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THESouthern NEWSLETTER OF THE CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF SOUTHERN CULTURE •WRegisterINTER 2004 g THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI

2004 OXFORD CONFERENCE FOR THE BOOK oreyo apeladLiho McCool Leighton and Campbell of Courtesy otable authors, editors, publishers, and others in the trade as well as educators, literacy advocates, readers, and book lovers will gather for the 11th Oxford Conference for the Book, set for April 1-4, 2004. The program will begin on Thursday afternoon Nwith a panel, readings, and a special conference edition of Thacker Mountain Radio and continue through Sunday afternoon with addresses, panels, and readings. The 2004 conference will be dedicated to author Walker Percy (1916-1990) in recognition of his contributions to American letters. Two sessions will examine Percy’s life and work through discussions and comments by friends and literary scholars. Author and editor Paul Elie will present a lecture on Percy.A panel with the author’s daughter Mary Pratt Percy Lobdell, grandson Robert Livingston Lobdell, and Patricia Sullivan, English professor at the University of Colorado, will discuss Percy’s life and work. Dr. Luke Lampton will give a presentation about his extensive collection of Percy’s works. Another special part of the 2004 conference will be the celebration of Mildred D. Taylor Day in Mississippi. The April 2 program will bring young readers, teachers, parents, and others together to recognize the achievements of this outstanding author. (See page 5 for details.) Participating in the annual session celebrating National Poetry Month will be Jonathan Galassi, author of two poetry volumes, Morning Run and North; William Jay Smith, poetry consultant to the Library of Congress (the position now Illustrating 2004 Oxford Conference for the Book materials is Baxter Knowlton’s portrait of Walker Percy. The portrait is reproduced on posters and T-shirts available from the Center by (continued on page 4) calling 800-390-3527. Center for the Study of Southern Culture • The University of Mississippi P.O. Box 1848, University, MS 38677-1848 • telephone 662-915-5993 • fax 662-915-5814 • e- mail [email protected] Internet: http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/south

Oxford Tourism Council Square Books For tourist information call 800-758-9177 160 Courthouse Square • Oxford, MS 38655 telephone 800-468-4001 • 662-236-2262 • fax 662-234-9630 D IRECTOR’ S C OLUMN

Southern Register GARDENERS KNOW that winter is the time to see the framework of Published Quarterly by their gardens. With foliage gone and limbs bare, garden trees and shrubs appear in The Center for the Study of Southern Culture their essential skeletons. I look out my window and see the girth of a sturdy oak, the The University of Mississippi graceful branches of the spirea, the red bark on my Japanese maple, and the tough Telephone: 662-915-5993 tentacles of the spreading wisteria. Fax: 662-915-5814 The Center’s conferences and symposia similarly provide the framework for much of E-mail: [email protected] our work. They divide the year into seasons as we bridge the gaps between the academy Internet: http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/south and the broader public interested in the American South. Autumn is the time for the Southern Foodways Symposia, with weather usually nice enough to eat the marvelous IN THIS ISSUE food of the meeting outside in the Grove. This lively gathering every year extends our Winter 2004 interest in a newer area of Southern Studies, bringing an eclectic and utterly engaged group of people here. The fall also is time for the Porter L. Fortune Jr. History 1 2004 Oxford Conference for the Book Symposium, and I can usually count on it as the first time I will wear my tweeds for 2 Director’s Column cooler weather, while listening to the best scholars open up new directions in the study 3 Wharton Presentation of the South. Far different weather greets the loyal attendees of the Faulkner and 4 Gussow Wins Award for Blues Book Yoknapatawpha Conference in July, always among the hottest times of the summer, it 5 Mildred D. Taylor Day to Be seems. That conference similarly brings people who are deeply engaged with the Celebrated during Book Conference conference topic and enjoying the atmosphere of the small town Mississippi that produced our Nobel laureate. 6 Mississippi Delta Literary Tour February saw two symposia that represent new Center initiatives growing out of 8 Eudora Welty Program in Jackson our long-standing interest in literature and music. Kathryn McKee, one of our two 9 Susan Lee Talks on Her Photographs McMullan Southern Studies professors, and Annette Trefzer, assistant professor of 10 Student Photography Exhibition English, directed the U.S. South in Global Contexts Symposium, February 13-15. 11 Gammill Gallery Exhibition Schedule The meeting was part of an on-going dialogue among those of us in Southern 12 A Day in the Country Studies about the future direction of the field. Discussions focused on new theories and teaching methods in Southern Studies and on the exciting expansion of 12 SST Internship Endowment “Southern” to include sharper comparisons with Southern places beyond the 13 Reading the South: Reviews & Notes United States. We are eager to follow up this meeting with other activities to 18 SST Student Assists Marshall with extend our interest in this new direction in Southern Studies. Local Research Project Another of our Southern Studies professors, Adam Gussow, took the lead in directing 20 SFA Director on Food Network the second Blues Today Symposium, February 26-28. Adam works closely with the Living 21 Southern Foodways Alliance News Blues magazine staff in planning the symposium, which brings together performers, 24 2004 F&Y on “Material Culture” scholars, journalists, academics, music critics, and leaders in the music industry. The theme was “From Africa to Mississippi,” with sessions on Africa and the blues, blues 26 2005 F&Y: “Faulkner’s Inheritance” music today, and the history of Living Blues itself. A session on hip-hop, spoken word, and 26 2004 F&Y Elderhostel Program contemporary blues poetics linked traditional blues with newer forms of African 26 2004 F&Y Interhostel Program American music. Paul Oliver, a distinguished blues scholar, came from Britain to deliver 27 Mayfield Book on His Art and Life the keynote. A highlight of any season is a B. B. King concert, and he rocked the 28 2003 Mississippi Delta Tennessee Gertrude C. Ford Center for the Performing Arts. Williams Festival Report If these two symposia brightened a dark winter month, the 11th Oxford Conference 30 Regional Roundup for the Book promises to bring its usual exuberance to early spring, April 1-4. The conference is dedicated to author Walker Percy, one of the most compelling of recent 30 Notes on Contributors Southern writers, one who helped take Southern literature out of its obsessive 31 Southern Culture Catalog Items preoccupation with the past and refocus it on the concerns of modern life (albeit still 32 Address Section/Mailing List with a Southern twist). One highlight of the conference will surely be Mildred D. Form/Friends Information and Form Taylor, a native Mississippian who has had a distinguished career writing award- winning books for young readers. Taylor is not often mentioned among the great REGISTER STAFF African American writers coming out of the state who have been major figures in Southern literature, but she surely deserves such attention from scholars. We will Ann J. Abadie Editor: honor her and her Mississippi family. In addition to other writers, the conference, as Graphic Designer: Susan Bauer Lee usual, will attract some of the most influential book people in the country, including Mailing List Manager: Mary Hartwell Howorth Ralph Eubanks, director of publishing at the Library of Congress; William Jay Smith, Lithographer: RR Donnelley Magazine Group former poetry consultant to the Library of Congress; and Jonathan Galassi, president The University complies with all applicable laws and publisher of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux (Percy’s publisher). regarding affirmative action and equal opportunity in all Barnard Observatory may not be a garden, but it is a hothouse of ideas, and our its activities and programs and does not discriminate symposia and conferences are forums for all of our friends of the Center to share our against anyone protected by law because of age, color,disability, national origin, race, religion, sex, or enthusiasms. status as a veteran or disabled veteran. CHARLES REAGAN WILSON

Page 2 Winter 2004 The Southern Register Wharton Presentation ai Whar ton David David Wharton, the Center’s Director of Documentary Projects, will present a slide show entitled “In the 21st Century: Oxford’s Second Baptist Church” on Sunday, February 22, at 3:00 p.m. The program will be held at the church, located at 611 Jackson Avenue in Oxford. It is free and open to the public. Funded by a mini-grant from the Mississippi Humanities Council, Wharton has been photographing activities at the church for the past two years. Founded by freed slaves in 1869, Second Baptist is Oxford’s oldest predominantly African American church and has long been one the community’s most vital institutions.

(above) Reverend Leroy Wadlington

(left) Sunday School Teacher Belinda Raybon with Students

David Whar ton (below) Making Videos, Easter Sunday ai Whar ton David Wharton’s photographs are intended as a composite portrait of Second Baptist as it enters the 21st century. “They’re a kind of history of the church’s present,” he says. “Fifty or a hundred years from now, people will be able to look at these pictures and get a pretty good idea of what was going on in the church at the beginning of the 21st century.” Wharton will donate to the church archives a portfolio of about 60 black- and-white prints, as well as several hundred images in digital form.

The Southern Register Winter 2004 Page 3 Continued from page 1 selling author of The Perfect Storm. Smith’s Fair and Tender Ladies, Connie Newsweek managing editor Jon May Fowler’s Remembering Blue, and known as the U.S. Poet Laureate) and Meacham will discuss his Franklin and other works of fiction they have author of ten collections of poetry; and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic translated to the musical stage. Reckon Graham Lewis, whose poems are Friendship, and Gail Collins, editorial Crew members are Tommy Goldsmith, collected in Forever Came Today. Poets page editor of the New York Times will an editor at the Raleigh News and Beth Ann Fennelly, Ann Fisher-Wirth, talk about her new book, American Observer; poet and folk singer Tom and Tom House will also read at the Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, House, author of a new poetry conference. Helpmates, and Heroines. Other collection The World according to Among the notable fiction writers nonfiction authors also scheduled are Whiskey; and Karren Pell, a country scheduled to read and talk about their Roy Blount Jr., one of America’s best- music songwriter, producer, performer, work are Kaye Gibbons, whose seventh known humorists; this year’s Grisham and author of Alabama Troubadour. novel, Divining Women, will be writer, Janisse Ray; Ben McClelland, The conference is open to the public published this spring, and Margaret author of the memoir Soldier’s War; and without charge. To assure seating space, McMullan, author of two new books, In two Mississippi natives: University those interested in attending should My Mother’s House and How I Found alumnus Ralph Eubanks, author of Ever preregister through the Center’s Web site the Strong. Barry Hannah, David Galef, Is a Long Time: A Journey into (www.olemiss.edu/depts/south). and Tom Franklin, who teach creative Mississippi’s Dark Past; and Julia Reed, Reservations and advance payment are writing at the University, will also be home to celebrate the publication of required for three optional events on hand to discuss fiction, as will Amy her first book, Queen of the Turtle Derby honoring conference speakers: a cocktail Stolls, program officer in the literature and Other Southern Phenomenon. buffet at Isom Place ($50), a cocktail division of the National Endowment The hour-long live Thacker Mountain party at Off Square Books ($25), and a for the Arts. Radio Show will feature a program of country dinner at Taylor Catfish ($25). Ole Miss journalism professor Curtis music by the house band and visiting Detailed information about the Wilkie will moderate a session on musicians as well as readings by visiting program, speakers, and registration writing from the world’s hot spots with authors. Another program of literature is available on the Center’s Web journalists Tom Bissell (Chasing the and music will be presented by Reckon site (www.olemiss.edu/depts/south) Sea), Alan Huffman (Mississippi in Crew, who will perform selections from or the Square Books site Africa), and Sebastian Junger, best- William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, Lee (www.squarebooks.com).

