Our Quiet Growing Time

Prior to this moment in my life, I've had a strict no re-reading policy. My motto has always been "So many books, so little time," so clearly, I have no time to waste for rereads. I had a sweatshirt sporting this slogan that I wore exactly once to school in sixth grade. That's all the further I'd like to go with that story; the pain is still raw. ;) But I'm glad I revisited Gone with the Wind . You get a lot more out of a book when you're 27 than you did when you were 13.  You know the story: it's the tale of how one Southern woman survives the turbulence of the Civil War and the years following. What struck me this time was that Margaret Mitchell wrote an epic 1000+ page tome with a protagonist who was detestable. Name a bad character trait: Scarlett's got it. She's lied, cheated, stolen, committed adultery in everything but the final act, wished death upon others, hated, and murdered. She's cruel, greedy, selfish, mercenary, manip...

Nathan and I recently returned from a whirlwind camping adventure in the South: 13 days, 13 states, 3,400 miles driven. We tried new foods: alligator, grits, etouffee, jambalaya, gumbo. (I should clarify that Nathan tried new foods and I tried tiny bites of his adventurous entrees.) We saw sugarcane and cotton being harvested, drove the Natchez Trace Parkway on a lonely Mississippi morning, cheered on the Bayou Bengals at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, rode on an airboat and on a steamboat and soaked up the abundant local color of the South. You could go on an entire vacation just visiting literary landmarks of the South. But I suspect that that itinerary wouldn't really fly with Nathan, though we did make a few stops at literary landmarks at my request. The best souvenirs are books and I love buying books in symbolic places. I came home approximately 8 books richer! At Square Books in Oxford, MS. I'm holding my purchases: Delta Wedding by Mississippi ...

"She was so Southern that she cried tears that came straight from the Mississippi, and she always smelled faintly of cottonwood and peaches." Sarah Addison Allen calls her style of writing "Southern-fried magic realism" and it is as delicious as Southern-fried cookin'. Her use of magical realism appeals to the whimsical in me. She creates such beautiful, vivid worlds that make me think that maybe--just maybe-- magic could happen in my own ordinary world, too.  Have you ever seen a low-hanging cloud that inexplicably clings to a hillside or just one end of a street? In Garden Spells , Claire is so consumed by unconsummated passion that when she showers, a fog shrouds her neighborhood, produced by the cool water hitting her heated skin. Now we know what's happening--or not happening--to explain that clingy fog you see sometimes. (Read this book and you will find explanations for other everyday phenomena.) The Waverley women all possess c...

Reading is kind of like dating. You said 'yes' to dinner, you bought a book. You think: " Looks good." You sniff, (or inhale deeply) and think: " Smells even better." You open the book, you go on the date. You wonder "Will this one be THE ONE ?"   By the end of the date, by the end of the first few chapters, you probably have an idea whether this is the beginning of something special. Or you will donate the book to the Salvation Army's used book sale and give him a bogus phone number and dodge his good-night kiss. All the King's Men was a blind date for me. I didn't know what I was getting into, but I thought I'd give it a shot. I walked in to the restaurant, saw the guy looking expectantly at the door and thought "Dang. This doesn't look good." I sat down, planning an early escape to the restroom and out the back way, when he pleasantly surprised me. He made me laugh. He held my interest. He made me feel. ...

There's something comforting about the cadence of fairy tales... the rhythm and repetition give you advanced warning of the story's direction and remind me of the beloved stories of my childhood. The Robber Bridgegroom is a modern American interpretation of the Grimm Brothers tale. Before I read Welty's version, I printed out a copy of the original (well, not original, because I don't read German, but you know) and it was extremely grotesque, as one can only expect from the grim Brothers Grimm. The story featured cannibalism and the mutilation of young maidens, but luckily Welty left out most of the blood and guts in her telling. Set along the Old Natchez Trace trail in Mississippi, TRB is a cross between a fairy tale and an American tall-tale. Many of the old staples we come to expect from a fairy tale were included, but some with a twist: a beautiful lonely blonde maiden who sits by her window at night and sings about finding her true love (but...

