Abraham Lincoln reflected the worst of northern excesses, South Carolinians believed. His election, one Charlestonian averred, “was simply a sign to us that we are in danger, and must provide for our own safety.” The finest of gentlemen founded South Carolina, informants assured the famous London Times correspondent, William Howard Russell, upon his arrival in [...]
In October of 1997, I attended the Southern Historical Association’s convention in Atlanta because I wanted to hear Paul Conkin’s presidential address, “Hot, Humid, and Sad.” What I heard was largely a history of the South in which climate and geography shaped a complex skein of human choices. Mostly a dense and almost perversely analytical [...]
IV M.E. Bradford The principle underlying the Agrarian-New Critic’s position as literary critic, shared generally in the New Critical movement at large, may be simply put: Some poems are better than other poems. He judges them as things existing in themselves, made by that intellectual creature—man. The problem term, of course, is better, since it commits intellect, willy [...]
We spoke of much else besides [our business of the day]: of friends and mentors and the tumors of both—their fortunes and misfortunes, their origins and our own; of illustrative stories, many of them drawn from outside the narrow confines of the academy; of adversaries ancient and modern; of our delight in the progress of [...]
Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords readers the opportunity to join Lee Cheek as he examines the importance of agrarianism in American life and the necessity of restoring its place within our culture. —W. Winston Elliott III, Publisher Among the contributions to I’ll Take My Stand, Allen Tate’s “Remarks on the Southern Religion” [...]
Toward the end of her life, Flannery O’Connor was often asked to speak about being a Southerner, as though this were a peculiar condition in need of explanation. In “The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South,” a composite essay published from two of her last public talks, she sums up what she thinks of her [...]
As I laid this Christ-haunted collection of short stories down, I felt the phantom presence of Flannery O’Connor and was sure that she was smiling with pleasure at the manner in which this later generation of writers had followed so faithfully in her inspired and inspiring footsteps. Previously in these pages, I highlighted the wealth of [...]
O.E. Parker is constantly looking in the mirror. Vanity of vanities. Parker is one of Flannery O’Connor’s crazy misfits. A tough dropout who was captivated by the mystique of tattoo at the age of fourteen when he saw the tattooed man at the county fair. Having a tattoo made the poor idiot feel special, so [...]
When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession, by Charles Adams. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000. This work is a spirited polemic whose central aim is to condemn the North’s subjugation of the South between 1861 and 1865. Asserting that the Civil War was at its heart a “fiscal [...]
As one who has adopted South Carolina as my home, I am still haunted by the recent events in Charleston and more than a little alarmed by its dark and disturbing aftermath. I cannot help feeling that a culture that advocates the banning or burning of flags is on the slippery slope to becoming a [...]
The Literary Correspondence of Donald Davidson and Allen Tate edited by John Tyree Fain and Thomas Daniel Young. Of those sources ordinarily consulted by literary historians and critics, letters are surely among the most suspect. In the first place, we all write lines that are no more than the accepted conventions of social intercourse: “I apologize [...]
The Irony of the Solid South: Democrats, Republicans, and Race, 1865-1944. By Glenn Feldman. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2013. As a work of history, this book is mostly fine scholarship. It is long, detailed, and thoroughly documented. Unfortunately, the author does not stop with writing history but adds personal, highly biased, and condescending [...]
The American military has traditionally promoted love of country, self-sacrifice, and courage. These latter two virtues, especially, are honed in wartime, and though war is always to be avoided due to its many attendant evils, there is no denying that it is a singular stage upon which great acts of sacrifice and stunning displays of [...]
Alan Jacobs patiently explains why even the most scrupulous of scholars can’t understand the first thing about Flannery O’Connor’s stories without at least a good deal of biblical literacy.* Well, a real poet or a person with genuine artistic and psychological sensitivity can understand something about her writing without the Bible. John Huston’s film version [...]