating, and in some respects brilliant, Southern novel.
　
It's a coming-of-age novel about the observations of a 14-year-old boy, narrated by the same person some years later. The story concerns E. Rucker Blakeslee, the owner of the general store and a 59-year-old widower of just three weeks who has decided to re-marry. The knowledge that Rucker is marrying again when the general opinion is that he should still be in mourning is enough to cause considerable anger in small town Cold Sassy, but the fact that this is a May-December relationship (Love Simpson is almost half his age), added to the fact that she comes from Baltimore, Maryland, and is therefore almost a Yankee in the eyes of those in the Deep South - the novel is set only some 40 years after the South lost to the Yankess, of course - makes matters far worse.
　
The narrator Will Tweedy is Rucker's nephew and he's very close to his grandfather. He often visits the couple and not only likes Love but also finds her sexually attractive, although that is as far as it, er, will go. But his rapid friendship with Love is, by various and unintentional means, the cause of Will's gaining access to privileged information about the couple. He learns, for instance, that this is a marriage of convenience, and that Rucker isn't sleeping with his wife but is in effect employing her as a housekeeper in return for deeding his house and furniture to her on his death. When Rucker's daughters become aware of this arrangement, they are understandably far from happy with the prospect of being largely disinherited.
　
But Rucker's death has not yet come, and both the reader and Love have to learn a lot more of Rucker, who is by appearances a mean, old-fashioned man, and of course a person whose property still has an earth closet and no electricity. After a visit to New York - and this is set during an era when a trip from Commerce to Atlanta and back, just 140 miles, was seen as an event - Love and Rucker not only become a little more friendly, but Rucker returns with the information that he is expanding his business into the nascent car sales trade: he is developiing from something of a Luddite to a modern man, such is the influence that Love (both capitalized and otherwise) is exerting on him. In the end, Rucker dies after just a year of marriage, but leaves Love pregnant.
　
So in what way is this novel particularly Southern, apart from the obligatory patterns of speech, the occasional mention of scuppernongs or grits, and the white trash from the mountains come down to be town lintheads? As the novel closes, we learn that the old sassafras tree - which gave the town its original name - has been felled to widen the road, and the town is to be renamed Progressive City. Although the narrator doesn't comment on the new name, the reader is no doubt expected to disapprove of it, but not to disapprove of progress itself. Rucker said that Cold Sassy would change its name over his dead body, which it does, but then he is a complex character anyway: he loved the 'Yankee' Love from afar almost from when he saw her, he is completely without racial prejudice, and he hates the violent Old Testament god that everyone around him worships. Love Simpson didn't really have to do so much to change Rucker, but in many ways she represents the New South transforming the Old South, and the marriage - consumated by the life growing within Love's womb - symbolizes a profound change. The future will not be easy, but at least there is room for considerable growth.
　
Very, very glad I read Cold Sassy Tree.

Sinclair Lewis's Main Street (1920) and Sauk Centre, Minnesota

As far as literature is concerned, Minnesota is popularly known as the birth state of Scott Fitzgerald (St Paul) and, er, Garrison Keillor (Anoka), although Sinclair Lewis (1885—1951) is not as well known. One reason for this is that, although he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1926 (for Arrowsmith (1925)) and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1930, he produced nothing of particular merit from 1930 to his death. But he is noted for his novels of the 1920s, especially Main Street (1920) and Babbitt (1922). Both novels attack the stultifying conformity of the America of the Midwest in the postwar years, although Main Street is arguably more interesting for its autobiographical content.

Main Street is set almost entirely in the fictional small town of Gopher Prairie, although its protagonist, Carol Kennicott, is anything but that name might suggest: she refuses to toe the line. Born Carol Milford, she was educated in the Twin Cities — and later worked in a library in St Paul — with no knowledge of prairie villages, so when she marries Dr Will Kennicott, who has a medical practice in Gopher Prairie, she is destined for a considerable culture shock.

The superficial similarities between Flaubert's Madame Bovary and Main Street are striking: in both novels, a young woman, preoccupied by reading, marries a boring, conformist medical practitioner from a small town, suffers strongly from boredom, and is tempted to commit adultery. The main differences are that Carol does not commit adultery, and does not kill herself: after spending two years working for the Bureau of War Risk Insurance, in Washington DC, she returns to the strains of the cultural desert of Gopher Prairie.

But this is not Madame Bovary with a postwar American take: Lewis had a love-hate relationship with the small Midwest town in which he was born and grew up — Sauk Centre, which for some reason is given an English spelling — and his father was a doctor there. In Main Street, Lewis incorporated many of the elements — and many of the characters — he had known in Sauk Centre, and reactions in the town against his satire were very strong.

Carol Kennicott in many ways expresses Lewis's left-wing views on small town America, and although this is Lewis in full exaggeration mode, the message is clear when he launches into a criticism of the Perrys:

'The Republican Party, the Grand Old Party of Blaine and McKinley, is the agent of the Lord and of the Baptist Church in temporal affairs.

'All socialists ought to be hanged.

'Harold Bell Wright is a lovely writer, and he teaches such good morals in his novels, and folks say he's made prett' near a million dollars out of 'em.

'People who make more than ten thousand a year or less than eight hundred are wicked.

'Europeans are still wickeder.

'It doesn't hurt any to drink a glass of beer on a warm day, but anybody who touches wine is headed straight for hell.

'Virgins are not so virginal as they used to be.

'Nobody needs drug-store ice cream; pie is good enough for anybody.

'The farmers want too much for their wheat.'

The Perrys are by no means an atypical couple — in fact, their ideas are identical to the views of many others in the novel, and, Lewis believed, identical to those of many other identical inhabitants of many other identical small towns in conformist America. Carol dreads catching the 'Village Virus'.

After her (kind of) rebellion in Washington, Will ensnares her back, and five months after a holiday with her husband in Charleston, SC, and Savannah, GA, the pregnant Carol prepares to return to prairie living still an anarchist, but a gentler one:

'And why, she began to ask, did she rage at individuals? Not individuals but institutions are the enemies, and they most afflict the disciples who the most generously serve them. They insinuate their tyranny under a hundred guises and pompous names, such as Polite Society, the Family, the Church, Sound Business, the Party, the Country, the Superior White Race; and the only defense against them, Carol beheld, is unembittered laughter.'

Her vision of the beginning of the 21st century is interesting, as she sees that the real revolution will be carried out by the adults of the future. Before she retires to bed, as she points to her daughter's head, she warns her husband:

'Do you see that object on the pillow? Do you know what it is? It's a bomb to blow up smugness. If you Tories were wise, you wouldn't arrest anarchists; you'd arrest all these children while they're asleep in their cribs. Think what that baby will see and meddle with before she dies in the year 2000! She may see an industrial union of the whole world, she may see aeroplanes going to Mars.'

Sauk Centre has long since forgiven Sinclair Lewis, and has even turned him into the commercial attraction that he'd have hated: his parents' house, in Sinclair Lewis Avenue, is now the Sinclair Lewis Boyhood Home, there's a Sinclair Lewis Interpretation Center in the town, and you can even grab a Sinclair Lewis cheeseburger.

Lewis came to the world of letters at the wrong time, as he was writing in a rather old-fashioned style when writers like Sherwood Anderson, Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner were bringing a much fresher approach to American literature.