South toward home : travels in Southern literature / Margaret Eby.
Material type:
TextPublisher: New York : W.W. Norton & Company, [2015]Edition: First editionDescription: 240 pages : map ; 22 cmContent type: - text
- unmediated
- volume
- 0393241114
- 9780393241112
| Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Book
|
Dr. James Carlson Library | NonFiction | 810.9975 E16 | Available | 33111008109619 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
What is it about the South that has inspired so much of America's greatest literature? And why, when we think of Flannery O'Connor or William Faulkner or Harper Lee, do we think of them not just as writers, but as Southern writers? In South Toward Home, Margaret Eby--herself a Southerner--travels through the South in search of answers to these questions, visiting the hometowns and stomping grounds of some of our most beloved authors. From Mississippi (William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Richard Wright) to Alabama (Harper Lee, Truman Capote) to Georgia (Flannery O'Connor, Harry Crews) and beyond, Eby looks deeply at the places that these authors lived in and wrote about. South Toward Home reveals how these authors took the people and places they knew best and transmuted them into lasting literature.
Side by side with Eby, we meet the man who feeds the peacocks at Andalusia, the Georgia farm where Flannery O'Connor wrote her most powerful stories; we peek into William Faulkner's liquor cabinet to better understand the man who claimed civilization began with distillation and the "postage stamp of native soil" that inspired him; and we go in search of one of New Orleans's iconic hot dog vendors, a job held by Ignatius J. Reilly in John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces. From the library that showed Richard Wright that there was a way out to the courtroom at the heart of To Kill a Mockingbird, Eby grapples with a land fraught with history and mythology, for, as Eudora Welty wrote, "One place understood helps us understand all places better."
Combining biographical detail with expert criticism, Eby delivers a rich and evocative tribute to the literary South.
Includes bibliographical references.
Introduction -- Eudora Welty's Garden : Jackson, MS -- Richard Wright's Schoolhouse : Jackson, MS -- William Faulkner's Liquor Cabinet : Oxford, MS -- Flannery O'Connor's Peacocks : Milledgeville, GA -- Harry Crews's Hurricane Creek : Bacon County, GA -- Harper Lee and Truman Capote's Courthouse : Monroeville, AL -- John Kennedy Toole's Hot-Dog Carts : New Orleans, LA -- Barry Hannah and Larry Brown's Fishing Spot : Oxford, MS -- Coda.
"A literary travelogue that ventures deep into the heart of classic Southern literature. As the writer Elif Batuman did for Russian literature in The Possessed, Margaret Eby does for Southern literature in this charming book of literary exploration. From Mississippi (William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Richard Wright, Barry Hannah) to Alabama (Harper Lee, Truman Capote) to Georgia (Flannery O'Connor, Harry Crews) and beyond, Eby--herself a Southerner--travels through the Deep South to the places that famous Southern authors lived in and wrote about. South Toward Home reveals how they took these places and the lives of their inhabitants and transmuted them into lasting literature. Whether meeting the man in charge of feeding Flannery O'Connor's peacocks in Milledgeville, peering into Faulkner's liquor cabinet, or seeking out John Kennedy Toole's iconic hot dog vendors in New Orleans, Eby combines biographical detail with expert criticism to deliver a rich and evocative tribute to the literary South" -- Provided by publisher.