I finished The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn yesterday and thought that was quite fortuitous timing, since yesterday was the first day of Banned Books Week, and Huck has been one of the most banned/censored books in America. Huck is commonly banned because of its frequent use of the "N" word. But what would the dissenters ask that Twain call black people in his book? He can't call them African Americans, that's for sure, and issue would probably be taken with anything he called them. It's a part of America's oft-times ugly history and slavery and racism are sad and ugly things. But in the interest of realism and of accurately expressing the era in which the book is set, and the society that Jim and Huck are up against, why should Twain be censored?  Instead of censoring Huck for the "N" word, why isn't the focus on what I think is the true beauty of the novel? Despite the teachings ingrained in Huck by society, by his elders,  the c...

After the sit-in, all I could think of was how sick Mississippi whites were. They believed so much in the segregated Southern way of life, they would kill to preserve it. I sat there in the NAACP office and thought of how many times they had killed when this way of life was threatened. I knew that the killing had just begun... Before the sit-in, I had always hated the whites in Mississippi. Now I knew it was impossible for me to hate sickness. The whites had a disease, an incurable disease in its final stages. What were our chances against such a disease?  Martin Luther King, Jr. is the face most commonly associated with the Civil Rights movement. He was an idealist, an optimist, a dreamer, a preacher. He preached a message of hope and faith, not despair. Anne Moody, the author of Coming of Age in Mississippi , is a very different personality from the idealistic Reverend King. In her memoir, she frequently comes across as bitter and angry and pessimistic. Relationally, she's s...

I've always gotten a kick out of Mark Twain. His dry sense of humor really works for me. These are some classic Twain quotations that have always tickled my funny bone: C lothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow. I defy anyone to read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and not laugh out loud, or at the very least, grin stupidly. If you can, I don't want to be your friend. I've always thought I'd be a good mom to a passel of (no scratch that... I mean one or two ) mischievous little boys. And with a few tiny tweaks, Tom Sawyer is pretty much the epitome of perfect American boyhood. I laughed out loud so much reading this that I had to read passages out loud for Nathan to appreciate, too. But then we were both laughing so hard that I couldn't keep reading. This is my favorite funny passage. Tom is trying to win Becky Thatcher's affection and has succeeded in meeting her ...

I attacked As I Lay Dying , not as a leisurely read, but as a code to be cracked. I've been frightened of Faulkner for many years now, but as it turns out, my fear was misplaced. I should have been dreading Thomas Wolfe instead. This was actually a really fast read: I read it in only a few hours on Saturday and Sunday, holding the book in my left hand, ta king notes with my right. I like to give myself the occasional literary challenge in my efforts to call myself "well-read." This was one of those challenges (although it seems to be on the required reading lists of many high school sophomores... I guess I'm a decade overdue). My favorite kind of book is one in which I can forget myself and become lost in the pages; this was definitely not that. This was a book where I had to be focused the whole time, read and re-read passages, flip back a few pages, consult my notes, and pause to ponder. I hate this book's cover. What is with that lady's expressio...

1. I love her name. 2. I love the title. 3. I love this cover. 4. I did not love this book. I was reading this on my lunch break the other day and someone I work with said, "Flannery O'Connor... now that's some Southern craziness." And that's exactly what this collection of short stories is... Southern craziness. I don't generally read non-fiction or short stories for the same reason. They don't typically hold my interest because it's hard to feel an emotional attachment to cold hard facts or characters that will disappear in 27 pages. But these stories were well crafted, and if I didn't like the morbidity of the stories, at least that made them suspenseful and interesting: Who's gonna die in this one? I hastily tacked a "2 out of 5 stars" rating on goodreads, but then I reconsidered my rating. Flannery's stories are all about family tension, race, faith, and class issues in the South in the tumultuous era of the 1950...

