The recent, easy popularity of Divine Secrets of The Ya-Ya Sisterhood reminds us why no Lee Smith title appears on the multiplex marquis. She offers no Southerners from central casting, no soundbite stories, no smooth studio pitch, although Roy Blount came close when he once said that reading Lee Smith was like “reading Madame Bovary […]
J.M. Lucas
Posted inArt
Exposed Roots
The 25th anniversary of the mini-series Roots prompted Stanley Crouch to devote a recent New York Daily News column to the hushed Roots hoax. Alex Haley’s book would have been a viable commercial novel, but its publisher had chosen not to market it that way. The 1976 book and the mini-series that followed a year […]
Posted inArt
Reconstruction
In the preface to New Stories from the South 2001, Lee Smith offers her sushi bar (yes, hers–she’s part owner) as a “little case study in the New South.” Originally Carrboro’s Elite Café, with separate dining rooms for white and colored, now, 50 years later, Akai Hana employs people whose diverse backgrounds include Hispanic, Burmese, […]
Posted inGuides
Ghosts of War
She wore lizard-skin boots to the grocery store and seduced a 12-year-old lawn mower thief. That’s how Padgett Powell introduced her in “Trick or Treat,” the opening story of his 1998 collection Aliens of Affection. Now, 10 years older, Mrs. Hollingsworth re-emerges as the title character of Powell’s sixth book. Her destination is still the […]
Posted inArt
Beyond Labels
Since its inception in 1987, the Fellowship of Southern Writers has carefully avoided identifying itself with any university, group or style of writing–so carefully, in fact, that its biennial meetings coincide with Chattanooga’s Conference on Southern Literature, a civic rather than academic venture. Knowing the care with which the group has sought neutrality, it’s tempting […]