Memoir
Dr. Julius Hibbert: “Yes, I remember Bart’s birth well. You don’t forget a thing like . . . SIAMESE TWINS!”Lisa Simpson: “I believe they prefer to be called ‘conjoined twins.’”Dr. Hibbert: “And hillbillies prefer to be called ‘Sons of the Soil,’ but it ain’t gonna happen!”—The Simpsons, season 8, “Treehouse of Horror” In an interview »
“Meier told me, ‘A Man Called White is worthless, nothing but lies.’ And then he walked off, unable, apparently, to suffer fools for much more than a minute.” In 1989, I was a graduate student just beginning research on the life of the historian Rayford Logan. Perhaps best remembered for popularizing the phrase “the Nadir” »
“Even as he turned to a form of largely conservative cultural commentary on all sorts of things, Reed retained a keen sociological consciousness.” Some months ago, I gave a talk on the American South at the University of Mississippi. During the question-and-answer session that followed, a southern historian noted the prominence of the “ubiquitous” (his »
“Reed burst on the southern scene in 1972 as a contrarian, and, as we know, he has remained very much a contrarian to this day.” Any understanding of John Shelton Reed’s legacy to the study of southern history should begin with an appreciation of his pivotal position within modern southern intellectual history itself. Reed burst »
“‘Southerners can’t grasp anything that isn’t couched in a Br’er Rabbit tale. They got cornmeal mush for brains.’” Epigraphs Assignment: In the epigraphs below, kindly circle the terms associated with abstraction, generality, anywhere, anyone, and Platonic idealism, and underline those associated with concretion, particularity, somewhere, someone, and Aristotelian materialism. The ideology of New Criticism began »
“The object of John’s climb is what is presumed to be a coon nestled among the giant sweet gum’s topmost branches.” When it comes to milking an anecdote, John Reed has no equal and few competitors. It seems appropriate, therefore, to begin an essay about his work with a story. In one of his best-known »
“It is the illusion of his style that Reed is a sort of good old boy, sitting on his porch, swigging his whiskey, going out the back to shoot hapless mammals.” I am commissioned here to discuss the influence of John Shelton Reed. But on whom? On historians of the American South, like myself? I »
“Nobody enjoys getting his tongue extended far into his cheek more than Reed, and few have such a reach.” As a fiction writer, I used to complain that sociology was the academic discipline most opposite, in some cases even most inimical, to literature. After all, the average sociologist seemed to conduct boring surveys that led »
“We were part of its community life. But we were Jewish, and not from the old families that had fought in the Confederate War.” The earliest dream I can remember is of gateposts. A pathway in Hampton Park leads along an open area to a line of low trees and thickets. Next to and beyond »