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Is the South still special?
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Published: January 13, 2009
Three questions haunt me about Southern literature.
First: Is the literature of our region still distinct from the rest of the country?
Second: Is North Carolina really the leader (or at least a leader) in literary matters when compared to other Southern states?
And, third, among our state's many great writers, which ones do outside experts deem worthy of recognition?
A new volume of "The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture" gives some answers to these questions. "Volume 9: Literature" is part of a series of revisions to the original big one-volume classic "Encyclopedia of Southern Culture" published by UNC Press about 20 years ago. That big original will keep a treasured place on my reference bookshelf. But this separate and much smaller volume on Southern literature is a more convenient reference.
Here is what I found when I searched in the new volume for answers to my three questions:
The South is still special, literary-wise.
In his introduction to the new volume, its editor, Thomas Inge, concedes that the South is changing dramatically and that its literature is influenced by its growing links to the rest of the nation and the world. Nevertheless, he asserts, although the special Southern tradition may be changing, it continues to be distinctive. He writes: "Rather than accept the time-honored clichés of southern culture, however, they interrogate the real meaning in human terms of such things as the Civil War, slavery, and the disenfranchisement of women and blacks, and they worry less about politics than about the human condition."
Inge gives several examples to show our region's distinctiveness including the development of a type of Southern writing called "Grit Lit." It plays off one of our favorite foods, grits. But there is more to it, says Inge. "The 'grit' of grittiness of real life, stark violence, and economic despair, seem to be the general characteristic of these stories of poor white southerners who nevertheless cling to survival through humor and adaptation."
In summary, writes Inge in answer to my question, "… the last distinctively southern writer, like the last southern gentleman, has not been heard from yet."
Now, about whether or not North Carolina is the leading literary state in the South, there is good news and there is bad news.
The good news is that the new volume does not say that North Carolina is not the leader. Bad news is that it does not say that it is. After reading about all the great writers in other Southern states, I am slow to claim superiority for North Carolina. But there is no question that we are blessed with a bumper crop of writers who support each other in ways that make our state a great place for them to live and work.
Finally, the new volume gives special recognition by devoting separate articles to the following North Carolina connected writers: A.R. Ammons, James Applewhite, Doris Betts, W.J. Cash, Fred Chappell, Charles Waddell Chesnutt, Thomas, Dixon, Jr,, Wilma Dykeman, Clyde Edgerton, John Hope Franklin, Charles Frazier, Kaye Gibbons, Paul Green, Alan Gurganus, Hugh Holman, Blyden Jackson, Randall Jarrell, Randall Kenan, Doug Marlette, Jill McCorkle, Robert Morgan, Guy Owen, Reynolds Price, Ron Rash, John Shelton Reed, Louis Rubin, James Seay, Lee Smith., Elizabeth Spencer, Anne Tyler and Thomas Wolfe.
Does this list omit some of your favorite North Carolina writers? Maybe old timers like O. Henry, Robert Ruark, and George Moses Horton? Or maybe some of the popular bestselling North Carolina connected best selling authors like Patricia Cornwell, Kathy Reichs, Jan Karon and Nicholas Sparks?
Other questions about Southern literature? Get your own copy of Volume 9 of "The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture."
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