Here & There

I know many times it's because Southerners want to claim him and sometimes it's just a matter of labeling for label's sake, but Richard Ford is not--repeat not--a Southern writer.  And I'm glad to see that he agrees:

Mississippi roots notwithstanding, one thing Richard Ford isn’t is a Southern writer. His native accent is faint. Though he was raised in Jackson, across the street from the great Eudora Welty (he became her literary executor), he felt a cultural constriction there. ‘‘I knew that if I stuck around, it would have bad lasting effects on me,’’ he said. He lit out for the north as soon at he could, studying English at the University of Michigan, and creative writing at the University of California. ‘‘I left Mississippi in 1962,’’ he said, ‘‘and didn’t come back until 1983.’’ Only his first novel, ‘‘A Piece of My Heart’’ (1976) has a Southern setting and themes.

‘‘I didn’t want to write for a Southern audience,’’ he said, ‘‘or about historically Southern topics — the interpenetration of the past into the present, race, class, history. More important, everybody I grew up reading — Eudora and Faulkner and Walker Percy and Flannery O’Connor, Bill Styron and Reynolds Price — had done all that better than I could have done it.’’

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Speaking of, David Payne wonders if Southern writers have been marginalized.

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Among many other things, Hurricane Katrina's lasting legacy includes the destruction of much of the recorded history of a rich cultural heritage:

The scope and toll of this cultural loss cannot be measured, though, because no one knows exactly what was stuffed into the attics and back rooms of homes in the Lower 9th Ward, Bywater, New Orleans East and other devastated neighborhoods. There was no master list of who owned collections, let alone inventories of particular items.

Collections at the Louisiana State Museum and Tulane University’s Hogan Jazz Archive survived unscathed. But officials there still mourn the loss of material that would have added significantly to the world’s understanding of jazz and New Orleans culture.

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I'm not sure I've ever expressed my appreciate/borderline love of William Carlos Williams.  If not, I have now.  Anyway, that might explain why I'm excited about this new blog find:  New Jersey As An Impossible Object, in which Joe Milutis uses WCW's Patterson "as a map to navigate the city Patterson and other territories."  More about the blog here.

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The state of Mississippi will kick off its Mississippi Reads program in January with its first selection, Faulkner's Go Down Moses.

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It appears that the Dalkey Archive Press has settled on the University of Illinois as its new home.

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"Besides his bare, cut-to-the-quick style, Hemingway's image was shaped by the photos of him posing next to some glassy-eyed dead animal, by his enthusiasm for war and above all for bullfighting. Yet what the public saw wasn't as interesting as what Hemingway hid. Behind the bulls, blood and wives was a perceptive, erudite man steeped in literature, music and art, courtly to women, deeply spiritual if only intermittently religious, generous to his friends and quick to laugh and joke. He gave America a stark, 20th-Century voice to express the century's preoccupations: fear, suffering and death, as well as endurance, nobility and honor. In the absence of hope, man could strive for dignity."

Comments

[Professor Fury]

Oh, but you left out the best part of that Ford interview:

"Besides," continued Ford, "if I had set my novels and stories in the South, it would have been even more apparent that The Sportswriter is a stale retread of Percy's The Moviegoer."

If I'd been interviewing him, I would have asked if he thinks that Faulkner, Welty et al wasted their potential by writing for a "Southern audience."

Man, I'm grouchy today. Damn Mondays.

[mark c]

Some related articles on new orleans musicians and the levee failure. Thanks for the Chicago Tribune article.

Dr. Michael White and Irvin Mayfield
http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2006-05-03-new-orleans_x.htm

Henry Butler
http://www.westword.com/Issues/2006-11-16/music/music.html

[CD]

I'm nitpicking here, I know. The Globe made an error. Ford went to Michigan State, not Michigan. In any case, I saw Ford read and speak the other night here in Atlanta. He was interesting and highly approachable. He seemed to genuinely appreciate people showing up. His accent is faint, but you can hear it on certain words. Even though I'm a big Ford fan, I think Lay of the Land is not as good as either of the other Frank Bascombe novels. Thanks for the link, Jeff.