South Toward Home
Travels in Southern Literature
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
"Fascinating…Eby lyrically uncovers a bit of the magic that makes a Southern writer Southern." —Josh Steele, Entertainment Weekly
What is it about the South that has inspired so much of America’s greatest literature? And why do we think of the authors it influenced not just as writers, but as Southern writers? In South Toward Home, Margaret Eby goes in search of answers to these questions, visiting the stomping grounds of ten Southern authors, including William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Richard Wright, Truman Capote, Harper Lee, and Flannery O’Connor. Combining biographical detail with expert criticism, Eby delivers a rich and evocative tribute to the literary South.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this literary tour of the American South, Eby focuses on the places and things central to Southern writers: meditating on Eudora Welty's garden, peeking into William Faulkner's liquor cabinet, and spending an afternoon with Flannery O'Connor's peacocks (or their replacements O'Connor's actual peacocks are long gone), among other stops. Eby travels to Oxford, Miss.; Natchez, Miss.; Milledgeville, Ga.; New Orleans; and several other stops on the tourist circuit of preserved homes, mini-museums, and bookish gift shops. Some writers tower over the communities they immortalized, while others are barely recognized or mentioned. Jackson, Miss., for instance, clearly prefers the easy sainthood of Welty to Richard Wright's more complex legacy. Eby writes thoughtfully about each author's books especially John Kennedy Toole's beloved A Confederacy of Dunces and, in a section about Harper Lee's reclusiveness, insightfully reflects on the meaning of and potential downsides to literary fandom. She occasionally falls back on flattering, idyllic tributes to her favorite authors. Nonetheless, these essays form a delightful love letter to the South and serve as an apt reminder that the South is no literary backwater, but a world of letters all its own.
