“My point is not so much that a Mississippi story is better than a Michigan story, of course. Such is not always true, obviously. Besides, Eudora Welty could write circles around Ring Lardner on any terrain. But her region, so populous with talk, gives her an obnoxious advantage, one which she exercises with complete skill and insight.”

My wife is not a southerner. She speaks English, and I could add that she has a couple of degrees in linguistics. Nonetheless, since she has moved South, I have spent much of my time as translator, explaining the region’s strangely idiomatic and deflective language.