Presentation scheduled for delivery
at the 8th Annual Harriette Austin Writers Conference
July 21, 2001, at the University of Georgia
 

Willie Morris once asked, "Is the idea of 'The South' felt by anyone besides writers and other people who spend too much time thinking about themselves? Is it nothing more than personal nostalgia codified? Are Virginians and Mississippians connected by anything other than the fact that their ancestors lost a war together? What is innately Southern anymore?"

Let me ask, how many of you grew up in the South?

How many in the rural South?

When you think of the South, what is the first thing that comes to mind? Do you think of barbecue and the blues, moonlight and magnolias, Scarlett and Rhett, or do you think of place and family--where you grew up and Sunday afternoons spent with relatives (probably a few eccentric ones) during your youth?

The defining characteristics of Southern fiction are a sense of place and home--home is a potent word for a Southerner, a deep involvement with family and ritual, a celebration of eccentricity, a strong narrative voice, themes of racial guilt and human endurance, local tradition, a sense of impending loss, a pervasive sense of humor in the face of the tragic, and an inability to leave the past behind. As William Faulkner said, "The past is not dead, it isn't even past."

I am on friendly turf today, Athens, Georgia--a town that prides itself on being the home of the Civil War's double barreled cannon and Budwine--so I am relieved that I do not have to enter into the tired debate about whether or not there is a Southern identity or whether or not it is important. Louis D. Rubin, the founder of Algonquin books, stated, "...the Southern identity is important because it is. Whether it ought or ought not to be is irrelevant. The facts are that there existed in the past and there continues to exist today, an entity within American society known as the South, and that for better or for worse the bait of viewing one's experience in terms of one's relationship to that entity is still a meaningful characteristic of both writers and readers who are or have been part of it."

What I am here to talk about is the image of the South as a cottage industry, sought after not only by New York and Hollywood, but by foreign countries as well. A popular part of European curricula is the study of the South. Southern writers show us how history is being altered but also recovered--a theme with universal appeal.

Hollywood

How has Hollywood translated the South?

As either an idyllic pastoral South or a tragically flawed South. Since the beginning of American film history, there has been a constant tension surrounding the portrayal of the South.

Viewers can easily list the facets of the Western, but the "Southern," never caught on as a genre because depictions of the South are often contradictory.

"There have always been two versions of the South, both wrong. On the one hand there is the GONE WITH THE WIND South: bronze men in white linen suits, demure ladies with lace parasols, white-columned mansions framed by magnolias, courtly black butlers named Melvin, and gentlemen who make their own whiskey. On the other hand there is the TOBACCO ROAD South: sawmill towns, potbellied sheriffs, hillbilly singers, Jackleg radio preachers, tin-roofed chicken houses, and gentlemen who make their own whiskey. So you can see that Margaret Mitchell and Erskine Caldwell didn't totally disagree," Paul Hemphill observed.

Hollywood's first attempts to portray the South were all films in the Plantation Film genre, beginning with the 1903 silent film of UNCLE TOM'S CABIN, which focused on "the gallantry, charm, hospitality, and gentility of the antebellum days," rather than on Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery message in the novel. D. W. Griffith's classic BIRTH OF A NATION (1915), based on Thomas Dixon Jr.'s novel THE CLANSMAN, portrayed what he called the attractive plantation lifestyle of the South. Posters for SO RED THE ROSE (1935), based on Stark Young's novel of the same name, begged moviegoers to "see the Old South ride again."

But all of these earlier films would be left in the dust when the quintessential Southern Plantation Film, GONE WITH THE WIND, debuted in 1939. It has continuously mesmerized audiences worldwide.

Why?

Margaret Mitchell created a memorable literary landscape of place in GWTW. Tara and the land are important characters. Whether a moviegoer is in the South or Japan, he can connect with the sense of place and with Scarlett, who exemplifies the Southern themes of human endurance and triumph over tragedy.

With the coming of World War II, producers were discouraged by the U.S. government, which was fighting a war for democracy, from continuing to portray the plantation lifestyle, lifestyle built on slavery, as glamorous. In the 1947 film, THE FOXES OF HARROW, a mother kills herself and her child rather than continue to live in slavery. Change had come in Hollywood's representation of the South.

Producers then sought to depict a realistic contemporary South in such films as ALL THE KING'S MEN (1949), based on the novel by Robert Penn Warren, and INTRUDER IN THE DUST (1949), based on the novel by William Faulkner.

