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Message
Books about the South
Posted on 5/9/18 at 7:54 am
Posted on 5/9/18 at 7:54 am
Can you give me some good books about the South? Anything works and it please don't restrict it to just the Civil War (I think that elicits the initial response). Fiction and nonfiction welcomed. I'm interested in the culture, food, major events, and so forth.
I'm interested in all states: South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, North Carolina, Kentucky...all is good to me.
For example:
I'm interested in all states: South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, North Carolina, Kentucky...all is good to me.
For example:
quote:
Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927
The Potlikker Papers: A Food History of the Modern South
A Confederacy of Dunces
This post was edited on 5/9/18 at 7:55 am
10
Posted on 5/9/18 at 11:58 am to LSUbase13
Just about anything from Walker Percy or William Faulkner.
Personal favorites of Percy: The Last Gentleman, Love in the Ruins.
Faulkner: Absalom, Absalom and The Sound and the Fury (S&F requires at least 2 readings though- first 2 sections are stream of conciousness. First one by a mentally handicapped person)
All The King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
Stories and books by Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, Nora Zeale Hurston, Carson McCullers.
Non-Fiction:
The Burden of Southern History by C. Vann Woodward
Black Boy by Richard Wright
Lanterns on the Levee by William Alexander Percy
Lots of great nonfiction about New Orleans and South Louisiana out there, but that's more of a dialed down topic. Definitely Southern, but a little bit different.
Personal favorites of Percy: The Last Gentleman, Love in the Ruins.
Faulkner: Absalom, Absalom and The Sound and the Fury (S&F requires at least 2 readings though- first 2 sections are stream of conciousness. First one by a mentally handicapped person)
All The King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
Stories and books by Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, Nora Zeale Hurston, Carson McCullers.
Non-Fiction:
The Burden of Southern History by C. Vann Woodward
Black Boy by Richard Wright
Lanterns on the Levee by William Alexander Percy
Lots of great nonfiction about New Orleans and South Louisiana out there, but that's more of a dialed down topic. Definitely Southern, but a little bit different.
Posted on 5/9/18 at 1:26 pm to LSUbase13
Fiction:
*Dorothy Allison - Bastard out of Carolina (rural S Carolina)
*Ellen Douglas - Can't Quit You, Baby (Mississippi)
*Jesmyn Ward - Salvage the Bones (Gulf Coast)
*Lee Smith - The Devil's Dream (Appalachia)
*Ernest Gaines - A Lesson Before Dying (Louisiana)
*Tom Franklin - Poachers (Alabama)
Non-Fiction:
* But for Birmingham (a history of the Civil Rights movement)
*Carville: Remembering Leprosy in America
*Natasha Trethewey - Beyond Katrina
*Margaret Eby - South Toward Home (this is travel writing, I guess you'd call it, that explore the homes of a lot of famous southern writers. It might give you some ideas of things you'd like to read)
*Dorothy Allison - Bastard out of Carolina (rural S Carolina)
*Ellen Douglas - Can't Quit You, Baby (Mississippi)
*Jesmyn Ward - Salvage the Bones (Gulf Coast)
*Lee Smith - The Devil's Dream (Appalachia)
*Ernest Gaines - A Lesson Before Dying (Louisiana)
*Tom Franklin - Poachers (Alabama)
Non-Fiction:
* But for Birmingham (a history of the Civil Rights movement)
*Carville: Remembering Leprosy in America
*Natasha Trethewey - Beyond Katrina
*Margaret Eby - South Toward Home (this is travel writing, I guess you'd call it, that explore the homes of a lot of famous southern writers. It might give you some ideas of things you'd like to read)
This post was edited on 5/9/18 at 1:27 pm
Posted on 5/9/18 at 8:42 pm to LSUbase13
Absalom Absalom!
Posted on 5/9/18 at 8:54 pm to tigahbruh
quote:
Country was the first book published by Rolling Stone magazine critic Nick Tosches. Released in 1977 under the title Country: The Biggest Music in America, it was retitled in later editions as Country: Living Legends and Dying Metaphors in America's Biggest Music and Country: The Twisted Roots of Rock and Roll. Rather than a detailed, chronological study of country music, the book is arranged like a fan's scrapbook, leaping across time and subject.
Throughout Country, Tosches makes a point of paying tribute to pivotal but undersung figures in country, hillbilly, and blues music, including Emmett Miller, Cliff Carlisle, and Val and Pete. He also pays tribute to early music writers, such as Emma Bell Miles, whose 1904 essay "Some Real American Music" Tosches called "the most beautiful prose written of country music."
Posted on 5/9/18 at 9:16 pm to LSUbase13
Posted on 5/9/18 at 10:18 pm to SCLibertarian
quote:For those unfamiliar with that book:
The Southern Agrarians
quote:
The Southern Agrarians (also the Twelve Southerners, the Vanderbilt Agrarians, the Nashville Agrarians, the Tennessee Agrarians, and the Fugitive Agrarians) were a group of twelve American writers, poets, essayists, and novelists, all with roots in the Southern United States, who united to write a pro–Southern agrarian manifesto, published as the essay collection I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition (1930). The Southern Agrarians greatly contributed to the Southern Renaissance, the revival of Southern literature in the 1920s and 1930s, and were based at Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, with John Crowe Ransom as the unofficial leader.