Gussow Wins Award for Book on Violence and the Blues

Adam Gussow, assistant professor of director Charles Regan Wilson, who Pantheon in 1998 English and Southern Studies, is the won the award with Center founding “It’s extremely rare for an assistant latest recipient of the Society for director Bill Ferris in 1990 for the professor’s first scholarly book to win Southern Literature’s C. Hugh Holman Encyclopedia of Southern Culture this kind of prize,” said Joseph Urgo, Award. Named for the late University of (University of North Carolina Press, chair and professor of English at the North Carolina-Chapel Hill English 1989). “Adam’s depth of understanding University. “This proves the point that professor and Southern Literary Journal of the music and community makes his Adam Gussow is a rising star in editor, the award recognizes the “best book stand out as one of the most Southern Studies.” book of literary scholarship or criticism important studies of African American Besides the Holman Award, Seems in Southern literature during a given literature,” Wilson said. Like Murder Here recently received a calendar year,” according to the society. An expansion of Gussow’s John G. Cawelti Book Award honorable Gussow received the award for Seems dissertation, Seems Like Murder Here is mention from the American Culture Like Murder Here: Southern Violence and his first scholarly work and his second Association, and a section of the book the Blues Tradition (Chicago, 2002) at the blues-themed book. Mister Satan’s published in African American Review December convention of the Modern Apprentice: A Blues Memoir, an account won the journal’s Darwin T. Turner Language Association in San Diego. of Gussow’s experience playing Award for the best essay of 2003. “Seems Like Murder Here is a classic harmonica alongside Harlem guitarist JENNIFER SOUTHALL interdisciplinary study,” said Center Sterling Magee, was published by

Page 4 Winter 2004 The Southern Register Mildred D. Taylor Day in Mississippi Pinkney Jer r y by 2001 © painting Jacket Mildred D. Taylor, one United States, she enrolled of the foremost writers for in the University of young people in the Colorado, where she earned United States for three a master’s degree in decades, will return home journalism. to Mississippi this spring In her acceptance speech for a statewide celebration as the recipient of the 1997 of her work. The formal ALAN Award, given by the proclamation of Mildred National Council for D. Taylor Day will take Teachers of English to honor place at the Gertrude C. those who have made Ford Center for the outstanding contributions to Performing Arts at the the field of adolescent University of Mississippi literature, Taylor said that in on April 2 at 10:30 a.m. her books, “I have attempted during a session of the 11th to present a true picture of Oxford Conference for the life in America as older Book. members of my family Beginning with her first remember it, and as I book, Song of the Trees, in remember it in the days 1975 and Roll of Thunder, before the civil rights Hear My Cry, winner of the movement. In all of the 1977 Newbery Medal, the books I have recounted not most prestigious honor in only the joy of growing up in children’s literature, Taylor a large and supportive family, has written nine celebrated but my own feelings of being books about African faced with segregation and American life in Mississippi, bigotry....I have tried to where she was born and present not only a history of where her father’s family my family, but the effects of had lived since the days of racism, not only to the slavery. All of Taylor’s books victims of racism but also to are based on stories from her Jacket cover of Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry the racists themselves. I have own family and are rooted in recounted events that were Mississippi. Song of the Trees painful to write and painful won the first Council on Interracial named laureate of the inaugural $25,000 to read” in the “hope they brought more Books for Children Award and was NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s understanding.” named a New York Times Outstanding Literature, awarded by the University of The author’s achievements will be Book of the Year and a Children’s Book Oklahoma and its international recognized on April 2, 2004, when, as Showcase book. quarterly World Literature Today. an excerpt of the proclamation of her Taylor’s writings also have been The great-granddaughter of the son day states, “Mildred D. Taylor returns honored with the Coretta Scott King of a white plantation owner and a to the place her life and work began, to Author Award (Let the Circle Be slave, Taylor was born in Jackson, Mississippi, where much of her family Unbroken, 1981; The Road to Friendship, Mississippi, but spent her childhood in remains, to a Mississippi that no longer 1987; The Road to Memphis, 1990; The Toledo, Ohio, returning to the South celebrates prejudice, a Mississippi that Land, 2001), the Christopher Award each year with her family. She attended embraces Mildred D. Taylor’s work, and (The Gold Cadillac, 1987; The Road to Toledo’s public schools in the 1950s honors her life and her family and her Memphis), and the American Library and graduated from the University of people, and, indeed, a Mississippi that Association’s Best Book for Young Toledo in 1965, after which she joined seeks to reconcile racism and rectify Adults (Let the Circle Be Unbroken), the Peace Corps and spent two years in ignorance by honoring all people of among others. In October 2003, she was Ethiopia. When she returned to the Mississippi.”

The Southern Register Winter 2004 Page 5 Mississippi Delta Literary Tour Experience the place, the people, the food, and the music that inspired Mississippi writers March 29-April 1, 2004 – Greenwood, Mississippi The Center for the Study of Southern Experience the landscape, the people, the 5201 and asking for the special “Literary Culture and Viking Range Corporation food, and the music of the Mississippi Tour” rate. In the event that the Alluvian invite you to explore the literary heritage Delta and you too will be inspired! But sells out before you get a chance to book a of the Mississippi Delta. This tour is based remember to sign up early. Only 35 spots room, we have also reserved a block at the in Greenwood and offers participants a are available, and they will go fast. Greenwood Best Western, 662-455-5777. special opportunity to stay in the Delta The Delta tour is $350 per person for all town where bluesman Robert Johnson last program activities, five meals, and local laid his head and where literary figures transportation. The fee does not include such as Endesha Ida Mae Holland found lodging. To register, go to the Center’s Web inspiration. Each day we will travel the site (www.olemiss.edu/depts/south). back roads of the Mississippi Delta, Group accommodations have been discovering other historic sites along the arranged at Viking’s new boutique hotel, way. One day is spent in Greenville and is the Alluvian, in downtown Greenwood. dedicated to the life and work of Walker [www.thealluvian.com] Rooms at the Percy and other authors from that literary Alluvian require a separate registration town; another day is dedicated to and are priced at a discounted rate of $135 Tennessee Williams in Clarksdale. Join us. and may be reserved by dialing 866-600- Literary Tour Schedule

MONDAY, MARCH 29 A SENSE OF PLACE: Landscape, Blues, 11:00 a.m. “The Athens of the South: and Barbecue Walker Percy and His Circle,” 1:00 p.m. Registration – Alluvian Lobby talk given by Kenneth 2:00 p.m. Alluvian Art Tour led by Duff Holditch at the William Dorrough Alexander Percy Library 3:30 p.m. Tour of Viking Range NOON Lunch at the Percys’ – Lisa & Manufacturing Facilities Billy Percy, hosts 5:00 p.m. Setting the Scene “The History of Greenville,” “Railroads, Crossroads, and the talk given by Hugh River: Travel and Permanence McCormick in the Mississippi Delta,” talk 1:30 p.m. Greenville Tour led by Mary 1:30 p.m. “A Deep Dark World You Can by Ted Ownby Dayle McCormick Breathe In: Tennessee Williams “Delta Land,” talk by Maude 3:00 p.m. Greenville Cemetery Tour led and Mississippi,” talk by Schuyler Clay by Princella Wilkerson Nowell Kenneth Holditch at St. 6:30 p.m. Cocktails – Alluvian Lobby 3:45 p.m. Sweet tea & cheese straws at George’s Episcopal Church 7:30 p.m. Blues & BBQ – Viking McCormick Book Inn 2:30 p.m. Tour Tennessee Williams sites Training Center Book signing with Greenville and various blues sites, Spooney’s Bar-Be-Que authors & live music including the Delta Blues Crystal Grill pies 5:15 p.m. Depart for Greenwood Museum Live Delta Blues by Big T of 7:30 p.m. Dinner at Lusco’s in 4:30 p.m. Depart for Greenwood Clarksdale Greenwood 7:30 p.m. Dinner at Giardina’s in 9:30 p.m. Ramble to Robert Johnson’s “The Cefalu Connection,” talk Greenwood Money Road Gravesite with given by Amy Evans Live music by Duff Dorrough Big T WEDNESDAY, MARCH 31 THURSDAY, APRIL 1 TUESDAY, MARCH 30 CLARKSDALE: Tennessee Williams OXFORD CONFERENCE FOR THE GREENVILLE: Walker Percy 8:00 a.m. Alluvian Breakfast BOOK OR BUST! 8:00 a.m. Alluvian Breakfast 9:00 a.m. Depart for Delta Tour led by 8:00 a.m. Alluvian Breakfast 9:00 a.m. Depart for Greenville Luther Brown 9:00 a.m. Depart for Oxford (1.5 hours) Jimmy Thomas, tour guide From Greenwood, through Oxford Conference for the Make blues-related stops in Money, Ruleville, Drew, Book, dedicated to Walker Moorhead and Indianola Parchman, Rome, Tutwiler, Percy Delta Welcome given by and on to Clarksdale On the University of Carver Randle in Indianola NOON Lunch & Live Music – Ground Mississippi campus, April 1-4 Visit birthplace of Kermit the Zero, Clarksdale Frog in Leland *All events subject to change.

