| 9780393241112 |
| (hbk.) |
| 0393241114 |
Available:*
Library | Material Type | Call Number | Shelf Location | Status | Item Holds |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... Fountain Library | Book | 810.9975 EBY | Nonfiction | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
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Summary
Summary
What is it about the South that has inspired so much of America's greatest literature? And why, when we think of Flannery O'Connor or William Faulkner or Harper Lee, do we think of them not just as writers, but as Southern writers? In South Toward Home, Margaret Eby--herself a Southerner--travels through the South in search of answers to these questions, visiting the hometowns and stomping grounds of some of our most beloved authors. From Mississippi (William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Richard Wright) to Alabama (Harper Lee, Truman Capote) to Georgia (Flannery O'Connor, Harry Crews) and beyond, Eby looks deeply at the places that these authors lived in and wrote about. South Toward Home reveals how these authors took the people and places they knew best and transmuted them into lasting literature.
Side by side with Eby, we meet the man who feeds the peacocks at Andalusia, the Georgia farm where Flannery O'Connor wrote her most powerful stories; we peek into William Faulkner's liquor cabinet to better understand the man who claimed civilization began with distillation and the "postage stamp of native soil" that inspired him; and we go in search of one of New Orleans's iconic hot dog vendors, a job held by Ignatius J. Reilly in John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces. From the library that showed Richard Wright that there was a way out to the courtroom at the heart of To Kill a Mockingbird, Eby grapples with a land fraught with history and mythology, for, as Eudora Welty wrote, "One place understood helps us understand all places better."
Combining biographical detail with expert criticism, Eby delivers a rich and evocative tribute to the literary South.
Author Notes
Margaret Eby has written for the New York Times, The New Yorker, the Paris Review Daily, Bookforum, Salon, Slate, and the Los Angeles Times. Originally from Birmingham, Alabama, she now lives in New York City.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this literary tour of the American South, Eby focuses on the places and things central to Southern writers: meditating on Eudora Welty's garden, peeking into William Faulkner's liquor cabinet, and spending an afternoon with Flannery O'Connor's peacocks (or their replacements-O'Connor's actual peacocks are long gone), among other stops. Eby travels to Oxford, Miss.; Natchez, Miss.; Milledgeville, Ga.; New Orleans; and several other stops on the tourist circuit of preserved homes, mini-museums, and bookish gift shops. Some writers tower over the communities they immortalized, while others are barely recognized or mentioned. Jackson, Miss., for instance, clearly prefers the easy sainthood of Welty to Richard Wright's more complex legacy. Eby writes thoughtfully about each author's books-especially John Kennedy Toole's beloved A Confederacy of Dunces-and, in a section about Harper Lee's reclusiveness, insightfully reflects on the meaning of and potential downsides to literary fandom. She occasionally falls back on flattering, idyllic tributes to her favorite authors. Nonetheless, these essays form a delightful love letter to the South and serve as an apt reminder that the South is no literary backwater, but a world of letters all its own. Agent: Brandi Bowles, Foundry Literary + Media. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* This sweetly personal yet embracingly informative book is a result of the author's focused travel through the American South, a trip she calls a pilgrimage to the places that a group of Southern writers described in their fiction. Before sharing rich details about her visits, Eby introduces the issues that she sees as intrinsic in attempting to isolate and define southern literature. From observing that a certain flavor exists in the literature of the American South actually, there's a ferocity about it she then insists that the 10 writers she is impressed by and follows here are outstanding in their ability to convey to nonsoutherners the nature of the portion of the South with which they were (or are) personally familiar. Eby concludes that what makes a Southern writer a Southern writer is not just the circumstances of his or her birth but a fierce attachment to a particular place, and a commitment to exploring its limits in his or her work. The 10 writers she features all have strong appeal to a wide range of readers of American literature. The place of honor the first writer she discusses is deservedly given to Eudora Welty, one of the most highly regarded fiction writers in the long, golden pageant of southern literature. Basic familiarity with Welty informs any reader that Jackson, Mississippi, was where she was deeply rooted and lay at the heart of her fiction, her reputation resting primarily on her incomparable short stories. Eby is obviously enchanted by Welty's graceful yet sharp-edged prose, which captured the local culture around her as with a butterfly net. Richard Wright, author of Native Son, also grew up in Jackson, and Eby sensitively paints the difference between the white and black sides of Jackson life that generated each writer's fiction. Of course, no visit to southern literature can be complete without a stop in Oxford, Mississippi, to survey the little postage stamp of soil that Faulkner tilled time and again for his very distinctive fiction, for which he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Flannery O'Connor, Harry Crews, Harper Lee, Truman Capote, John Kennedy Toole, Barry Hannah, and Larry Brown round out the list of distinctively southern writers Eby brings into her defining discussions, enticing us to enjoy their work either for the first time or once again.--Hooper, Brad Copyright 2015 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Eby, who has written for the New York Times, The New Yorker, and the Los Angeles Times, and who is originally from -Birmingham, AL, has turned her love for Southern literature and the artifacts in the homes of Southern writers into a travelog of the places Southern writers lived and worked. The author visits William Faulkner's liquor cabinet and comments on Eudora Welty's mass of papers and love for gardening, Harper Lee and Truman Capote's courtrooms, and other areas that sparked the author's imagination or offered a quiet place to meditate. The resulting book is a gentle reminder of the many styles of writing labeled as "Southern." VERDICT Eby's collection provides a fine introduction to writers and their homes and will be appreciated by readers of older literature (the book ends with Barry Hannah and Larry Brown).-Pam Kingsbury, Univ. of North Alabama, Florence © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Introduction | p. 11 |
| 1 Eudora Welty's Garden | p. 19 |
| 2 Richard Wright's Schoolhouse | p. 35 |
| 3 William Faulkner's Liquor Cabinet | p. 55 |
| 4 Flannery O'Connor's Peacocks | p. 69 |
| 5 Harry Crews's Hurricane Greek | p. 97 |
| 6 Harper Lee and Truman Capote's Courthouse | p. 123 |
| 7 John Kennedy Toole's Hot-Dog Carts | p. 157 |
| 8 Barry Hannah and Larry Brown's Fishing Spot | p. 197 |
| Coda | p. 217 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 221 |
| Notes | p. 223 |
| Suggest Reading | p. 237 |
