Southern Writers

I have been working on Look Homeward, Angel over the past couple weeks and find myself asking the question, "Why do Southern writers seem to always write about the dregs of Southern culture?" Erskine Caldwell wins the prize (at least thus far) in making Southerners look like a bunch of inbred freaks, but Faulkner wasn't far behind him. And I have to admit, though I am held in awe by his use of language, even Wolfe spends much of his time crawling around in the slop bucket of the culture. If many people have read this stuff there is no wonder everyone thinks we are a sub-human species.

Perhaps I am sheltered, but the South that they are writing about intersects with mine almost nowhere. Sure, there is plenty enough dysfunction in my life and in the lives of many of my friends, but I guess one of the big parts of being Southern is that we don't talk about that so much. I wish that there were more Southern novelists that approached the region more like Don Williams did in his music. Perhaps I am just looking for someone who will portray the South through the eyes of a child. (Even though Thomas Wolf's main character was a child, he was a precocious one that understood more than he should have!)

I suppose that there are some that manage to write about the South that I am more familiar with. Truman Capote's story "A Christmas Memory" comes a lot closer to what I am looking for. And even though he can be critical of the South and its attitudes, Mark Twain captures some of the goodness of it too. The Education of Little Tree by Forrest Carter is also pretty fair in its treatment of the South and Appalachian culture.

Perhaps it is time for me to write the great American novel. I wish I had started 18 months ago. By now I might have been finished! The trick is writing something that is distinctively Southern and complimentary that still has enough of a crisis to drive the plot. I have actually been ruminating on an idea that may be robust enough to work. Now I need to do a little planning so that putting pen to paper - or in this case fingers to keyboard - won't be so daunting.

I have more practical book ideas too that would require some creative writing as well. I have started on one already, but it was put aside in the activity of real estate survival, and I haven't picked it back up. Yes, it may be time to do something with these ideas.

Finished!

I finished Louis Armstrong's autobiography last week. It was a great read. It seems fairly evident that he did most of the writing. The style was very warm and personable. This book made it seem as if you were sitting there chatting with Satchmo himself.

I would only have one criticism. The book ends rather abruptly. It ends at an appropriate place, but literally the last page of the text is the last page in the book. I found myself wondering if some pages were missing when I got to the last page. I don't think that any were missing, but that may give you an idea of just how abrupt the conclusion was.

It is clear from this book that Louis grew up in a very hard place. It is a wonder that he survived. Reading his story made me more grateful for my rather sheltered upbringing. I think that you will be amazed at the seeming negative turn of events that led him to taking up the cornet.

I was really amazed by his attitudes about some of the things that he had to endure when he lived in New Orleans. How much his attitude was influenced by the realization that the racist attitudes that brought about the Jim Crow laws were still very much present when he wrote this in the early 1950s (It was copyrighted 1954.) I don't know. You do get momentary glimpses that he did care about the way white people treated him, but you have to read between the lines a little bit. However, overall you do get the feeling that he tended to let most things just roll off of his back.

As you read you will find that he was no angel, but his story made it clear that he believed in treating people with respect and trying to get along with everyone. I feel sure that I would have loved to get to know him. Based on some comments that he made early in the book, it would seem that I may get my chance eventually!

Update On The Web Page

Well, I am nearly done with my internet education - at least the "bachelor's degree!" I have about 5 more modules to finish on CSS and hopefully I will be able to figure out what I am doing enough to actually build MY web page.

I must say that I have been learning a lot. Perhaps you have noticed some of the formatting changes that I have been making to the blog here. Well, you probably didn't notice them. Most are pretty subtle, but I am finding the blog a good place to practice both my HTML and CSS.

Yesterday I downloaded some weather extensions to use on my Joomla site. Hopefully they won't be too hard to figure out or configure. I am really starting to chomp at the bit as I see the end of the tunnel on the "classroom" phase of this endeavor. Soon the real learning will begin.

