Paul V. Murphy. The Rebuke of History: The Southern Agrarians and American Conservative Thought. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. xii + 351 pp. $25.00, paper, ISBN 978-0-8078-4960-6.

Thomas A. Underwood. Allen Tate: Orphan of the South. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001. viii + 447 pp. $35.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-691-06950-0.

Reviewed by Steve Wall

Published on H-South (December, 2002)

The Continuing Importance of Allen Tate and of the Southern Agrarian tome, I'll Take My Stand, the Southern Agrarians as well as the subsequent and uneven infuence Some recent commentators on Southern intel‐ the Agrarian movement has exerted on American lectual history and literature have attempted to conservative thought. Underwood by contrast ex‐ reduce the importance of writers like William amines Allen Tate's life up to the year 1938, with Faulkner and the Southern Agrarians by claiming the attendant promise that the rest of Tate's life that their perceived role and infuence has been will be presented soon. Both books are thoroughly exaggerated. These two very diferent books are researched, and Underwood boasts of having indications that this efort has been unsuccessful. unimpeded and unprecedented access to Tate's personal letters. Thomas Underwood is introduced as being an independent scholar from Texas, while Paul Mur‐ Underwood takes the position that Tate con‐ phy's book is a revision of his dissertation from sidered himself an orphan due to his mother's dis‐ Indiana University. Murphy and Underwood cov‐ honesty about his forebears and birthplace, and er much similar ground, but have diferent focus‐ was primarily motivated during these early years es. Murphy looks at the goals and positions held to locate a family, a home, and an identity. Under‐ by the Agrarians and the reasons for the writing wood tries very hard to drive home this interpre‐ H-Net Reviews tation: he makes abundant use of familial words ties to the South, he reconsidered the modernism like orphan, home, family, mother, father, and in his poetry" (p. 135), but he appears to qualify brethren in the book's title and in chapter head‐ that assertion by stating, "The Tates found that ings. I think Underwood makes too much of this London did not satisfy their Southern tastes" (p. supposed overriding motivation because if Tate 140). The latter comment suggests that Tate al‐ was uniquely concerned to locate a family and a ready possesses the strong Southern identity that home, what can be said regarding the other Mod‐ Underwood claims he was now developing. ernists and Agrarians? The desire to fnd a myth The point I am trying to make can be crystal‐ that compensates for the fractures produced by lized by examining the following lines: (1) Under‐ modernity goes back to the nineteenth century at wood claims that Tate has "new Southern alle‐ least. In his work, Murphy also uses headings that giances" (p. 140), (2) but also that "Tate's South‐ suggest loss: for example, exile, Americanized ernness made him feel equally self-conscious Nowhere, and identity. among the prominent writers living in Britain" Underwood also suggests that as part of his (p. 141), and (3) that Tate experienced a Southern desire to fnd a place to belong, Tate in efect be‐ "reversion" (p. 143). The terms that Underwood came a Southerner, and that once Tate was at uses do not mean the same things. Line 1 means peace with himself, particularly after the publica‐ that a new allegiance exists where one previously tion of his novel The Fathers in 1938, his devotion did not; line 2 means that Tate's Southern identity to the Southern cause began to diminish. Tate was is so ingrained that he feels uncomfortable able to work in Minnesota, the implication being around non-Southerners; and line 3 seems to pur‐ that working in Minnesota was not possible for port that Tate originally held Southern views, lost someone completely devoted to the South. them, and is now returning to them. I think Un‐ I disagree with Underwood's presentation of derwood's difculty in having these inconsistent the notion that Tate assumed a Southern identity descriptions comport with each other lies in his merely to ward of his sense of not really belong‐ attempt to have Tate's life comport with his or‐ ing anywhere, and that he easily cast it of once it phan thesis; instead, Tate's allegiance to the South was no longer needed. As Underwood phrases it: was earlier and stronger than Underwood allows. "[Tate] gained both an identity and a family by an‐ On more personal matters, Tate's experience swering the question that had vexed him since in Paris with the writers of the Lost Generation childhood: How could he be a genuine son of the was mixed. Underwood fnds that Ernest Heming‐ South when he felt like an orphan?" (p. 5) I think way respected Tate as a critic if not a poet, that Underwood's own words belie his efort to so in‐ Tate and F. Scott Fitzgerald mutually disliked each terpret Tate's motivations. For example, regarding other, and that Tate found Gertrude Stein egoma‐ the justness of the South's war for independence, niacal. When she informed him that "No South‐ Tate said to fellow Fugitive and Agrarian Donald erner can aford to know any history," he sur‐ Davidson: "'We should be a separate nation'" (p. mised that she was an "ignorant old bitch" (p. 130). Underwood also writes, "Tate's vindication 147). Underwood also relates his relationships of General Jackson gave him an opportunity to with other members of the literati; his relation‐ vent his hostility toward Northerners who wrote ships with wife, fellow writer and Agrarian fel‐ Southern history" (p. 131). Tate's Southern senti‐ low-traveler Caroline Gordon and daughter Nan‐ ments seem to be rather strong--indeed, much too cy; and his conversion to Catholicism. Given his strong to have been recently formed. Underwood access to Tate's documents, Underwood's book is continues, "As Tate began forming stronger loyal‐ quite useful on these more personal matters. The