The works of many Southern writers, who were oftentimes labeled as Southern gothic, including Truman Capote, Carson McCullers, and Tennessee Williams were translated onto the big screen. Williams described Southern gothic as a style which captured "an intuition, of an underlying dreadfulness in modern experience." Williams' A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (1951), CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF (1958 ), and SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER (1959) helped create the Decadent South film genre.

Some examples of films which left a little bit to be desired in the "it's Southern, so these stereotypes must be overblown" department:

CRAZY IN ALABAMA, DELIVERANCE, FORREST GUMP, MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL, SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT and WALKING TALL.

Some examples of films which didn't blow it in the stereotype department:

A CHRISTMAS MEMORY, FRIED GREEN TOMATOES, THE GRASS HARP, MY DOG SKIP, THE GREAT SANTINI, TO DANCE WITH THE WHITE DOG, THE TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL, and SLING BLADE

What film adaptations from Southern novels do you think have been successful?

One of the finest film adaptations from a novel that I have ever seen is TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. Horton Foote wrote the screenplay based on Harper Lee's novel. Perhaps because he is a Southerner, he took such care to make the script authentic.

New York

Terry Kay said this morning that New York sees Southern as being a dysfunctional family. He should know for he is one of the contemporary South's most successful writers, so you might want to consider putting a dysfunctional first cousin once removed in your next book.

I feel that I need to qualify what I am about to say, for there are always exceptions to every broad generalization about any topic. I know many dedicated and caring editors and publishers in New York, so what I am about to say cannot be held against me. I am making comments about the New York publishing industry as a whole and there are exceptions to every rule.

Publishing has changed more in the last ten years than in the previous century. Gone are the days of the "gentleman" publisher in New York. Post-World War II American publishing has been transformed relentlessly by corporate take-overs. Five behemoths now share 80% of the market and profit margin is the bottom line. They are: AOL-owned Time Warner, which owns Little, Brown and Company, as well as the Book-of-the-Month Club; Disney, which owns Hyperion; Viacom/CBS, which owns Simon & Schuster; Bertelsmann; and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which owns HarperCollins, which owns William Morrow and Avon.

One of the best books on the collapsing standards of New York publishing is Andre Schiffrin's THE BUSINESS OF BOOKS: HOW THE INTERNATIONAL CONGLOMERATES TOOK OVER PUBLISHING AND CHANGED THE WAY WE READ. Schiffrin was Publisher at Pantheon Books for thirty years. He is now director of The New Press, which he founded in 1993.

Schiffrin writes, "Until quite recently, publishing houses were for the most part family owned and small, content with the modest profits that came from a business that still saw itself linked to intellectual and cultural life. In recent years, publishers have been put on a procrustean bed and made to fit one of two patterns: as purveyors of entertainment or of hard information. This has left little room for books with new, controversial ideas or challenging literary voices."

Nearly 2.5 billion books were sold in the United States in 1998, earning close to 23 billion. The large volume, however, does not insure diversity of content. More and more of the books published today duplicate each other--play it safe regarding content. In the bullring of today's marketplace, danger lies ahead for adventurous, intelligent publishing.

Most of the American public is well aware of the plight of the independent bookseller vs. the chain bookstore. Like awareness needs to be developed for the plight of the independent publisher vs. the conglomerate publisher. In the end, freedom in the marketplace for both the author and the reader is reliant upon the independent publisher; otherwise a very few mega- corporations dictate what is published and what is available to the large-scale reading public.

When HarperCollins was eaten by Rupert Murdoch's empire, the company released many mid-list writers from their contracts. The term, mid-list writer, usually equates with literary writer. These are not the blockbuster sellers, but they are the works that will endure and prevail, the works that will become the classics of tomorrow. It is becoming more and more the case, unless a book seems destined to be a blockbuster, these media empires are not interested in publishing it because of the high economic demands they are faced with daily.

Some independent publishers still exist in New York, including Grove/ Atlantic and W. W. Norton and they actively pursue the acquisition of good literature, of mid-list writers. An example is the recent publication by Grove Atlantic of YONDER STANDS YOUR ORPHAN by Barry Hannah, who is one of the South's finest writers, but has never been a mega-seller. Grove's dedication to good writing when COLD MOUNTAIN, which they expected moderate sales for, became a best-seller.