Page 6 Winter 2004 The Southern Register PEOPLE & PLACES TO KNOW

The Alluvian is a luxury boutique hotel in Giardina’s, opened by the Giardina family Hugh & Mary Dayle McCormick are Greenwood, Mississippi, set within walking in 1936, is a local favorite for Italian- natives of Greenville, Mississippi, and distance of Viking Range, the Yazoo River, inflected Delta dishes like Gulf Pompano. founts of local Greenville history. Together and historic Cotton Row. Original art by The restaurant’s new home as part of the they own and operate McCormick Book Delta artists and a lively lobby scene make Alluvian hotel is a unique blend of old Inn, the premier Delta bookseller. the Alluvian the epicenter of family recipes and modern elegance. contemporary Delta culture. Princella Wilkerson Nowell, a journalist Greenville is known as the home of many and local history buff, is the author of A Luther Brown is the founding director of Delta bluesmen and as Mississippi’s literary Closer Look: A History and Guide to the the Delta Center for Culture and Learning center. It has been said that Greenville has Greenville Cemetery. at Delta State University in Cleveland, produced more authors per capita than any Mississippi. He is also one of the organizers other city its size in the country. Among Ted Ownby is professor of history and of the Blues Highway Association and was the more than 100 writers who made this Southern Studies at the University of named “Humanities Educator of the Year” by city on the Mississippi River their home Mississippi. He is the author of Subduing the Mississippi Humanities Council in 2003. during the 20th century are poet and Satan: Religion, Recreation, and Manhood in biographer Williams Alexander Percy; the Rural South, 1865-1920 and American Clarksdale, Mississippi, is home of the novelist, historian, and Pulitzer Prize- Dreams in Mississippi: Consumers, Poverty, Delta Blues Museum and of Tennessee winning author Shelby Foote; Delta and Culture, 1830-1998. Williams (1911-1983), widely regarded as Democrat Times publisher Hodding Carter the greatest American playwright of the Jr. and his son, Hodding Carter III; Lisa & Billy Percy have deep ties to 20th century. For plays like The Glass historian and author Bern Keating; Greenville, Mississippi. Billy is a retired Menagerie (1945), A Streetcar Named Desire memoirist Clifton Taulbert; and novelists farmer, and his wife, Lisa, is a (1947), Summer and Smoke (1948), Cat on Ellen Douglas, Beverly Lowery, and Walker photographer. a Hot Tin Roof (1955), and The Night of the Percy. Iguana ( 1962) he earned many honors, Carver Randle, a native of Indianola, including two Pulitzer Prizes and four Ground Zero is a renowned blues club and Mississippi, is on the board of the B. B. Drama Critics Awards. cafÈ in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Owned by King Foundation, which is bringing a long- Bill Luckett and actor Morgan Freeman, it awaited B. B. King Museum to the Maude Schuyler Clay is a fifth-generation is one of the best places to get your fix for legendary bluesman’s hometown. The native of the Delta town of Sumner, collard greens and Delta Blues in one fell museum is scheduled to open its doors in Mississippi. Her book of photographs, Delta swoop. 2006. Land, is a beautiful homage to her home. Kenneth Holditch, professor emeritus at the St. George’s Episcopal Church is in The Crystal Grill in Greenwood is famous University of New Orleans, is the author of Clarksdale, Mississippi. Tom “Tennessee” for its mile-high meringue pies. In business numerous short stories, poems, and essays on Williams spent a great deal of his since the 1930s, the restaurant is owned an major Southern writers, including his impressionable early childhood at St. operated by the Ballas family. friends Walker Percy and Tennessee George’s, where his maternal grandfather, Williams. He is the author of Tennessee the Reverend Walter E. Dakin, was rector Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, Williams and the South, has edited the for 16 years (1917-1933). Next door lived a Mississippi, is celebrating its twenty-fifth Tennessee Williams Journal since 1989, and, woman who kept a collection of glass year. Housed in the old railroad depot with New York Times drama critic Mel animals in her window, which became downtown, it features many permanent Gussow, edited the Library of America’s inspiration for Williams’s play The Glass exhibits that speak to every aspect of the recent two-volume edition of the works of Menagerie. blues, past and present. A highlight is the Tennessee Williams. His new book, Jimmy Thomas is originally from the Delta tiny cabin that Muddy Waters once lived Galatoires: Biography of a Bistro, written with town of Leland, Mississippi. He is the in that has been reassembled inside the Marda Burton, will be published this spring. museum. managing editor of the Encyclopedia of Spooney Kenter is a native of Greenwood, Southern Culture and lives in Oxford, Duff Dorrough of Ruleville, Mississippi, is Mississippi. He owns and operates Mississippi. a painter and musician. He is most well- Spooney’s Bar-Be-Que, specializing in Terry “Big T” Williams is a blues guitarist known as a founding member of the Delta chicken and ribs. Don’t forget about the and from Clarksdale, Mississippi. He has R&B band the Tangents. He now leads the sauce! gospel group The Revelators and The Duff performed with Big Jack Johnson, the Jelly Dorrough Band. Lusco’s has been in business since 1933 and Roll Kings, and his own group, Big T and is owned and operated by a fourth- the Family Band. Amy Evans is a special projects consultant generation Lusco, Andy Pinkston, and his for Viking Range and leads the Southern wife, Karen. This legendary restaurant has Foodways Alliance’s Oral History long been the haunt of Delta folks who Initiative. She is also a freelance revel in the restaurant’s down-at-the-heels photographer, painter, and co-founder of gentility. Don’t miss this opportunity to dine PieceWorks, an arts and outreach in one of their infamous private booths. organization for the Deep South.

The Southern Register Winter 2004 Page 7 Eudora Welty Program Jackson, Mississippi

To register for the Eudora Welty program and dinner, go to the Oxford Following the Oxford Conference for Conference for the Book registration form on the Center’s web site the Book, on Sunday, April 4, and (www.olemiss.edu/depts/south). To register for a room at the Old Capitol Monday, April 5, literary enthusiasts Inn, call 888-359-9001. are invited to Jackson for programs on Eudora Welty centered around the SCHEDULE opening of the garden at her home on Sunday, April 4 Pinehurst Street, where she lived for 76 4:00 p.m Tour of the Welty Garden, led by archival gardener Susan Haltom years and which is now owned by the 6:00 p.m. Cocktails and Dinner - Old Capitol Inn Mississippi Department of Archives 8:00 p.m. Eudora Welty - Life and Achievements, talk by Peggy Prenshaw, and History. holder of the Eudora Welty Chair at Millsaps College The first phase of MDAH’s project to “Petrified Man,” reading by actor John Maxwell develop the Eudora Welty House is the restoration of the garden, where the Monday, April 5 author worked alongside her mother, 9:00 a.m. Welty Archives - William Winter Archives and History Chestina Andrews Welty, and learned BuildingTour of Research Room - Hank Holmes, Archives and about many of the 150 plants and LibraryDivision Director, MDAH flowers mentioned in her writings. Discussion of Welty Collection - Suzanne Marrs, Welty Programs on April 4-5 will include Foundation Scholar in Residence at Millsaps College talks on several topics: Welty’s life and Forest Galey, MDAH special projects officer achievements, historic development 10:30 a.m. Public Programming at the Eudora Welty House, talk by Patti Carr and restoration of the garden, public Black, founding director of the Old Capitol Museum, curator of programming for the house, and the Welty and other exhibitions, author of Art in Mississippi, 1720- Welty Archives. There will also be 1980 and Touring Mississippi readings from Welty’s work and tours of the garden and of MDAH’s Welty Archives. charge The cost of the dinner, special rates for participants in the The Center and MDAH are including cocktails and gratuity, is $50 Eudora Welty Program. Rooms are priced collaborating on the Welty program. per person. at $99 plus tax and may be reserved by Except for dinner on April 4, the Welty The Old Capitol Inn, located at 226 calling 888-359-9001. Reservations must program is open to the public without North State Street in Jackson, is offering be made by March 22.

Eudora Welty House Garden Opening April 3 The garden of the Eudora Welty House After the opening programs, the knowledgeable gardener: the names of in Jackson will open to the public garden will be open to the public one day flowers and plants, wild and domestic, Saturday, April 3, with special programs a week until the Welty House opens as a of Mississippi abound in her fiction. offered through Monday, April 5, 2004. museum. The garden will open The garden created by her mother, Visitors will walk in the restored garden, Wednesdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. for Chestina, and tended by Eudora for and programs will be presented by public tours beginning April 7, 2004. years, is being carefully restored to its historical architect Robert Parker Garden admission is free, but 1940s splendor, including an extensive Adams, Jackson; Welty scholar Suzanne reservations are required. For perennial border and rose garden, Marrs, Millsaps College; and Welty information about the opening events or reconstructed trellises and latticework, historical garden consultant Susan to make a reservation for a garden tour, a woodland garden, and a camellia Haltom, Jackson. The three-day opening e-mail [email protected] or garden. The Historic Iris Preservation is supported in part by the National call 601-353-7762. Society provided bulbs for the 50-foot Endowment for the Arts, which believes Readers of Welty’s fiction know that iris bed. that a great nation deserves great art. Eudora Welty was an avid and

Page 8 Winter 2004 The Southern Register Susan Lee Talks about Her Dirt-track Auto Racing Photographs

Dirt-track auto racing was the subject of Thunder and Grace: Racing on American Dirt, a photo exhibition showcasing the work of former Center employee Susan Bauer Lee and displayed at the Center this winter. Lee has attended hundreds of dirt-track races in the past 13 years and, in an interview with journalist Jennifer Southall, talked about her experiences.

“Some friends invited my husband and me to our first race, at Dixie Speedway in Woodstock, Georgia,” said Lee, a native of Mendenhall, Mississippi, who lived in Oxford in early 1990s. Lee said she was “completely hooked” by the noise, the fans, the excitement, and the overall “carnival atmosphere.” Lee, who in 1988 earned a bachelor’s degree in art from Millsaps College in Jackson, was also taken by the cars themselves. “I’d been photographing a lot of roadside church the religious messages, local sponsors advertise on the sides of signs before, so when I saw all these battered hunks of steel the cars, as well. “Local sponsors advertise on the sides of the covered with religious messages, I was really excited.” cars alongside the religious messages, local preachers pray for According to Lee, of the 900-some racing facilities in the everyone’s safety, and a local talent sings the national United States, about 700 are short dirt or clay ovals. Besides anthem,” she said. Lee says that for many rural areas, dirt racing is the equivalent of high school football. “It’s where people gather to cheer friends or family and swap stories. Wives keep score in the stands; children play in the dirt; drivers and crew members work on machines in the pits.” In addition to the cars, it’s this sense of community at the races that Lee has tried to capture in her work. “This is a really dynamic, energetic set of photographs,” said Center Director of Documentary Projects David Wharton, who was largely responsible for bringing the exhibition to the University campus. “I saw some of Susan’s photos about three years ago and was struck. There’s clearly a personal connection in these pictures.” “I had rarely taken portraits before we started going to the dirt tracks, but the great thing about dirt racing is the access,” said Lee. “You can pay extra and get into the pits, and after a few years the drivers and crews got really relaxed around me and just forgot I was there taking pictures.” Lee began taking her racing photos to submit to dirt-track magazines along with articles written by her husband, Tim Lee. She now serves as art director and Tim serves as editor for two Powell, Tennessee-based dirt-racing magazines–Late Model and Sprint Car. In the early ’90s, Lee designed publications for the Center and said she was “very tickled” to return to Ole Miss for the exhibition, her second ever and her first to feature only racing photos. JENNIFER SOUTHALL

The Southern Register Winter 2004 Page 9 Student Photography Exhibition

During the fall semester of 2003, members of the Southern Studies Richie Caldwell, Documentary Photography seminar, View from taught by David Wharton, traveled Junkyard, throughout Mississippi and its bordering Pontotoc, states making pictures about the Mississippi. relationships between Southerners and the physical world around them. There were nine students in the course–Richie Caldwell, Christopher Hedglin, Scott Kitchens, Lynn Linnemeier, Marcie Little, Mary Ellen Maples, Nash Molpus, Mayumi Morishita, and Angela Watkins. At the end of the semester, each student compiled a 20-print portfolio of his/her best images. Collaboratively, the class also selected 71 of the Christopher photographs for exhibition at Barnard Hedglin, Antique Observatory’s Gammill Gallery. That Car and Ghosts, exhibition, Southerners and Their World, Pontotoc County, will be shown at the gallery from March Mississippi. through May 2004. Here are a few of the pictures. More will soon be available for viewing at the “special projects” link at the Center’s Web site (www.olemiss.edu/depts/south).