Posted on 5/9/18 at 10:46 pm to LSUbase13
quote:You can read Cash's orginal 1929 article for Mencken's American Mercury here. You'll probably be outraged, but note his comment on the current behavior of slaves' descendants. I wonder how that would go over today...
Frustrated with the duties at a small newspaper, Cash abruptly quit shortly after the 1928 election and began writing what would turn out to be eight articles for H.L. Mencken's American Mercury between 1929 and 1935, including the seminal piece "The Mind of the South," published in October, 1929. Blanche and Alfred Knopf, publishers of the Mercury, saw the piece, liked it, and asked Cash to write a book-length version. Thus was born the book of the same title for which Cash is primarily known. The book was delayed, much to the Knopfs' worry and frustration, for over a decade as Cash meticulously labored to perfect the work to its final conclusion in mid-1940, receiving help along the way from the noted University of North Carolina sociologist, Howard Odum.
On February 10, 1941, The Mind of the South was published by Knopf. The book, a socio-historical, intuitive exploration of Southern culture, received wide critical acclaim at the time and garnered for Cash praise from sources as diverse as the N.A.A.C.P., TIME, The New York Times, The Saturday Review of Literature and most Southern newspapers of note. (One note of negative criticism came from the Agrarian group out of Nashville.) TIME, for instance, stated, "Anything written about the South henceforth must start where he leaves off."
Posted on 5/10/18 at 10:57 am to LSUbase13
Handling Sin by Michael Malone is humorous. Fiction. About a dysfunctional family. North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana. Anyone from the South can relate to the major themes in the book.
Posted on 5/11/18 at 1:57 am to LSUbase13
Go pick up the Lords of Discipline by Pat Conroy. To this date, the best book ive ever read. You wont be able to put it down.
It’s a coming of age story set in Charleston at the military college the institute (based on the citadel) about brotherhood, hazing, tragedy, betrayal, love, and secret organizations.
Conroy makes you fall in love with Charleston while you’re reading it.
If you like Lords of Discipline, I would also recommend the Prince of Tides and South of Broad by him. Both partially set in the south as well.
ETA: If anyone on here has any recommendations for other authors like Conroy, I’m all ears.
It’s a coming of age story set in Charleston at the military college the institute (based on the citadel) about brotherhood, hazing, tragedy, betrayal, love, and secret organizations.
Conroy makes you fall in love with Charleston while you’re reading it.
If you like Lords of Discipline, I would also recommend the Prince of Tides and South of Broad by him. Both partially set in the south as well.
ETA: If anyone on here has any recommendations for other authors like Conroy, I’m all ears.
This post was edited on 5/11/18 at 2:01 am
Posted on 5/12/18 at 7:54 pm to LSUbase13
A triology by Ferrol Sams
Run with the Horsemen- A young boy growing up in rural Georgia during the Great Depression
Whispers of the River- The same young boy goes to college at Mercer and pulls a bunch of shenanigans.
When All the World Was Young- Young Porter Osborne Jr goes to Emory Medical School and goes to fight in WWII.
It's an amazing series that's based on the author's life growing up. It's pretty dang funny too.
Run with the Horsemen- A young boy growing up in rural Georgia during the Great Depression
Whispers of the River- The same young boy goes to college at Mercer and pulls a bunch of shenanigans.
When All the World Was Young- Young Porter Osborne Jr goes to Emory Medical School and goes to fight in WWII.
It's an amazing series that's based on the author's life growing up. It's pretty dang funny too.
Posted on 5/12/18 at 11:56 pm to Babble
quote:
Go pick up the Lords of Discipline by Pat Conroy. To this date, the best book ive ever read. You wont be able to put it down.
It’s a coming of age story set in Charleston at the military college the institute (based on the citadel) about brotherhood, hazing, tragedy, betrayal, love, and secret organizations.
quote:
The Strange One is a 1957 black-and-white film about students faced with an ethical dilemma in a military college in the Southern United States. The film is adapted from a novel and stage play by Calder Willingham called End as a Man, and the film was also released as End as a Man.
The cast includes Ben Gazzara, George Peppard, Pat Hingle, Geoffrey Horne, James Olson, and Larry Gates, some of them members of the original cast of the stage version.
The film was produced by Sam Spiegel, directed by Herb Gardner and Jack Garfein and is noteworthy due to the entire acting and technical staff being from the Actors Studio of New York City.
The film focuses on the dehumanization associated with the tradition of hazing within the college and is noteworthy for its portrayal of homoerotic themes – and at least one gay character – at a time when the Hays Code prohibited such expression.
Posted on 5/13/18 at 9:37 am to LSUbase13
Just read Deep South by Paul Theroux. Worth a read. A Northerner takes 4 trips into the poorest parts of the South and equates it to third world countries. As if the North, or Western states are immune to poverty.
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