So what is Southern today to these conglomerates is as diverse as the South itself is, but to generalize, what is Southern to New York is reliant upon the same stereotypes Hollywood employs. Would the work of the great writers of the Southern Literary Renaissance, Faulkner, O' Connor, and Welty (if they were newcomers) be published today by these New York houses? Welty said of her own writing, probably not.

Publishing in the South

There are many publishers in the South today, ranging from Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, which is owned by Workman in New York to independent publishers to university presses.

Acclaimed Southern literary critic Louis D. Rubin Jr. founded Algonquin as an independent press in 1982 and the quality of the fiction on his list got New York's attention. Rubin paved the way for Southern publishers that receive critical acclaim for their authors on a national scale.

Independent publishers in the South, such as Longstreet and Peachtree in Atlanta, Hill Street in Athens, Cumberland House in Nashville, Crane Hill in Birmingham, and John F. Blair in Winston-Salem, continue to grow. Many authors find them a welcome alternative to New York.

Although these companies are not going to compete with New York for advances, they do compete with the quality of the working relationship they can offer an author. Southern independents who do publish fiction usually have room for only one or two fiction works on their list each year. Many university presses in the South publish one or two fiction titles a year also.

Study these publishers web sites and catalogues to see how they define Southern.

What is Southern, Anyway?

Even though the South has changed dramatically in the last half century, its character remains distinct. "Southern still invokes considerably more than merely a geographical grouping. History as a mode for viewing one's experience and one's identity remains a striking characteristic of the Southern literary imagination, black and white," wrote Louis Rubin.

The most noteworthy of today's Southern writers marry the best of Southern tradition with the demands of contemporary life in the South. The important theme of sense of place remains constant even though a more diverse Southern community is explored in its literature.

Perhaps "The South" as an entity is a work-in-progress and not a completed manuscript; it is a culture constantly in pursuit of redefining itself in the present, while holding onto the tenants which gave the region its character.
 

Quotes by Southern Writers (They say it better than me)

"My mother, Southern to the bone, once told me, 'All Southern literature can be summed up in these words: On the night the hogs ate Willie, Mama died when she heard what Daddy did to Sister."'
    --Pat Conroy

"Why has the South produced so many great writers? Because we got beat."
    --Walker Percy

"When I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it's because we are still able to recognize one."
    --Flannery O'Connor

"All talk is dying. No more porch talk because no more porches. Air conditioning and television have taken us inside to be passive voyeurs of a fake world made in Hollywood and New York.
    --John Egerton

"Many Southerners of a certain age . . . have moved beyond the old defensiveness on the one hand, the old guilt on the other. They don't object to portraying the South warts and all--as long as it's made clear that Southern warts are more interesting than anyone else's.
    --John Shelton Reed

"One of the first things I can remember in my life was hearing about the New South. I was three years old, in Alabama. Not a year has passed since that I haven't heard about a new South. I would dearly love never to hear the New South mentioned again. In fact, my definition of a New South would be a South in which it never occurred to anybody to mention the New South.
    --Walker Percy

"The North isn't a place. It's just a direction out of the South."
    --Roy Blount Jr.

"Storytelling and copulation are the two chief forms of amusement in the South. They're inexpensive and easy to procure."
    --Robert Penn Warren

"The Southerner is a local person--to a degree unknown in other sections of the United States. The Southerner always thinks of himself as being from somewhere, as belonging to some spot of earth.

"In a way, I think Southerners care about each other, about human beings in a more accessible way than some other people.
    --Eudora Welty

Southern Winners of the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction:

Julia M. Peterkin, Scarlet Sister Mary (1929)

Caroline Miller, Lamb in His Bosom (1934)

Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind (l936)

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling (1939)

Ellen Glasgow, In This Our Life (1942)

Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men (1947)

William Faulkner, A Fable (1955)

James Agee's A Death in the Family (1958)

Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (1961)

William Faulkner, The Reivers (1963)

Shirley Ann Grau, The Keeper of the House (1965)

Katherine Anne Porter, Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter (1966)

William Styron, The Confessions of Nat Turner (1968)

Eudora Welty, The Optimist's Daughter (1973)

James Alan McPherson, Elbow Room (short stories, 1978)

John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces (1981)

Alice Walker, The Color Purple (1983)

Peter Taylor, A Summons to Memphis (1987)

Anne Tyler, Breathing Lessons (1989)

Richard Ford, Independence Day (1996)