But even when reading the works of the established, accoladed authors, as much as I've loved some of their works, I'm usually left with an unsettled feeling that somehow, I'm not truly Southern because I don't always feel the deep-seated sense of hopelessness and lethargy that seems to be an underlying theme in much of Southern literature.
Yeah, that's exactly the sense. Flannery O'Connor always leaves me with a sense of restlessness, like even the vaguely happy endings aren't truly happy, so much as, "well, there it is." The majority of Southern/regional writers have that sense, for that matter. A sort of longing, a bit of melancholy like somehow the best days are already past. I think a lot of that has to do with the mythos of a region being built on what-we-don't-got-now, which is really rather... sad, in itself, and self-defeating, as well.
One thing I did realize when studying this stuff was that the romanicization really freaking backfired, in one respect: if we didn't have the dominant culture going on and on about how 'wonderful' and 'idyllic' such slave-powered agrarian-based life was, some aspects of the South wouldn't be so hellbent, even now, on rising. They'd be aware that there's nothing to rise to, nothing all that great to go back to. What the South had was a massive stratification of wealth, with huge division between very rich and very poor, and the very rich weren't all that many anyway, and the rest of us were basically missing teeth and raising pigs and not all that much to write home about. Who the hell wants to rise again and reclaim that? But no, we've got a mythos that insists we were genteel, wealthy, happy, content, a freaking garden of goddamn eden or something, so it's no surprise to me that 150+ years later people are still muttering here and there about it -- and that, IMO, is the Northern writers' and readers' own goddamned fault for creating, encouraging, and perpetuating a mythos to the point that the South swallowed it as well -- and you'd think the Southerners reading these works (who were easily old enough to remember exactly what it'd been like, for realz) would've known better!
Then again, in the midst of Reconstruction, I guess even a pipedream of the past was better than the reality of the present, especially with the total lack of real significant economic assistance or rebuilding that might've given people hope about the future. Makes me just the tiniest bit bitter about how the US helped rebuild both Germany and Japan after WWII: the US freely and generously gave of time, energy, and expertise to build those countries into major economic powers, but it couldn't bloody well be bothered to do it for half its own population.
And they wonder why the South still rankles, sometimes, even these generations later. Katrina was just the exclamation mark at the end of a very bad, very unfunny joke.
I'm not even touching Anne Rice -- that woman is a an entire series of posts all to herself!
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Date: 1 Dec 2009 09:06 pm (UTC)Yeah, that's exactly the sense. Flannery O'Connor always leaves me with a sense of restlessness, like even the vaguely happy endings aren't truly happy, so much as, "well, there it is." The majority of Southern/regional writers have that sense, for that matter. A sort of longing, a bit of melancholy like somehow the best days are already past. I think a lot of that has to do with the mythos of a region being built on what-we-don't-got-now, which is really rather... sad, in itself, and self-defeating, as well.
One thing I did realize when studying this stuff was that the romanicization really freaking backfired, in one respect: if we didn't have the dominant culture going on and on about how 'wonderful' and 'idyllic' such slave-powered agrarian-based life was, some aspects of the South wouldn't be so hellbent, even now, on rising. They'd be aware that there's nothing to rise to, nothing all that great to go back to. What the South had was a massive stratification of wealth, with huge division between very rich and very poor, and the very rich weren't all that many anyway, and the rest of us were basically missing teeth and raising pigs and not all that much to write home about. Who the hell wants to rise again and reclaim that? But no, we've got a mythos that insists we were genteel, wealthy, happy, content, a freaking garden of goddamn eden or something, so it's no surprise to me that 150+ years later people are still muttering here and there about it -- and that, IMO, is the Northern writers' and readers' own goddamned fault for creating, encouraging, and perpetuating a mythos to the point that the South swallowed it as well -- and you'd think the Southerners reading these works (who were easily old enough to remember exactly what it'd been like, for realz) would've known better!
Then again, in the midst of Reconstruction, I guess even a pipedream of the past was better than the reality of the present, especially with the total lack of real significant economic assistance or rebuilding that might've given people hope about the future. Makes me just the tiniest bit bitter about how the US helped rebuild both Germany and Japan after WWII: the US freely and generously gave of time, energy, and expertise to build those countries into major economic powers, but it couldn't bloody well be bothered to do it for half its own population.
And they wonder why the South still rankles, sometimes, even these generations later. Katrina was just the exclamation mark at the end of a very bad, very unfunny joke.
I'm not even touching Anne Rice -- that woman is a an entire series of posts all to herself!