(left) Scott Kitchens, Kudzu Dog and Highway, Lafayette County, Mississippi.

(right) Lynn Linnemeier, Three Generations on Highway 61, Mound Bayou, Mississippi.

Mary Ellen Maples, Cotton Module, Panola County, Mississippi.

Page 10 Winter 2004 The Southern Register Nash Molpus, Chairs on Porch, Philadelphia, Mississippi.

Angela Watkins, Mayumi Morishita, Railroad Bridge over Tracks in the Clay, the Tallahatchie, Lafayette County, Indianola, Mississippi. Mississippi.

Exhibition Schedule

January 15 - March 15 June 1 - August 31 The Search for Bottle Trees Portraits from the Delta Kendall Messick Jane Rule Burdine

March 17 - May 31, 2004 September 1 - October 31 Southerners and Their World, 2003 Photographs from the Nashville Sit-ins Southern Studies Documentary Rachel Lawson, curator Marci Little, Indian Bayou, Mississippi Photography Students Delta. November 1 - January 14, 2005 Game and Fish through the Lens Wiley Prewitt The Gammill Gallery, located in Barnard Observatory, is open Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m., except for University holidays. Telephone: 662-915-5993.

The Southern Register Winter 2004 Page 11 Internship Endowment to Benefit A Day in Southern Studies Graduate Students Since the inception of the Southern endowment while reading an article the Country Studies graduate program at the Center from her alma mater’s quarterly Nestled in the piney woods of in 1986, internships have been an magazine. “The college president had Pinola, Mississippi, Strong River Farm integral part of the graduate student advocated an internship program of provided an ideal setting for the “Day experience. They enrich a program of which all undergraduates could avail in the Country” that took place on the classroom-based coursework by themselves. I never had the afternoon of November 2, 2003. providing students with opportunities to opportunity to be an intern, because Hosted by Center Advisory gain marketable work experience as well internships were not available when I Committee chair Sarah Dabney as professional contacts. Even more, was a college student. I wish that I Gillespie, the day featured strolls internships allow students to have the could have had the experience that through the surrounding woods, bike gratifying experience of becoming enables students to work in the ‘real rides around the farm, and best of all, intellectually engaged in the professional world.’ Anything that allows a student croquet, played on Dr. Guy Gillespie’s world by testing their newly-acquired to experience and work through a carefully constructed and meticulously knowledge in a practical setting. They project is greater instruction than just maintained croquet court. are springboards for fulfilling careers. hearing about it.” The endowment is In January, Kathryn Wiener, a named for Wiener and her late resident of Jackson and a longtime husband, Dr. Julian Wiener, who shared member of the Center Advisory her interest in providing for students’ Committee, established the Julian and professional engagement. Kathryn Wiener Southern Studies Thanks to the Wieners’ generous Internship Endowment. A graduate of endowment, one Southern Studies Smith College in Northampton, graduate student each year will receive Massachusetts, Kathryn Wiener support to undertake an internship in became motivated to fund such an his or her area of interest. Past students have interned for organizations such as the Southern Cultural Heritage Foundation, Vicksburg, Mississippi; Viking Range Corporation, Greenwood, Mississippi; the Southern Arts Federation, Atlanta; the Hampton Roads Naval Museum, Norfolk, Virginia; and the National Archives in Washington, D.C. They have specialized in areas ranging from cultural resources management, to Dr. Guy and Tay Gillespie archival and museum work, to documentary work. “Day in the Country” was organized Center director Charles Reagan to raise funds and awareness for the Wilson commented, “The Julian and Center’s campaign for an Endowment Kathryn Wiener Southern Studies for the Future of the South. The event Internship Endowment is an investment was a great success, resulting in over in the future of Southern Studies at the $12,000 in donations and pledges. University of Mississippi. Funding Donors were rewarded with a choice opportunities like this draw top-notch of books on Southern Studies-related students from all over the country to our topics, and as the afternoon drew to a graduate program. The annual proceeds close and night fell, all who attended from this endowment will enable were rewarded with a quietly grand students to engage in valuable finale: Dr. Gillespie had set up a professional development that will lead telescope behind which people lined them to become innovators in their up to have a look at the clear night’s fields.” full moon. ANGLINA ALTOBELLIS ANGELINA ALTOBELLIS

Page 12 Winter 2004 The Southern Register Reading the South

Appalachian Lives. Photographs and Text by Shelby Lee Adams. Introduction by Vicki Goldberg. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003. 120 pages. 80 photographs. $50.00.

Appalachian Lives is Shelby Lee Adams’s third book of photographs, following upon Appalachian Portraits (1993) and Appalachian Legacy (1998), both also published by the University Press of Mississippi. As with those earlier volumes, the photographs in Appalachian Lives are from eastern Kentucky—where Adams was born and raised but no longer lives—and almost all are portraits. The subjects in Appalachian Lives tend to be a bit younger than in the earlier books. They are more likely to live in mobile homes than cabins and to wear T-shirts proclaiming allegiance to a professional wrestler than work clothes. Adams has posed them less achieved through trial and error, using criticism from those who see his work frequently with signs of an older, more multiple sheets of Polaroid film before as violating certain standards of traditional (and more stereotypical) arriving at a satisfactory end result. documentary truth they expect from Appalachia than in surroundings that Adams takes considerable time photography, especially pictures that suggest change—there are more arranging his subjects, sometimes depict out-of-the-mainstream people satellite dishes in evidence on the large groups of them—family from out-of-the-mainstream places. pages of Appalachian Lives than bibles. members, drinking buddies, These critics claim that Adams’s Adams’s photographs are boyfriends, neighbor kids, dogs, calculated way of making photographs environmental portraits. They are as whoever happens to be around that takes his subjects so far out of their much concerned with showing the day—in places of his choosing (usually everyday lives as to render them physical spaces eastern Kentuckians outdoors but not always) around the fictional. Some charge him with have created for themselves to live in family home. Sometimes people get victimizing his subjects through as with faithfully rendering physical bored and wander off before he can repeated visual reference to various likeness and character. One of the make the final exposure. Most seem “hillbilly” or “white trash” things this means is that his pictures happy enough to pose for him, stereotypes—rundown mobile homes, are anything but spontaneous. They however; many of his portraits missing teeth, junked cars, physical are elaborately previsualized, bespeak an easy, good-natured deformities, etc. Adams has equally meticulously set up (often requiring collaboration between photographer passionate defenders, however: those the intricate balancing of several and subject. from the fine art end of the different light sources, both natural Adams’s images from eastern photocritical spectrum who perceive and artificial), and painstakingly Kentucky have received a good deal of his work as having transcended

Book Reviews and Notes by Faculty, Staff, For these and other books call 800-648-4001 or fax 601-234-9630. Students, and Friends of the Center for the 160 Courthouse Square • Oxford, Mississippi 38655 Study of Southern Culture

The Southern Register Winter 2004 Page 13 Reading the South continued

photography’s seeming responsibility to shipping of necessary goods to this of his previous critically acclaimed documentary truth (long an anchor remote area was inefficient, second novel, Visible Spirits. weighing the medium down, they especially when every ship was In Prisoners of War, 17-year-old would claim) and risen to the level of needed to bring troops and Dan Timms is employed by his uncle high visual art, one of the few examples equipment to supply American Alvin to drive a “rolling store” (an of “straight,” documentary-style forces for the impending Normandy old school bus stocked with everyday photography to have achieved such invasion. items from sugar and Popsicles to rarefied status. After unloading their cargo in coal-oil lamps and radios) and is not This is not the place to attempt to Great Britain, ships had previously as eager to see what lies outside his resolve this issue. There’s no denying been returning empty to the U.S. rural community as he is to be shed that Shelby Lee Adams’s The decision was made to ship the of it: “He didn’t like where he was, environmental portraits from eastern POWs back to America where they and he didn’t like what he’d most Kentucky are beautiful, sophisticated, could be more easily fed and likely become if he managed to and fueled by a high degree of creative sheltered, and at a much-reduced survive the war that was waiting for intelligence. At the same time, one cost. In addition, the prisoners could him a few months down the road. can’t help but wonder what, if be put to work in nonmilitary jobs in But he didn’t know what else, or anything, has been sacrificed to a time where manpower back home where else, he’d rather be. His achieve such elegance. Even so, there’s was in short supply. In September of imagination, he guessed, was a lot little doubt that the photographs are 1943 the first of these POWs began like an acre of buckshot. Nothing full of important information; one arriving in Virginia. much grew there.” The war seems to senses fundamental truths about Once landed, a great number of be an inevitable destination to Dan, people’s lives on every page of Adams’s the German POWs were shipped to although his being the sole man of books, even if those truths are the preindustrial agrarian South the house with a farm to run would sometimes more poetic than literal. where cotton was still picked, ditches permit him an exemption from Suffice it to say that Appalachian Lives, were still dug, and crops were still serving. But the knowledge of his as well as Adams’s earlier books, walks planted primarily by hand. Four mother’s infidelity and the lingering that fine, but all too blurry, line major POW base camps were located effects of his father’s recent suicide between documentary and art. in Mississippi: Camp McLain near are enough to make dodging Nazi Sometimes his imagery seems more at Grenada, Camp Como in the bullets seem attractive. home in one camp, sometimes the northern Delta, Camp Shelby in But everyone knows war is hell, no other. Much of the time, however, it Hattiesburg, and Camp Clinton, just one more so than Dan’s best friend, seems pretty comfortable in both, outside Jackson. In addition to these Marty Stark, who has just returned which is high praise. four base camps, 15 branch camps from the war damaged, affected in no DAVID WHARTON were developed, 10 of which were in small way by the horrors he witnessed the Delta. They were located in in the German theater. “Ever since Greenville, Belzoni, Leland, he’d been home, he’d been feeling like Prisoners of War. By Steve Yarbrough. Indianola, Clarksdale, Drew, the whole world was in a state of rot New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. Greenwood, Lake Washington, and decay, and he kept smelling odors 288 pages. $35.00. Merigold, and Rosedale. For these that reminded him of rancid meat. POWs the war was all but over. But He’d lie on his cot every night, doing In July 1943, Germany and Italy’s for some Deltans laboring beneath his best not to think about smells, or Afrika Korps, Axis troops fighting in the hot Mississippi sun, the war was trying to think of nice ones—the Northern Africa, fell to United either yet to begin or was still raging scent of honeysuckle, say, or perfume. States and British forces. As a result, within them. But when he finally got all the stink 275,000 German and Italian troops Steve Yarbrough’s third novel, out of his nostrils and fell asleep, the became prisoners of war (POWs) Prisoners of War, is set in the time dreams would start.” Now home, under Ally rule. But Northern Africa and place of these POW camps Marty is assigned to guard duty in the was a place ill-suited to contain such scattered about the Delta. local POW camp, unnerved and ever a large number of prisoners. Food, Yarbrough’s fictionalized camp is suspicious of those under his watch. water, and other essentials had to be Camp Loring, and the locale is Also feeling the effect of war, but transported into the desert, and Loring, Mississippi, the same small in a somewhat different sense, is L. compounds were constructed of tents town located somewhere just outside C. Stevens, the black friend of Dan’s surrounded by barbed wire. The Indianola, which is also the setting who drives another of Uncle Alvin’s