Overall, I have found the tutorials at the World Wide Web Consortium to be very helpful, but I must say that not all of the creators of the tutorials are equally skilled. It has been more evident in the tutorials for CSS. Most of them give you the syntax fine, but not all of the creators do a good job of explaining all of the details or the rationale behind some of the things that they are showing you. (Tip: if you decide to check out the tutorials, make sure that you click through to the examples. Some of them contain information that you don't get anywhere else on the website.)

I have found Elizabeth Castro's book HTML, XHTML, & CSS: Sixth Edition helpful in understanding rationale in using some of the different elements and techniques. It hasn't proven the most helpful to me to learn the languages (it isn't hands on enough for that) but it has been invaluable in helping me to understand what is in the world of website design versus what should be (at least according to the w3 group) in the world of website design. I am confident that it will also prove (along with my notes from the tutorials) to be a very useful reference.

Hopefully, the next time I update you on my progress, I will be finished with the tutorials and looking for extensions to make my webzine a reality.

For the First Time Ever...

I have just begun reading Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward Angel. I am not even 20 pages into it and I'm already hooked. Dang! This guy could write.

I am actually torn between reading for general effect and reading for full comprehension. I think that I will read it faster for the general effect. Later I can come back to it and revisit. This is a book that I believe that I can read and enjoy more than once. I can't believe that I have never been required to read Wolfe in all my years of education. Even in my Southern Writers class we read Faulkner instead - FAULKNER!

It took me years just to read Faulkner and understand him - I was afflicted with him as a senior in High School too. Why is it that people always believe the most twisted perverse things about the South? It is because of the likes of William Faulkner and Erskine Caldwell. Thank God I didn't have to read Tobacco Road. I saw it for the first time last year at the Triad Stage in Greensboro (who, by the way, do a great job with their productions) and was utterly appalled. It was the most revolting thing I have ever seen called art. Caldwell had a chip on his shoulder and the South has been paying for it since.

OK, I'm calm again. I actually can see why Faulkner's writing has been praised. He captured - at least in Absalom, Absalom, the way Southern people tell stories. I just wish that his characters hadn't been so bizarre. If you've never read Faulkner before, there is a trick to it. See, when Faulkner wrote he would often insert parenthetical ideas that could literally last for PAGES before finishing the original sentence. The effect was something like this: (Forgive me, I'm a bit out of practice. I could do it perfectly in college.)

Salisbury was (Can't you remember that time that we went down to O.O. Rufty's General store? You know that time when the radiator hose busted there on East Innes Street. There we all were trying to get that blamed thing off the truck with everyone and his brother standing around gawkin' at us. Don't you remember how Uncle Jim burned his hand on the steam? I'll never forget how they used to have the buckets of seed right there in the walkway between the display cases as you entered the door. I always thought the pink corn was neat and liked the feel of it slipping through my fingers before my dad made me put it down on account of the poison that had been put on it to keep the birds from eating it.

That store was a veritable wonderland inside. They had things in there that must have been there since the store was opened just after the Civil War. There were farm implements and notions, old toys, hardware, clothing, doo dads, and thingamabobs, tools, housewares, fertilizer and all manner of other fascinating treasure. And in the air hung a pungent, earthy smell. I guess it came from the dirt that was ground into the hard wood floors and the farm chemicals.

Of course my favorite part was the drink coolers that they had there just inside the front door - you know, the big square chests that slid open at the top and contained bottled drinks. Not the kind of drinks they have now in the plastic bottles; glass bottles with metal bottle caps that didn't twist off. There was a bottle opener right on the front of the cooler. We always drank it right there so we didn't have to pay the 10¢ bottle deposit. Somehow a drink tasted better drinking it there in the lobby of O. O. Rufty's.

Thank goodness they had that radiator hose too. We'd a been in a fix if they hadn't. We were able to get the truck fixed and back home before supper.) a lot different when I was growing up there. Everything was a lot more laid back and slower paced. Everybody knew everyone....

