The Weighing of Daleville/Annie Dillard
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the new ouLeans ueviecv LOYOLA UNIVERSITY A Journal Of Vol. 4, No. 3 Literature & Culture table of contents Published By Loyola University of the South articles New Orleans Editor: Not for the "Smart-Set in Omaha"/Stephen R. Maloney .. 197 Marcus Smith fiction Managing Editor: Tom Bell The Hero and the Witness/David Madden ................ 206 Blood Song/Jessie Schell . 219 Associate Editors: Jesus Stories/Dennis Brackin ............................ 242 Peter Cangelosi Burning Boy/Sena Jeter Naslund ........................ 248 John Christman Buddy Rough/Martin Kirby . 260 Dawson Gaillard Lee Gary Ramon El Conejo/Natalie L. M. Petesch ................. 265 C. J. McNaspy Francis Sullivan interviews Advisory Editors: Jesus in the Brush Arbor/An Interview with Will Campbell 228 David Daiches The Water is Wide/An Interview with Pat Conroy ........ 257 James Dickey Walker Percy portfolio Joseph Fichter, S.J. Joseph A. Tetlow, S.J. Southern Revival/Jim Magdanz .......................... 233 Editor-at-Large: Alexis Gonzales, F.S.C. poetry Editorial Associate: The Facts of Light/P. B. Newman . 202 Christina Ogden Rynchops/P. B. Newman . 203 The Weighing of Daleville/Annie Dillard .................. 204 The New Orleans Review is pub Sovegna Vos/Myra Hambrick ............................ 205 lished quarterly by Loyola Uni The Loot/Eiecta Wiley ................................... 205 versity, New Orleans (70118) Orion/Keith Moul ............................... ........ 216 Subscription rate: $1.50 per For a Young Nephew, Traveling in Scandinavia/ copy; $6.00 per year; $10.00 for Larry Rubin ......................................... 217 2 years; $14.00 for 3 years. Instructions for Survivors of a Winter Storm/ Larry Rubin ................... ..................... 217 Advertising rate schedule avail "And We Made Love and Only the Sea Was Watching"/ able on request. Myra Hambrick ...................................... 224 Cold Harbor/Michael Mott . .............................. 225 Manuscripts cannot be returned The State of Georgia/Rosemary Daniell . 226 unless accompanied by a self Talking of Stars/Rosemary Daniell ....................... 227 addressed, stamped envelope. , All care will be taken to prevent Moon in Aquarius/Vaughn Duhamel ..................... 232 loss of manuscripts, but no re- Continuum/Kathryn Stripling ............................. 241 sponsibility can be assumed for All Children Should Be Fish/George F. Thompson ....... 245 unsolicited material. In the Meadow/Thomas Johnson ......................... 253 Seeing the Gulls, a Bridge, a Rainbow and Jellyfish, @1974 by Loyola University, Landlocked, in Georgia/Ruth Moon Kempher ........ 254 New Orleans. Whiffed/Ruth Moon Kempher ............................ 255 Fish/Ruth Moon Kempher ............................... 256 Manufactured in the United States of America New Bethlehem/Thomas Johnson ........................ 259 Hunting Monologue/Shael Herman ....................... 262 US ISSN 0028-6400 I sign the invoice/Shael Herman ......................... 263 The Future of Chance/Thomas Johnson ................. 270 Three Poets/John Allen Adams .......................... 271 Waiting/Pinkie Gordon Lane ............................. 272 MEMBER Spring/Pinkie Gordon Lane .............................. 273 (Qrg}3~~;; ~ COMMITTEE OF SMALL MAGAZINE reviews EDITORS AND PUBLISHERS lOX 70) SAN FRANCISCO. CA . 94101 Perspective/Dawson Gaillard ............................. 276 Books .................................................. 275 THE SOUTH IN THE 1970's "What is a Southerner?" I was asked in preparing to edit this issue. "Well, a Southerner is a person who was born in the South and whose imagination was nourished there.'' My questioner argued that a non-native could also be a Southerner. Certainly the South is not merely a geographic region, but is also a state of mind. What states of mind may be evidenced by the contents of this special issue, which-incidentally-contains writ ings by people who were not born in the South. My grateful thanks to Christina Dalrymple Ogden, without whom I would have limped painfully, and to Betsy Damhorst for her help and to Sr. Carol Reuss, whose advice was invaluable. Dawson Gaillard Special Editor: Southern Issue Not for the ''Smart-Set in Omaha'' The Georgia Review and Southern Literature* by Stephen R. Maloney INTERVIEWER: You wouldn't advise the life of the academy? of Eliot's remark that "there are no lost causes because there [SHELBY] FOOTE: I would advise against it as strongly as I are no gained causes." The causes which the Review has cham could. pioned, those of regionalism and localism, of classical Christian INTERVIEWER: Some of us have this problem. civilization and