Page 14 Winter 2004 The Southern Register Reading the South continued

rolling stores and struggles daily to In the fall of 1999, when Chance Further enhancing the biography explain to Dan the differences Harvey was teaching in the are several illustrations of Saxon and between the “polar universes” in University of Mississippi’s English his circle—including Lyle’s sweet which they each reside. L.C.’s life Department, she gave a dynamic baby picture from July 1892 and a has been spent in war, but in one lecture on “Lyle Saxon and the startling view of the writer as a burly where he is not permitted to return Southern Renascence” at the Center werewolf at Mardi Gras 1941—from fire, and he is loath to go off to fight for the Study of Southern Culture. the New Orleans Public Library, the for a place that would just as soon see Her insights into the man of many Cammie G. Henry Research Center him dead than treat him like a man. masks, along with her photographic at Louisiana’s Northwestern State The intricate plot revolves around slides of this generous friend of University, and other collections. An these richly drawn characters and Faulkner and Sherwood Anderson, especially fruitful repository of eventuallly shifts when a Polish were a tantalizing preview of The Life photographic images, letters, and prisoner informs Marty that a group of and Selected Letters of Lyle Saxon. additional material was Tulane prisoners are planning an escape, Fortunately, Harvey began her University’s Special Collections in setting in motion a series of events research in the late 1970s, when several the Howard-Tilton Library. There, leading to inevitable tragedy. The of Saxon’s associates and relatives were Harvey came across the unusual Lyle three principal characters’ interaction alive and glad to talk about the author Saxon-Rachel Field correspondence with POWs, with each other, and known as “Mr. Louisiana” and “Mr. and decided to write her doctoral with various other secondary New Orleans.” Harvey’s hundreds of dissertation about the historian who characters serves to illustrate not just endnotes document the interviews, as helped to launch the restoration of the tragedy of war on the front, but well as her frequent citations from the French Quarter in the early 1920s the war that can rage within when Saxon’s diaries, his journalistic and whose house at 536 Royal Street what is truly desired is far from reach columns, his published and “was known as the place to meet” or forever lost. unpublished manuscripts, and a great (10). The dissertation was the basis Yarbrough’s Loring County is often variety of other compared to Faulkner’s resources. Several notes Yoknapatawpha County, but his include fascinating setting, as well as his characters and sidelights, such as narrative style, would be more aptly Harvey’s comment that compared to that of his other photography intrigued neighbor to the north, Larry Brown. the boy Lyle, who Nevertheless, while Brown’s work is published three pictures the epitome of the “rough South,” in St. Nicholas magazine Yarbrough effectively utilizes in 1908: “One was sentiment, without lapsing into awarded a gold badge; sentimentalism. The tightly woven the other a cash prize” and tense plot in Prisoners of War (282, n. 3). A note remains taut throughout, and his identifying Saxon’s historical portrayal the POW camp friend Caroline makes the Delta during WWII Dormon explains that especially fascinating. Yarbrough is, “Dormon is recognized like Brown, such an effective, skilled, as the first female and talented writer that he can make forester in the U.S. for a hot beer in August sound good and her work with the a sinner woman seem saintly. Louisiana Department JIMMY THOMAS of Conservation” (293, n. 121). Harvey even lists two of Dormon’s The Life and Selected Letters of Lyle books about Louisiana Saxon. By Chance Harvey. Gretna, flora, adding details on Louisiana: Pelican Publishing a recent reprint edition Company, 2003. 336 pages. $24.95. by a Baton Rouge publisher.

The Southern Register Winter 2004 Page 15 Reading the South continued

for Chance Harvey’s book, which she labor that went into the writing of Louisiana Writers’ Project from 1935 prefaces with an amusing account of this volume. The result of Harvey’s to 1942, he provided employment her own visit to 536 Royal in April quest appears on the seventh line of for many Depression-era contributors 2002. Carriageway Gallery had set up a page she reproduces from the 1891 to the New Orleans City Guide and an art print business with bright register of births in Whatcom Louisiana: A Guide to the State. After pegboards and little Christmas lights, County, Washington: a September 4 the state writers’ projects ended, the and Harvey looked in vain for traces entry for Lyle Saxon (25). Louisiana Library Commission asked of the former resident: “They tore the Apparently, Hugh Saxon remained him to supervise the collection of vine down. Saxon’s palm tree died on the West Coast when Kittie folklore for Gumbo Ya-Ya. His one winter in a hard freeze” (11). Chambers Saxon returned to her coeditor, Robert Tallant, wrote to Several letters by Saxon, dated Baton Rouge home with their baby. A their mutual friend Cammie Garrett 1917 to 1946 and found in libraries correspondent and then city editor Henry: “As a writer, I owe him from North Carolina and Virginia to for the Los Angeles Herald, the elder everything” (217). New Orleans, complement Harvey’s Saxon abandoned his young family, Owner of the restored Melrose biographical text in many ways and later remarried, and, between 1919 Plantation, south of Natchitoches, form a separate section of the volume and 1934, “played bit parts in twenty- Louisiana, Cammie Henry often (219-70). The Life and Selected Letters four movies, including the Charlie welcomed Saxon to Yucca House of Lyle Saxon is an outstanding Chaplin classic The Circus (1928)” cabin, where he could escape the addition to Pelican Publishing (27). Harvey’s note on Hugh Saxon’s steady social and professional Company’s catalog. Over the past film career leads the reader to the demands of life in New Orleans. several years, Pelican has reprinted Internet Movie Database; but this Harvey underscores the stressfulness many of Lyle Saxon’s books, from the entertaining citation is preceded by a of journalistic and historical writing 1927 Father Mississippi to The Friends note on Lyle Saxon’s cousin, Muriel for an aesthetically sensitive man of Joe Gilmore, published in 1948, Saxon Lambert, who told the who believed fiction was a superior soon after his death. The press biographer that Saxon never spoke genre. “In his repeated statements in exaggerates, however, in claiming on about his father and refused to see his letters about the writer’s art,” says the dust cover that Saxon’s “life him on Hugh Saxon’s visits to New Harvey, “Saxon reveals the kind of story” is told “for the first time” in Orleans. In fact, Harvey suggests that ‘anguish and travail’ that Faulkner this book. As Harvey makes clear, Lyle Saxon’s deep sense of rejection would later note” (14). The James W. Thomas’s Lyle Saxon: A was an early source of the loneliness biographer also describes the Critical Biography appeared over a that forms a major theme of The Life ongoing financial difficulties that decade ago (Birmingham: Summa, and Selected Letters of Lyle Saxon. distracted Saxon from writing 1991). So many myths and mysteries Beginning with chapter 1, “The fiction, and she states that “a failed surround Lyle Saxon, however, that Solitary Spirit and the Comic Mask,” romantic relationship” in 1928 Thomas did not even begin to Harvey emphasizes the “thread of disturbed him so seriously that “his exhaust the rich subject; and Harvey intense despair, the leitmotif of his creative ambition” was ruined (47). surpasses the earlier biographer in diaries and letters” (56), countering Arts patron Muriel Moore, her indefatigable search for elusive the much more typical image of Lyle photographer Doris Ulmann, and facts. For example, Harvey traveled Saxon as bon vivant and mentor to a author Rachel Field are possible to the Washington State Archives in generation of artists and authors. identifications of “the mystery lady” Bellingham to solve “the mystery of Harvey does not underestimate (148), and Harvey carefully his birthplace” (24). Because Saxon Saxon’s impact on the literary world documents the relationships each called himself a native Louisianian, in New Orleans and, during the later woman had with Saxon. and because of his maternal family’s 1920s, in Greenwich Village. Another likely influence on long associations with Baton Rouge, Commenting on his support for Saxon’s recurring depression and most scholars had assumed he was William Faulkner, both in Louisiana lifelong sense of loneliness is the born in that city. Harvey’s meticulous and New York, Harvey suggests that complex sexuality that Harvey hints assembling of “bits and pieces of Children of Strangers, Saxon’s only at rather obliquely. Saxon never information” (24)—interviews, novel, might have influenced the married and never lived with a Saxon’s mother’s notebook, a plot and characterization of The woman, but he did live with his California physician’s business card, Sound and the Fury. Less famous childhood and college friend George and a 1938 letter in the Tulane authors also benefitted from Saxon’s Favrot, who fought in World War I archives—hints at the prodigious generosity. As state director of the and whom Saxon had planned to

Page 16 Winter 2004 The Southern Register Reading the South continued University Press of Mississippi A member of the Association of American University Presses

join in Europe in the 1920s. Favrot died in 1925; The French Quarter and in 1946, shortly before his own death, Saxon of New Orleans told his journalist friend François Mignon: “Baton Text by Jim Fraiser Rouge always depresses me, and I think continually Photographs by West Freeman of George Favrot” (269). Saxon also developed a “An intelligent, enlightening look at one of America’s most charming areas. . .via close relationship with the music critic Noel Fraiser’s learned text and Freeman’s vivid Straus, with whom he lived in Chicago, New photographs.”–Publisher’s Weekly Orleans, and New York. And Harvey’s scrupulous $45 hardcover avoidance of a pronoun suggests that the visitor who sometimes spent “drunken nights” with Saxon Voodoo Queen for “purely monetary” reasons—despite Saxon’s The Spirited Lives of Marie Laveau sense of “self-abasement” and his fears of a painful By Martha Ward recurrence of syphilis—was probably a male (170). “Ward, an indomitable researcher and inspired interpreter, not only tells the entire astonishing Saxon’s library, she says, contains many studies of and moving story of the two Marie Laveaus, but “social and sexual aberration” (53). also offers a fresh perspective on Creole culture Future biographers of Lyle Saxon will probably and Voodoo New Orleans style.” –Booklist place greater emphasis on such mysteries than $26 hardcover Harvey does. Equally complicated and deserving of further discussion are Saxon’s attitudes on race. Fortune’s Favorite Child Langston Hughes asked him to support the The Uneasy Life of Walter Anderson Scottsboro Nine in 1933, citing “the great By Christopher Maurer sympathy which you have shown for the Negro The definitive and intriguing biography of peoples and the beauty you have given them in one of the South’s most prolific and your writing” (34). And Saxon was an early idiosyncratic artists $35 hardcover promoter of folk artist Clementine Hunter, whose Cane River scenes he collected and compared to the “primitive paintings” of Europe in the Middle Ages (107). He called his valet, Joe Gilmore, Soldier’s Son “Black Saxon” and titled his own literary By Ben W. McClelland reminiscences The Friends of Joe Gilmore. (Gilmore A memoir in which a son imagines and is pictured “mixing an absinthe frappé” on page resurrects the life of his deceased WWII soldier father 186.) Yet, Saxon’s letters and diaries are surprising $28 hardcover for the number of patronizing and disrespectful references to African Americans. The Life and Selected Letters of Lyle Saxon is not Florida’s Miracle Strip the last word on the author. For those who cannot From Redneck Riviera to make the pilgrimage to 536 Royal Street, however, Emerald Coast the book is without parallel as an introduction to By Tim Hollis “Mr. New Orleans,” who, ironically, claimed to A nostalgic and humorous romp through hate crowded parties, his Louisiana history books, the tourist attractions and vintage hotels and even Mardi Gras. Surely not Mardi Gras. of the Sunshine State’s Gulf Coast $50 unjacketed hardcover, $25 softcover Chance Harvey quotes from Saxon’s enthusiastic description of his all-day, all-night party for the 1940 festivities (198). Even better, she includes a Trumpet Records photo of a six-foot, two-inch rabbit: Lyle Saxon in Diamonds on Farish Street yet another mask. By Marc W. Ryan JOAN WYLIE HALL In a new edition, the history of a regional record company and the blues, gospel, and R&B greats it launched nationally $46 unjacketed hardcover, $18 softcover

