Wendell Berry: Modern Agrarian

By |2016-07-28T19:30:49-05:00November 6th, 2013|Categories: Glenn Arbery, South, Southern Agrarians, Wendell Berry, Wyoming Catholic College|Tags: |

     The Humane Vision of Wendell Berry, Mark T. Mitchell and Nathan Schlueter, eds., ISI Books. A year ago, when my wife and I were waiting for a flight out of Logan Airport, a roughhewn man of about 60 was sitting a few seats away from us reading a book I would have been surprised [...]

Sins Unatoned: The Gothic Imagination of Bruce Springsteen

By |2023-05-10T14:54:37-05:00October 26th, 2013|Categories: Audio/Video, Bruce Springsteen, Culture, Flannery O'Connor, Music, South, Stephen M. Klugewicz, Walker Percy|

If original sin lies at the heart of Bruce Springsteen’s work, redemption lurks out there somewhere too. In 1989, the year before his death, the great Southern novelist Walker Percy wrote a letter to rock-and-roll legend Bruce Springsteen, which read, in part: This is a fan letter—of sorts. I’ve always been an admirer of yours, [...]

A Review of Andy Catlett: Early Travels by Wendell Berry

By |2013-12-20T15:28:30-06:00October 25th, 2013|Categories: Books, Robert Cheeks, Wendell Berry|

Wendell Berry is a philosopher, and an important one in this postmodern era, who utilizes the essay, the poem, and, most importantly, the novel, to express his observations of concrete human beings and their life in community. It is in his novels, purposefully located in an agrarian setting, that he depicts the intrinsic interdependency of the [...]

Novels by State: A Southern Reply

By |2023-01-15T12:32:21-06:00October 19th, 2013|Categories: Sean Busick, South|Tags: |

Business Insider caused a sensation with its list “The Most Famous Book Set In Every State.” And when we say “sensation,” we mean “shock and anger.” While some of their picks are obvious, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz for Kansas or To Kill a Mockingbird for Alabama, others provoked more consternation. Does Louisiana deserve to [...]

Allen Tate, Wendell Berry, and Sewanee’s Discarded ‘The Hidden Wound’

By |2016-07-26T15:26:49-05:00October 9th, 2013|Categories: Agrarianism, Books, Wendell Berry|Tags: |

Years ago, perhaps when I was still in graduate school, I stopped at a Chattanooga used bookshop when passing through. One has a mental list of authors to check, and I happened to find an uncommon thing: a hardcover first edition of Wendell Berry’s 1970 book on race and the South, The Hidden Wound. The disappointment [...]

The Truth of Things

By |2021-08-12T10:22:34-05:00August 17th, 2013|Categories: Christendom, Culture, Liberal Learning, Marion Montgomery|

Even “academic” specialization might be recovered as desirable, but desirable as a means to a higher end in service to the body of community, not merely servicing the appetitive order of individuals collectively called society, but in service to the community as a body of members. In that term society the nature of community, as [...]

Does the South Belong in the Union?

By |2014-01-14T19:54:27-06:00August 12th, 2013|Categories: Pat Buchanan, South, Supreme Court|

Is the Second Reconstruction over? The first ended with the withdrawal of Union troops from the Southern states as part of a deal that gave Rutherford B. Hayes the presidency after the disputed election of 1876. The second began with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a century after Appomattox. Under the VRA, Southern states [...]

Religion and the Mind of the South

By |2014-01-16T18:34:49-06:00August 5th, 2013|Categories: Peter A. Lawler, Religion, South|

     Thoughts on The Mind of the South, by W. J. Cash W. J. Cash follows Mencken–and genuine Southern Stoics such as the poet William Alexander Percy–in having a very poor opinion of the uneducated individualism and raw emotion of Southern religion. It is, as Will Percy said, for “white trash” and for “Negroes” [...]

M.E. Bradford and Southern Agrarianism

By |2023-05-07T16:05:00-05:00July 26th, 2013|Categories: Agrarianism, Lee Cheek, M. E. Bradford, Sean Busick, South, Southern Agrarians|

M.E. Bradford was was truly one of the giants of the postwar conservative intellectual movement. A Southerner first, he was naturally both an agrarian and a conservative. The late M.E. (“Mel”) Bradford (1934-1993) was truly one of the giants of the postwar conservative intellectual movement. A Texan (born in Fort Worth), Bradford earned his B.A. [...]

Philosopher-Poet of the Rednecks: Donald Davidson and the Defense of the Agrarian South

By |2017-09-05T23:06:20-05:00June 27th, 2013|Categories: Mark Malvasi, Poetry, Political Science Reviewer, Southern Agrarians|

Donald Davidson Confident that industrial prosperity would create the material foundations for a vigorous, democratic civilization in the South, southern liberals since the 1880s had repudiated much of their heritage and embraced science and industry as the salvation of mankind. Liberal educators, journalists, and social scientists of the immediate postwar era, such as [...]

Marion Montgomery: Prophet Philosopher

By |2021-08-12T10:15:22-05:00June 19th, 2013|Categories: Books, Featured, Flannery O'Connor, Marion Montgomery, South|Tags: , |

The Prophetic Poet and the Spirit of the Age by Marion Montgomery (in three volumes): Why Flannery O’Connor Stayed Home (1981), Why Poe Drank Liquor (1983), Why Hawthorne Was Melancholy (1984) Marion Montgomery’s trilogy is an ambitious, indeed audacious, assessment of the social, political, literary, religions, and philosophical temper of the Western world since the [...]

William Gaston, Race, and Religion in North Carolina

By |2020-05-20T11:51:50-05:00May 25th, 2013|Categories: Religion, Social Order, South, Stephen M. Klugewicz|Tags: |

Gaston County and the county seat of Gastonia, located in the southwestern part of North Carolina, bear his name, a fitting tribute to the easterner who came to support the rights of his western brethren. In his day, his legal acumen was hailed by none other than the great Luther Martin of Maryland, perhaps the [...]

Agrarianism Reborn: On the Curious Return of the Small Family Farm

By |2014-01-31T16:06:59-06:00May 21st, 2013|Categories: Agrarianism, Culture|Tags: , , |

In 1941 the Prairie Farmer, America’s oldest farm periodical, celebrated its one hundredth anniversary. The centennial cover features a drawing of the iconic twentieth-century “new” farmer: tall, young, and slender. Bulky overalls have given way to tailored city clothes; the straw hat to a fedora. In the artist’s words, he is “a strong, virile, keen, [...]

Go to Top