the humanities, appear on the verge of becom (From Kite-Flying and Other Irrational Acts: Conversations with ing fashionable, even "relevant." Twelve Southern Writers, ed. John Carr [L.S.U. Press, 1972], Which might distress the founder of the Review, John Donald p. 31). Wade. One of the remarkable poet-critics from Vanderbilt As Dr. Calvin Brown of the University of Georgia has said, University, Wade was a contributor to the Agrarian symposium, one of the worst metaphors spawned by our age is: "you can't I'll Take My Stand. When he founded the Review in 1947, turn back the clock." But of course we can-that is one of he knew that the critical quarterlies were becoming increasingly the good things about clocks. On the other hand, it is a risky "useless" (Tate's word) as the world measures use. 2 But Wade business talking about Southern literature in the 1970s, trying never cared very much what the world thought useful or to predict the shape of things to come. One point does appear relevant. In his second editorial, he announced that he could certain: much of that literature, Mr. Foote's advice notwith not see any reason "to publish here anything devised pointedly standing, will come from the colleges and universities. (Writers for the approval of the current smart set in Omaha. Or anywhere in the 1970s, like their predecessors, will have to eat, and else like Omaha,"-he meant New York I believe-"if one it is the universities which give us our daily bread.) Moreover, may say so ." 3 ln the first issue Wade announced that the Review unless the universities decide to put the "humanities out to would contain material of "special concern to Georgians" and grass," as one observer has predicted, much of the Southern that it would attempt to "indicate its persisting faith in country literature to come will appear in the university-supported quar men and even in villagers(!) and the way of life these people terlies, including ~he Georgia Review, the subject of this essay. follow" (1, 4). The shame and/or glory of Southern literature, depending Although Wade served as Review editor for only five years, on the particular critic's view, has always been its tendency he set its tone and pointed its future direction. His influence to look backward. And I shall make ample use of hindsight. continues. He believed strongly in the importance of place; As Walker Percy's Love in the Ruins instructs us, we may well he revered the local and regional. Interestingly enough, there prefer to look back rather than forward into some dystopian is a letter in the third issue to the editor from William Wallace future. The Georgia Review has always been a backward look Davidson, brother of Donald and third editor of the Review. ing journal, and not only in the "Confederate Gray" covers Davidson strongly endorsed Wade's regional commitments. which adorned it for twenty years. "It has become the fashion "Evidently the Georgia Review will not think that its first duty to deride it: its intellectualism, its traditionalism, its devotion is to please the New York critics-whose own provincialism to 'lost causes' .... " 1 Allen Tate, speaking here in 1936 on is the only provincialism they do not see fit to condemn" "The Function of the Critical Quarterly," was not referring (1, 268). Significantly, these comments of Wade's and David to the Georgia Review but toT. S. Eliot's Criterion, which Tate son's reiterate a major critical insight of Allen Tate's, one that ..Q calls "the best quarterly of our time." But his words are applic has served as the philosophical cornerstone of the continuing :J 0" Agrarian movement. In "The New Provincialism" (1945) Tate c able to the Review, not so much the best but the most consistent a:0 of the quarterlies in its singleness of purpose. More perhaps set up a contrast between "regionalism" and "world provin c cialism." 0 than any other journal the Review instructs us as to the meaning Q) _J *For Ed and Sally Krickel 197 The provincial attitude is limited in time but not in space. be subsidized; it either runs on a subsidy or it does not run," When the regional man, in his ignorance, often an intensive says Tate), has, since the days of Dr. Eidson, been asking two and creative ignorance, of the world, extends his own immediate necessities into the world, and assumes that the things: (1) that the number of subscribers be increased; (2) present moment is unique, he becomes the provincial man. that the "base be broadened." These requests, if honored, also He cuts himself off from the past, and without benefit of tend to diminish the regional, that is, Southern, nature of the the fund of traditional wisdom approaches the simplest prob Review. Editors tend to be pulled in two directions: they want lems of life as if nobody had ever heard of them before. to publish