Find in bookstores, or order from the publisher online at www.upress.state.ms.us or by phone at 1-800-737-7788.

The Southern Register Winter 2004 Page 17 Southern Studies Graduate Student Assists with Local Research Project Nash Molpus, a second-year graduate these communities outside of Oxford; student in Southern Studies, reports on the she cares about the people she knows research project with local teacher and who live near the cemeteries; she cares historian Susie Marshall. about the people in the cemeteries; and she cares enough to make sure their Mrs. Susie Marshall is a 90-year-old, names are a part of history. Mrs. African American woman who has Marshall’s love for people is the reason lived in Oxford, Mississippi, since 1923. she still makes it a priority to write down She was a teacher for 41 years and a 100 names in a cemetery on a hot day, to Jeans supervisor for 10 years. As a Jeans spend four hours on back country roads supervisor, Mrs. Marshall oversaw 36 each week, and to teach me through her one-room schools in Lafayette County. words and actions the ways to remember She is known around town as the local and keep history alive. historian. In 2002 the Skipworth The final product of our trips Genealogy group of Oxford asked Mrs. together is a booklet that consists of: Marshall, as part their mission to record Whar ton David two photographs, directions, and names the local cemeteries, to identify all of of all 34 cemeteries. Copies will be the African American cemeteries in given to Mrs. Marshall, Reverend Lafayette County. There are 34. Wadlington, and the University of I began helping Mrs. Marshall as a Susie Marshall and Nash Molpus out in Mississippi library. This project has field work and photography project last the field been the most rewarding one I have spring and continued it into the fall as ever completed. I will greatly miss my an independent study. Mrs. Marshall cemetery adventures with Mrs. and I visited cemeteries from March of cemetery on the right side of the Marshall. This is my final journal entry 2003 until December of 2003. Once a road. There is no church or even on December 19, 2003: week we went out into rural Lafayette a sign; it is just a cemetery. Mrs. I walked around to the front County to photograph and record the Marshall says they still bury of the church to take one last markers of each African American people here. We get out of the photograph, and when I cemetery. The first visits were about car, and as usual I begin recording returned, Mrs. Marshall’s back accuracy and taking the perfect names on the stones as Mrs. was to me and she was hobbling photographs. As time went on they Marshall walks around calling over to the left side of the became little adventures out in the out the names of people she cemetery. Everything was still, county. This is an excerpt from my knows. She has a stick to scrape and the sun was brightly journal on April 16, 2003: away the dirt and a can of shaving shining. It was the third It is a hot, sunny day and Mrs. cream to clean off the markers so cemetery we had been to that Marshall sports a straw hat to I am able to read them. day. Mrs. Marshall slowly keep the sun off her face. The Each trip I would want to understand reached down to pick up a rose first cemetery we visit is and learn more about why we were that had blown off one of the Springdale. It is 14 miles south of going to these cemeteries. I was also gravestones. She walked back Oxford on an old gravel road. curious about the people Mrs. Marshall over to a handcrafted white The only markers we see are a knew out in the county. The obvious stone and placed it in the vase. trailer decorated with fake deer answer is that she is involved in different Mrs. Marshall stood and looked and Christmas lights, and a history projects and as a Jeans supervisor at it, and then delicately mailbox. Mrs. Marshall has a she traveled these roads many times brushed some of the dirt off of hunch that this is the right road. throughout the years to visit teachers the gravestone. It seemed like We travel down this dusty, one and families. This answer came to me time was standing still and lane road for a while and see after a couple of trips out in the finally she turned and walked nothing. She tells me to keep cemeteries, but the real answer did not back towards me. We silently going. I think it is looking very come until some of our final adventures. climbed back in the truck and doubtful, and begin to worry that It hit me as I walked away from Mrs. drove away. I realized I had just we might get shot. After about 10 Marshall’s home: Mrs. Marshall is doing witnessed the reason we were minutes we come across a tiny this because she cares. She cares about here.

Page 18 Winter 2004 The Southern Register

Southern Foodways Alliance Director Featured on Food Network li Hobbs Blair

To find the country’s best fried chicken, a visit with John T. Edge of the University of Mississippi is a must. At least according to Tyler Florence, founding executive chef of Manhattan’s critically acclaimed Cafeteria restaurant and host of the Food Network program Tyler’s Ultimate. Edge, food writer and director of the Southern Foodways Alliance at the Center, appears on a Tyler’s Ultimate episode being aired this winter. A segment of the program was taped in Edge’s Oxford backyard, where he demonstrated his chicken-frying know- how for the camera. Edge and Florence also visited Pontotoc County chicken farmer Ron Brandon at his Zion farms Tyler Florence (left) and John T. Edge, cooking chicken and sampled the fried chicken at Oxford’s Yocona River Inn. Florence, who travels the world in avenue through which he works to keep According to Florence, Edge is the search of the “ultimate” recipes featured Southern food traditions alive, though. foremost authority on all foods on his show, chose a fried chicken As director of SFA, Edge has the Southern. “John T. is the voice of recipe Edge obtained from John Fleer, responsibility for ensuring those contemporary Southern food,” chef at Tennessee’s Blackberry Farm traditions don’t die. “Traditional cooking Florence said while taking a break from Hotel. The recipe involves brining techniques are getting sucked up by taping. “I’ve been a big fan of his for a pieces of dark meat in a sweet-tea corporations catering to people too busy long time, and I wanted to get his point mixture for 48 hours before battering to cook,” Florence said. “It’s up to people of view, especially since he’s been all them and carefully placing them in a who care to protect and preserve the art over searching for the best fried cauldron of hot oil. The result: “The of Southern cooking. John T.’s work with chicken.” Edge conducted his search most beautiful chicken I’ve ever seen,” SFA is like Ken Burns’s efforts to preserve for the country’s best bird while writing Florence said. the tradition of baseball through his his third book, Fried Chicken: An But it was not just Edge’s knowledge of documentaries, or Steven Spielberg’s American Story. The first of a four-part great fried chicken recipes that earned efforts to remember the Holocaust series on iconic American foods, the him an appearance on Florence’s program. through his movies. ” book will be released by Putnam in the Edge’s dedication to preserving Southern “Tyler was looking to explore the fall of 2004. food traditions also drew attention from South by way of fried chicken,” Edge Florence, who grew up in said. “For him to come to me, to come Greenville, South Carolina. to SFA, looking for credible fried “I really loved John T.’s book chicken gives SFA a great deal of Southern Belly,” Florence credibility in return.” said. Edge describes the The episode of Tyler’s Ultimate book, published in 2000 featuring Edge is scheduled to air by Hill Street, as a several times this winter and spring. “mosaic-like portrait of For the schedule, check the Web Southern food told www.foodnetwork.com/food/show_tu/e through profiles of people pisode/0,1976,FOOD_10228_30601,0 and places.” 0.html Edge’s writing is just one JENNIFER SOUTHALL

Page 20 Winter 2004 The Southern Register The Newsletter of the Southern Foodways Alliance

SFA Launches Endowment Campaign Ole Miss alumni Ron and Becky premium will provide funds for of Mississippi Foundation will Feder, principals of the R&B Feder operational expenses such as supplies, administer the endowment. All funds Charitable Foundation for the Beaux printing, and postage, as well as for raised will be dedicated exclusively to Arts of Ocean Springs, Mississippi, salaries, special events, and the Southern Foodways Alliance. helped launch the Southern Foodways scholarships. Further, it will provide The initial round of donations to the Alliance’s endowment fund during this seed money for some of our biggest endowment came from SFA members, October’s Southern Foodways aspirations. Chief among those is a the board, the staff of the Center, even Symposium with a $5,000 challenge thorough compilation of oral histories symposium speakers. A case in point: grant to members. The grant is the first about current, historic, and endangered Jim ’N Nick’s Bar-B-Q of Birmingham, installment of a ten-year pledge foodways of the American South. A Alabama, responded to the challenge totaling $50,000. SFA members close second is planning for a public with a pledge of $3,000. Others may attending the symposium met and museum, library, and archives. choose to contribute anonymously or bested that challenge, raising over Projects such as these were once only make donations in another’s name. All $11,000 in additional funds during the dreams. Now, they are becoming reality. contributions are fully tax- deductible weekend. An initial collection of SFA archival and can be made by check, credit card, One of SFA’s most critical and materials, for instance, is on deposit at or pledge. pressing needs is an endowment that the University of Mississippi The Southern Foodways Alliance serves as a permanent and reliable Department of Archives and Special has always been a member-driven source of funding for the events and Collections. Likewise, the oral history organization. I urge each member programs that support its mission. campaign has already produced with a development or philanthropic Today, almost all operating expenses— histories on barbecue and baking. To background to continue that nearly $100,00 annually—must be manage that project, the board recently tradition by contacting me at raised through the efforts of SFA staff. hired Amy Evans as a part-time [email protected] or 215- As the organization grows, however, facilitator. Amy, a graduate of the 432-4348 to offer advice and demands on staff resources grow. This Southern Studies master’s program, was leadership on the endowment endowment will relieve some of the the lead researcher on our Tennessee campaign. I am eager to discuss pressure to raise funds. Staff can then barbecue project. fundraising strategy, leads, and dedicate more of their expertise to Both the University of Mississippi developing promotional materials. assuring the same high quality of and the Center for the Study of scholarship and service that members Southern Culture are working closely MATTHEW ROWLEY and the public have come to expect. with the SFA to develop the Interest earned on the endowment’s endowment campaign. The University 2004 Field Trip and Symposium Dates Set