On one of the hottest days last summer, Nathan and I went on an excursion to Gettysburg National Military Park. Despite the 90-degree-plus temperatures, I remember getting goosebumps when we stood at the marker denoting the location of the Union line when thousands of Confederates pl unged across a mile-wide field in the infamous Pickett's Charge. When I closed my eyes, I could imagine a sea of bedraggled gray rushing across the bare field to almost certain death. I wish I had written down the quotation that was on the plaque at that spot, spoken by one of the Union soldiers who survived the battle; this is the best that I can reconstruct it: "Watching those soldiers cross that field, I couldn't help but be proud that these brave men--rebels or not--were my countrymen." Goosebumps! For this reason alone--that countryman fought countryman--the Civil War will never cease to fascinate. But there are other reasons--some subtle, some obvious--why the Civil War ...

This is the story of a teenage boy, an old man, and a town. The boy is going through the growing pains of adolescence. The old man is experiencing the growing pains of age. The town, Cold Sassy Tree, Georgia, is scandalized by their adventures and shenanigans in a way that only a small town can be. It is through the teenage voice of Will Tweedy that we learn that his grandpa, E. Rucker Blakeslee, remarries when his first wife, Will's Granny, is barely three weeks dead. Miss Love Simpson is less than half Mr. Blakeslee’s age and a Yankee to boot! [dontcha just lovelovelove the names of these characters? Is that Southern for ya, or what?] Of course, the family and the town are in an uproar and Will is thrust into the middle of the action as a confidante and friend to both Grandpa Blakeslee and Miss Love. Cold Sassy Tree is a lesser-known Southern classic, set in the days when old men walked the South with the wounds of the Confederacy evident on their bodi...

From Pat Conroy to one of Conroy's literary influences: Thomas Wolfe. And maybe this was a bad move on my part. I can see the same pomposity (I looked it up this time. It is a word; pompousness is also correct) in Wolfe's writing that I disliked in Conroy's. They say writers live in Mississippi because of Faulkner; they live in Asheville because of Thomas Wolfe. Look Homeward, Angel is a huge autobiographical novel about a boy growing up in Western North Carolina in the beginning of the 20th century. Wolfe's editor was the famed Maxwell Perkins, the editor of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway. So why have the works of F. Scottie and Ernie entered the American literary canon, but old Tommy's books haven't? Apparently Wolfe was incredibly successful in his time, both critically and with the public. But that popularity hasn't lasted. I hadn't really heard about him until I read the inside cover of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn recently. Betty Smith said she ...

Set in a military institute (the Citadel in everything but name), this was a suspenseful novel about one cadet and his experiences at the "Institute." I couldn't get past the idea that the main character, Will McLean, was Conroy in everything from his self-deprecating and sarcastic sense of humor, his love for basketball, and his ambivalence toward military life. And indeed, Will probably is a thinly veiled Conroy. I liked Will in a lot of ways, but I don't think I would like Conroy as a person, even though I couldn't get away from connecting the two. Is that weird? The story is set in the 60s and Will, being one of the few non-racist cadets, is given the task of helping the first black cadet integrate into the Institute safely, without excess hazing from all of the thousands of other racist cadets. Why is Will the only cadet to have an acute sense of justice? If Will is a mirror of the author, Conroy must have an inflated view of himself. Will was the funny guy,...

I've always felt that reading and travel enhance each other. I read about witches and pilgrims in Massachusetts; when Emma Bovary pined: "What was it like, Paris?" I was on a bench in one of Paris' manicured gardens, reveling in what it was like ; I laughed reading Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods beside our campfire in Smoky Mountain National Park. To enrich our camping trip to the Deep South this fall, I'm making an effort to dig into Southern Lit. Some of the books will be frivolous and fun, like Fried Green Tomatoes ; others will be weightier: Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe and Blood Done Sign My Name . I'm even venturing into the intimidating world of Faulkner: As I Lay Dying (I've been too scared to try anything by Faulkner before, but it is time, my dear, it is time.) This reading project dovetails nicely with another ongoing one entitled "Read-all-the-books-I-didn't-finish-in-English-class-or-worse-yet,-haven't-read-at-a...