Southern writings
This week, as Nancy hurtles through Virginia and Tennessee on a vacation, we'll take a look at books about the South. For starters, here are five for a Southern must-read list. It's not my list -- as a Connecticut Yankee (just like Mark Twain, one of the great Northern writers) I disqualified myself. But I enlisted Mark Flinchum, a college roommate who grew up in Atlanta and has taught English for years.
His picks: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren, Three by Flannery O'Connor, Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns and The Thread That Runs So True by Jesse Stuart.
If we were to expand it to a Top 10, what would you add to the list?
Comments
No Faulkner?! The Sound and the Fury should definitely be on a Top 10.
Posted by: Thomas Bechtold | August 11, 2008 9:40 AM
More recent works could include Fannie Flagg's Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, although I'm sure an argument could be made for some of her other books, and perhaps some of Michael Lee West's work. Just don't read any of West's writing if you're hungry; you'll be absolutely famished by the time you're done.
Posted by: Claude | August 12, 2008 12:04 AM
For a contemporary (novel, I thought Bobbie Ann Mason's novel In Country was fantastic. It's set in 1980s Kentucky and beautifully reflects small-town, teenaged life and the effects of the Vietnam War on the young veterans.
Posted by: boombat | August 12, 2008 11:08 AM
Thomas, good suggestion. When I asked Flinch about the characteristics of Southern writing, he quoted this line from Faulkner: "The past is never dead. It's not even past." He said I could include "anything" by Faulkner, but worried that many people are still thrown by the distinctive writing style. So I'm glad you added him to the top 10.
Posted by: Dave | August 12, 2008 11:17 AM