This summer’s SFA Field Trip will be black and white. The Seventh Annual And, of course, we will gather here on the first weekend in June in Southern Foodways Symposium will campus. Please point your Web browser Birmingham, Alabama. Our agenda will focus upon the same topic. Dates are set to www.southernfoodways.com for more be to explore Southern foodways in for the second weekend in October. information. FOOD FOR THOUGHT

The Best of Virginia Farms Cookbook A Taste for War: The Culinary devising things to eat from the raw and Tour Book: Recipes, People, History of the Blue and the Gray. By materials at hand, and endured untold Places. By CiCi Williamson. Atlanta, William C. Davis. Mechanicsburg, privations that often haunted their Georgia: CI Publishing; Birmingham, Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books, 2003. health for the rest of their lives.” Alabama: Menasha Ridge Press, 2003. 240 pages. $26.95. Davis skillfully and entertainingly 320 pages. $24.95. weaves together journalistic accounts Napoleon’s observation that “an and observations from soldiers’ diaries Many people say if you want to learn army marches on its stomach” was no and letters to document these privations. about the culture of a place, then study less true in the American Civil War Nowhere is soldiers’ ingenuity more the food. Author CiCi Williamson than in earlier wars. Soldiers always clearly seen than in the collection of describes her book: “A quilt of writing complain about the food, says William recipes at the end of the book. Hardtack, formats drawn from a wealth of sources C. Davis, professor of history at Virginia toast soup, planked rat, Louisiana was patched together here to showcase Tech, but in this case, there was some alligator, chinquapin coffee, spruce the individuals and enterprises who, justification. Neither army, according beer—it’s perhaps not a collection that together, tell the story of almost 400 to Davis, ever “completely solved the I’ll cook from often, but it’s inspiring to years of Virginians and their land.” problems of getting adequate food to see how soldiers and civilians did their I’d go so far as to say it’s a whole lot the armies on time, or in the right best to make life as normal as possible in more than a cookbook and tour book. place, or in palatable condition, let very difficult times. It’s also a history book, a guide to alone educating millions of strangers to On Christmas Eve 1863 officers of agricultural extension services, an the kitchen in how to cook and eat the Louisiana Tigers camped near encyclopedia of Virginia agriculture, a what they got.” Raccoon Ford, Virginia, sent a servant directory of Virginia bed and breakfast There are stories of hardships from out to look for whiskey and eggs for inns, and a compendium of quotes on both sides—rotten meat, worm- eggnog. He returned just before Virginia agriculture by noted Virginia infested bread, the complete absence of midnight, and one of the officers politicians. Not to mention that it’s an a balanced diet—but Southern soldiers records: “The eggs were quickly excellent resource and buyer’s guide to probably suffered more, because of the beaten—the sugar stirred in and then Virginia farmer’s markets, restaurants, inability of the South’s transportation the whiskey added, and we had one of farms, wineries, food festivals, system to get food where it was needed. the most delicious nogs that ever museums, gardens, and arboretums. “Johnny Reb and Billy Yank went to mortal man quaffed. Taking a couple of Did you know that chickens were extraordinary lengths to get food on glasses apiece, we retired merrily to domesticated around 3000 B.C., but their plates, and then to get it into bed—to forget the hardships of a turkeys were not domesticated until their stomachs and keep it there. In the soldier’s life, and dream of a joyful 1922 when Virginian Charles Wampler process, they overturned centuries of reunion with the dear absent one far Sr., came along? There’s a fascinating cultural and gender habit, away in Southland.” “interview” of Thomas Jefferson as demonstrated enormous ingenuity in THOMAS HEAD gardener, culled from letters preserved by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. Colonial recipes, annotated with SFA Contributors suggestions for modern-day preparation, include President James KAREN CATHEY is the president of Bon Vivant, LLC, a food marketing Monroe’s Chicken Gumbo and consulting firm in Arlington, Virginia, and chairman of the National Capital Kenmore Gingerbread. Recipes from Area Chapter of the American Institute of Wine and Food. Virginian celebrities include Willard Scott’s Country Pork Sausage and Edna MATTHEW ROWLEY, SFA secretary/treasurer, works for Assouline & Ting, a Lewis’s Pan-fried Virginia Spots. Philadelphia-based food importer and distributor. In 2002, he curated the Modern recipes aren’t left out. Imagine University of Pennsylvania ’s exhibition A Chef and His Library. Conicville Ostrich Burgers or Stribling’s Crock-pot Apple Butter. THOMAS HEAD is the Washingtonian magazine’s executive wine and food editor, Turning these pages, reading these one of its restaurant reviewers. He writes regularly for the Washingtonian and stories, makes me proud to be a other publications on food, drink, and travel. Virginian! KAREN CATHEY MUW Students Cook, Clean Up, at SFA Symposium

“I couldn’t make this stuff up if I mustard greens with crowder peas, nutrition wellness. “Students know they tried,” says SFA member Sarah skillet corn, pumpkin grits pudding, want to cook when they sign up for our Labensky, director of the Culinary Arts cornbread muffins, yeast rolls, apple program,” Labensky says. “They have a Institute at Mississippi University for stack cake, blackberry cobbler, and high level of commitment, and that Women. She’s referring to the peanut butter fudge. Of course there makes them a real pleasure to work with.” ingenuity of a group of 12 juniors and was plenty of sweet tea and cold The students look forward to the seniors in culinary arts at MUW who buttermilk too. experience of working at the traveled from Columbus to Oxford to While those of us who ate the lunch symposium. And their hard work does cook Friday lunch and much of dozed through the afternoon’s not go unappreciated. “The kids were Saturday dinner for the 225 presentations, the students were faced great fun,” says SFA president Damon participants in the 2003 symposium. with cleaning up. Problems were many. Fowler. “They are very sharp and also The students arrived on Thursday The sinks at the church clogged. The very grounded. I was very impressed by afternoon to commandeer the kitchen students literally had to bale water with their calm professionalism and good of a local Baptist church and set up for buckets to prevent flooding the kitchen humor.” The SFA tries to give back. In their cooking marathon. Sarah floor. But a potential crisis was averted recognition of their efforts we donated Labensky and Ronni Lundy had worked when one of the students had the bright $500 to a recent student research trip out the menu in advance. Preparation idea loading the big pots and sheet pans to Atlanta, Georgia. What’s more, was intense. “The first thing we had to into a pickup truck and scrubbing them several student internships have grown do,” Labensky says, “was to make a lot down at a car wash with a power out of relationships forged at the of bacon fat. The kids rendered an sprayer. Since the bed of the truck had symposium in Oxford. entire case of bacon just to get the served as a de facto bus tub, they even MUW students participating in the drippings,” indispensable to real had to scour the truck bed before 2003 symposium were Mel Howard, Southern cooking. putting the clean stuff back in. Millie Welborn, Allison Smith, David The centerpiece of the meal was to Enterprising students like these are a Stutts, Shannon Henderson, Opal be a big batch of Bill Best’s shuck beans. hallmark of the MUW Culinary Arts Peacock, Rashanda Pruitt, Tameka Dallas, But anyone who arrived at lunch Institute, a four-year program that began Cynthia Hembree, Gabe McCarter, expecting a pot of beans and cornbread in 1997 and now enrolls about 72 Marie Eckl, Catlin Conner, and Pat Berry. was in for a surprise. A glorious buffet students. The Bachelor of Science degree Pictures of the students and their car- of the best of the Appalachian South offers the students a chance to become wash cleanup can be found on the surrounded it: cucumbers and onions in culinary specialists with minors in Culinary Arts Institute’s Web site at vinegar, Kentucky heirloom tomatoes, entrepreneurship/small business http://www.muw.edu/interdisc/page64.h deviled eggs, potato salad, butter beans development, food journalism, food art tml. and sausage, green tomato casserole, (food styling and photography), and THOMAS HEAD

Southern Foodways Alliance

name

company

address

city state zip

telephone fax

email MEMBERSHIP

Please make checks payable to the J $25 student J $50 individual J $75 families Southern Foodways Alliance $200 nonprofit institutions $500 corporations and mail them to the J J Center for the Study of Southern Culture University, MS 38677.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, VISIT US AT OUR WEB SITE: www.olemiss.edu/depts/south/foodways or call John T. Edge, SFA Director, at 662.915.5993 or via email at [email protected] Faulkner and Material Culture Faulkner & Yoknapatawpha • July 25-29, 2004

Literature is inseparable from its Individualism, “Feminism Is Not the Story cultural contexts. Novels and poems of My Life”: How the Feminist Elite Has may aspire to an original expression, to Lost Touch with the Real Concerns of speak independently of their time and Women, and Women and the Future of the place, but they necessarily begin within a Family. She is also editor of the Journal cultural network that implicates every of The Historical Society. Lears is the word. Scholars and critics have come to author of No Place of Grace: attend closely to these cultural sources, Antimodernism and the Transformation of both “high” and “low,” from lyric poetry American Culture, 1880-1920, Fables of to locker-room limericks, from Old Abundance: A Cultural History of Master paintings to subway graffiti, from Advertising in America, and Something for string quartets to rap. Recently, however, Nothing: Luck in America. He is also they have learned to recognize another editor in chief of Raritan Quarterly level of culture, specifically the materially Review. Orvell is the author of Invisible made world in which we are so embedded Parade: The Fiction of Flannery as scarcely to recognize it as a cultural O’Connor, The Real Thing: Imitation and mode. This is the material way of our Authenticity in American Culture, After lives: our homes, our dress, our the Machine: Visual Arts and the Erasing transportation, our work, our sport, our of Cultural Boundaries, American food and drink. None of them is Photography, and John Vachon’s America: “natural”; all are constructs that reflect Photographs and Letters from the Charles S. Aiken desires, choices, social attitudes, moral Depression to World War II. values. They are all the products of Also speaking at the conference for the of Mississippi, author of Forensic Fictions: creative power and they exert a great, if first time are Charles S. Aiken, professor The Lawyer Figure in Faulkner and essays at times unnoticed, influence on our of geography at the University of on Faulkner, Freud, legal theory, Lillian more conscious and deliberate creations. Tennessee, author of The Cotton Plantation Smith, and Erskine Caldwell; and The world of Faulkner’s fiction is a South since the Civil War and a recently Patricia Yaeger, professor of English at world of material abundance, completed book-length study, “A Cosmos the University of Michigan and author intensified for readers by its of My Own: William Faulkner’s of Honey-Mad Women: Emancipatory relationship to the real world in which Geography”; Kathryn R. Henninger, Strategies in Women’s Writing, The he lived and of which he wrote. The Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Geography of Identity, and Dirt and 31st Faulkner & Yoknapatawpha who has published essays on Zora Neale Desire: Reconstructing Southern Women’s Conference–“Faulkner and Material Hurston, Josephine Humphreys, and Writing, 1930-1990, and coeditor of Culture”–will explore for five days of Faulkner, and has recently completed a Refiguring the Father: New Feminist lectures, panel discussions, tours, and book-length study, “Ordering the Facade: Readings of Patriarchy and Nationalisms social gatherings Faulkner’s material Photography and the Politics of and Sexualities. world in its fictional and biographical Representation in Contemporary Among the topics that will be taken manifestations. Appearing for the first Southern Women’s Fiction”; and D. up during the conference will be Aiken’s time at the conference are several of Matthew Ramsey, of Denison University, study of the Old South agrarian America’s leading scholars of material who has written essays and reviews and infrastructure, within which a large part culture: Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, has made numerous conference of Faulkner’s work is set; Henninger’s Eléonore Raoul Professor of the presentations on Faulkner and films analysis of photographs in the fiction, as Humanities and Professor of History at based on Faulkner’s fiction. a material embodiment of the tension Emory University; T. J. Jackson Lears, Returning to the Faulkner between oral and visual culture in the Board of Governors Professor of History Conference are Kevin Railey, professor South; and Orvell’s focus on the small at Rutgers University, and Miles Orvell, and chair of the Department of English town in Faulkner–particularly in the professor of English and American at Buffalo State College, author of context of contemporary avant-garde Studies at Temple University. Natural Aristocracy: History, Ideology, negativity toward the town–and how it Fox-Genovese is the author of Within and the Production of William Faulkner served his imaginative purposes. Railey the Plantation Household: Black and and essays on literature, theory, and will consider the links between White Women of the Old South, Feminism education and pedagogy; Jay Watson, without Illusions: A Critique of associate professor of English, University continued on page 25