That was typical of most everything that I ever read of Faulkner's with the exception that the characters are fairly normal and no one is doing anything scandalous in the back room. By the time you get to the end of the sentence that started four paragraphs ago you have completely forgotten what was being said.

The secret to reading Faulkner is to read until you get to a parenthesis and then skip on down to the end of the parenthetical phrase. Read the rest of the original sentence and then go back and finish the stuff in between. Get used to doing it. You won't read far without needing to. Sometimes it seemed like he even put parentheses inside of parentheses! The thing about it, though, is that if you listen to Southerners telling a story that's generally the way they do it.

I suppose that it is a little early in my reading of the story to be extolling Wolfe over Faulkner - only 20 pages in and one of the main characters turns out to be an alcoholic. But there is something different in the portrayal so far - something different in the presentation. It is being done respectfully, I guess. It isn't the South that is making him this way. It is his own generational demons that are driving him. I am truly shocked that I am already engaged with this book. I am already empathizing with the characters. I think this is going to be a very enjoyable read.

Good Progress

I have made very good progress on my web design project today. I finally have a layout that I am pleased with and will be putting the finishing touches on it tomorrow before I start showing it around some to get others' opinions. There is still much work to be done on it - like making the buttons work, finding the html widgets that I want, and actually publishing it to the site, but I am pleased that I seem to be learning the software at a reasonable pace. I am tired of sitting at the computer, but I am simultaneously pleased with the achieved result. I'm sure that I will be sharing it with you soon.

I have just completed 1776 by David McCullough. I've had it on my "to be read" list for over a year now and finally dove in. It wasn't quite the riveting read that I expected, but was good nonetheless.

I realized quickly how little I actually know about the the Revolutionary War. As a young boy (before I was 7 years old) I had a great interest in the stories about this war, most likely spurred on by re-runs of Daniel Boone. (No, I'm not quite old enough to have seen them first run.) Unfortunately, history books written about the Revolution at an elementary school reading level were pretty hard to come by back then. I doubt it is any different now. How many 7-year-olds are interested in Revolutionary history? I suppose a bit of my interest was also driven by the fact that I was 7-years-old in 1976.

One of the things that struck me as I read was that the British weren't the baby-eating demons that I had imagined them to be (at least not during the period of the war covered by the book - although there was mention of a number of atrocities carried out.) At times their generosity and concern for the well-being of "the colonies" was not unlike our own concern for those that our armies have encountered. The main fault of the British seemed to be their arrogance.

I was also struck by some of the similarities that I saw between America at the time of the Revolution and America today. The British were arrogantly secure in their belief that as the world's greatest superpower they couldn't be beaten by a ragamuffin army like the one fielded by America. They were wrong. There is no doubt in my mind that our military is the greatest on the earth, but we would do well to learn from the lesson we taught the British when they were in a similar situation.

Another similarity is that America was as greatly divided then as it is today. There were major fundamental differences between the Tories (or Loyalists) viewed things and the way that the Patriots (or Rebels) viewed things - Conservative versus Radical all over again. The only difference I would suggest is that the conservatives are on the right side this time. (I dare say they believed that they were on the right side that time!)

Politics was just as convoluted then as it is now. Nobody seemed capable to get anything done in Congress. We KNOW that hasn't changed.

Finally there was also the general apathy of the populace towards victory or defeat. The future lay in the hands of a handful of soldiers - some as young as 14. One quote by Colonel William Tudor about Washington struck me particularly. To his wife he wrote:

I cannot desert a man (and it would certainly be desertion in a court of honor) who has deserted everything to defend his country, and whose chief misfortune, among ten thousand others, is that a large part of it wants spirit to defend itself.

My, my, my, how history does repeat itself. His condemnation could have been written of the defeatists in the Congress, on the campaign trail, and in the media this year, self-serving cowards that they are. It is truly a shame that history is so neglected in our schools (and culture) today, and it is sad that so few realize the dear price payed for our liberties today.

God bless our troops and God bless America. Honor the veterans that you know this weekend.