2 H-Net Reviews reader encounters an Allen Tate who could be Lincoln to a critical evaluation that was uncon‐ quite headstrong. Where I think Underwood fails ventional. Not content to accept the conventional is in his efort to minimize Tate's early and strong mythology about Lincoln's magnanimity and po‐ attachment to the South. litical greatness, Bradford asserted instead that As for the Southern Agrarian movement it‐ Lincoln was dictatorial, hypocritical, racist, and self, both Underwood and Murphy discuss its used explosive rhetoric for the sole purpose of el‐ background and history. Murphy reviews the evating his region's interests and ambitions (p. events surrounding the formation of the Agrarian 233). Murphy reviews the trouble that Bradford's group; he identifes their despair about the anti-Lincolnian sentiments brought him during North's imposition of industrialism and standard‐ the period he was being considered to head the ization on the South, and the lack of room for an National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) in aesthetic and religious life. Although many North‐ the early 1980s. Ultimately, Bradford's name was ern and New South critics dismissed them as reac‐ withdrawn from consideration. (In an ironic tionary and nostalgic, their message resonated touch, recent studies of Lincoln have arrived at (and continues to resonate) with later thinkers. assessments remarkably similar to Bradford's.) Murphy's title, The Rebuke of History, is taken Another thinker that Murphy discusses who from Robert Penn Warren's observation at the has incurred the wrath of conventional academics Fugitives' reunion in 1956 that "The past is always for his championing of Southern conservatism as a rebuke to the present" (p. 1). Murphy shows that a bulwark against the market economy is Eugene while the Fugitive-Agrarians were a political fail‐ Genovese. What makes Genovese's interpretations ure, they achieved great success in the academic so compelling is that he is a Northerner and a and cultural realms. (former) Marxist. Murphy's treatment of Gen‐ Murphy details how the ideas advanced by ovese's experience is intriguing and elucidating. this group continue to be infuential. There are lit‐ These two studies of the fgures involved in erally hundreds of dissertations, articles, and the Southern Agrarian movement are worthy ad‐ books addressed to their ideas. Among the many ditions to the mountains of research already un‐ thinkers who have incorporated some of their no‐ dertaken. Both Underwood and Murphy contrib‐ tions or who have associated with the Agrarians ute to an understanding of the continuing impor‐ are Richard M. Weaver, William F. Buckley, Rus‐ tance of this group of poets, critics, novelists, sell Kirk, M. E. Bradford, Louis Rubin, Thomas philosophers, and teachers whose merit, despite Fleming, Walter Berry, and Eugene Genovese. As the changes society has undergone, persists. Murphy shows, frequently many of the original Agrarian principles were diluted or even altered by later followers. These controversial ideas are bound to be up‐ setting to someone, and one example that conveys the continuing importance of the Southern Agrari‐ an ideals involves M. E. Bradford. Bradford was infuenced by the philosophers Edmund Burke, Michael Oakeshott and Eric Voegelin in addition to the Agrarians. This eclectic political mix con‐ tributed to Bradford's embrace of a Southern tra‐ ditionalism that included subjecting Abraham

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Citation: Steve Wall. Review of Murphy, Paul V. The Rebuke of History: The Southern Agrarians and American Conservative Thought. ; Underwood, Thomas A. Allen Tate: Orphan of the South. H-South, H- Net Reviews. December, 2002.

URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=6979

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