Page 24 Winter 2004 The Southern Register masculinity and the signs of material served at Faulkner’s home, Rowan Oak, culture, such as glass-blowing machines, and a closing party at the home of Doctor cars, and houses; Professor Ramsey will and Mrs. Beckett Howorth. Films study the film Faulkner worked on, relating to Faulkner’s life and work will Today We Live, made from his short story be available during the week. In the “Turn About”; and Watson will explore Fortune Gallery of the University the role of the timer/lumber economy in Museums Bruce Newman’s photographs Light in August. Yaeger will examine how of prominent authors, Worth a Thousand our reading of Faulkner has been affected Words, will be on display. by recent African American women For more information about the writers’ “rescripting” of his work, and conference contact the Office of the different material cultures at work in Outreach and Continuing Education, the process. Post Office Box 879, The University of Other program events will include Mississippi, University, MS 38677-0879; discussions by Faulkner friends and telephone 662-915-7283; e-mail: family; sessions on “Teaching Faulkner” [email protected]. For information on directed by James B. Carothers, Miles Orvell the conference program, course credit, University of Kansas, Robert Hamblin, and all other inquiries, contact the Southeast Missouri State University, Department of English, Box 1848, The after in the Ford Center for the University of Mississippi, University, MS Performing Arts, followed by a buffet 38677-1848; telephone 662-915-7439; supper at Memory House, formerly the e- mail:[email protected]. For online home of John Faulkner. A Sunday registration, visit us on the Web at evening program, also at the Ford http://www.outreach.olemiss.edu/events/ Center, will feature a return faulkner/ engagement of a singer/songwriter For information about participating in group, Reckon Crew, who will perform the conference through Elderhostel, call a brilliant musical adaptation of 877-426-8056 and refer to the program Faulkner’s novel As I Lay Dying. Also number 5760, or contact Carolyn Vance on Sunday evening will be the Smith by telephone (866-296- 6522) or announcement of the winner of the e-mail: [email protected]. 15th Faux Faulkner Contest, For information about participating in coordinated by the author’s niece, the conference through Interhostel at Ole Dean Faulkner Wells, and sponsored by Miss, contact the Office of Professional Hemispheres Magazine/United Airlines, Development and Noncredit Education, Yoknapatawpha Press, and the E. F.Yerby Conference Center, Post University of Mississippi. Office Box 879, The University of Other events will include “Faulkner Mississippi, University, MS 38677-0879; on the Fringe”–an “open-mike” evening call 662-915-7036; or visit our Web site Elizabeth Fox-Genovese at the Southside Gallery, guided daylong (www.outreach.olemiss.edu). tours of North Mississippi, a picnic DONALD M. KARTIGANER

Charles Peek, University of Nebraska at Kearney, and Theresa M. Towner, Southern Writers, Southern Writing University of Texas at Dallas; and an exhibition of Faulkner books, Graduate Student Conference manuscripts, photographs, and The tenth annual Southern Writers, Southern Writing Graduate Student Conference memorabilia at the University’s John will be held at the University of Mississippi July 23-24, 2004. Creative and critical Davis Williams Library. readings will address various topics on or about the South. Critical topics are not The conference will begin on restricted to literature; we welcome submissions from other disciplines and are Sunday, July 25, with a reception at the particularly interested in interdisciplinary perspectives. Students whose papers are University Museums and a special accepted may register for the 31st annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference presentation–“The William Faulkner without paying a registration fee. Exhibition and Museum Design For more information, visit either the conference Web site Proposal”–that will outline the (http://www.olemiss.edu/conf/swsw/) or www.outreach.olemiss.edu/events/faulkner or Museums’ plan for a new Faulkner write to Southern Writers, Southern Writing, Department of English, C128 wing. The opening lectures of the Bondurant, University of Mississippi, University, MS 38677-1848. conference will take place immediately

The Southern Register Winter 2004 Page 25 Faulkner & Elderhostel Program for 2004 Faulkner Yoknapatawpha Conference Participants Lounge on Oxford’s Courthouse Square, from which William Faulkner drew July 24-28, 2005 inspiration. Enjoy a picnic under the ancient trees at his beloved family home, Rowan Oak. Visit the Nobel Prize-winning writer’s church and gravesite. And for “Faulkner’s Inheritance” five days, revel in the wisdom of more than a dozen internationally known scholars at the 31st annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference, July 25-29, 2004. “It’s easy to attend,” said Carolyn Vance Smith of Natchez, a longtime As much as the fictional character Elderhostel program provider and member of the of the Center Advisory closest to him–Quentin Compson– Committee. “Just register through Elderhostel, an internationally recognized leader William Faulkner was “an empty in educational travel for adults 55 or older or traveling with someone 55 or older. hall echoing with sonorous defeated We’ll handle all arrangements for you.” names . . . a commonwealth . . . a The 2004 conference will examine the theme “Faulkner and Material Culture.” barracks filled with stubborn back- Faulkner’s life, home, clothes, transportation, work, sport, food, and drink were looking ghosts.” The names and sources and products of his creative power. “Whether you are a general reader or a ghosts, of course, were not just those scholar, you will love these days on what Faulkner called his ‘postage stamp of of the Old South and the war fought native soil,’” Smith said. on its behalf, but the world that Special Elderhostel-only sessions will be led by Faulkner experts. To register, call grew up in the wake of their passing: toll-free to Elderhostel headquarters in Boston (877-426-8056) and ask for program a New South still harboring some of number 5760-0725. The rate of $832 per person includes all conference fees, four the values of the Old, a Falkner nights’ lodging at the Triplett Alumni Center Hotel (double occupancy), all meals, family history fostering comparably and local transportation. A limited number of single-occupancy rooms are available divided loyalties, a Modernist at extra cost. revolution in thought and art For more information, call Smith at 601-446-1208, e-mail her at prepared to challenge all loyalties, [email protected], or check out the Web site www.elderhostel.org. North and South. The 32nd annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference will attempt to take the measure of Faulkner’s “inheritance”: the varied elements that went into his making Interhostel Program for 2004 Faulkner and the making of his work. Obviously the range is great. What Conference Participants events of Southern and North The University of Mississippi is recognized as a preeminent institution in the Mississippi history, what aspects of study of the South. Its archives and museums contain the original works and papers the personal life, what ideas in the of Mississippi’s own William Faulkner. Explore the relationship between the real intellectual ferment of Modernism world in which Faulkner lived and the world of his fiction while expanding your figure most strikingly in the fiction knowledge of this unique and vibrant part of U.S. culture. he wrote? What do we as readers The five-day conference includes dramatic readings from Faulkner’s fiction; most need to know of the world lectures examining the South’s history and politics from the antebellum period to Faulkner inhabited—political, that of the New South; curate-guided tour and picnic on the grounds of William social, cultural–in order to best Faulkner’s home, Rowan Oak; excursion to Holly Springs, Mississippi, to explore understand that fiction? In antebellum homes, art, and Southern architecture; guided tour of the University commenting once on his work, he campus, including the Center for the Study of Southern Culture; free time to enjoy spoke, uncharacteristically, of “the the gracious hospitality of the University and Oxford; closing banquet at a amazing gift I had,” and wondered renowned restaurant in Taylor, Mississippi; evening films. “where it came from . . . why God or The cost is $1,195 per person double occupancy; add $395 for a single gods or whoever it was, selected me supplement. to be the vessel.” The aim of this Registration is open to anyone interested. Preregistration is required. For more conference will be to explore, in information, contact Interhostel at Ole Miss, Office of Professional Development somewhat more mundane terms, and Noncredit Education, E. F. Yerby Conference Center, Post Office Box 879, The “where it came from” and University of Mississippi, University, MS 38677-0879; call 662-915-7036; or visit what–given that “amazing our Web site (www.outreach.olemiss.edu). gift”–Faulkner made out of what he was given.

Page 26 Winter 2004 The Southern Register Mayfield Book about His Life and Art

Folk artist M. B. Mayfield said the idea Miss but was still of an autobiography had been “in (his) marginal to the whole mind for a long time.” No doubt the Ecru thing.” native had a great deal to say—after all, Mayfield not only he got his start studying art secretly from saw the world of fine a broom closet at the then-segregated art through his job at University of Mississippi. Ole Miss, though. Fortunately, a friend of Mayfield’s After moving back to finally convinced him to record his life’s Ecru to attend to his story. The result is The Baby Who Crawled ailing mother, then Backwards, published by Mayfield moving to Racine, himself this fall. Not only does the book Washington, where contain Mayfield’s extraordinary he held a number of history—including the story of how he odd jobs, Mayfield crawled backwards as a toddler—but it was drawn into the also features his original poetry along world of fine art—if with full-color photographs of more than only marginally— five decades’ worth of his artwork. “I once again. In wasn’t thinking about money or 1969, Mayfield anything like that when I started writing took a job as a the book,” said Mayfield. “It was about custodian at the getting something out that needed to Brooks Memorial come out and the story coming to Art Gallery in maturity.” Memphis, where Those things that Mayfield “got out” he studied the include the story of his lifelong paintings on display and displayed his friendship with Stuart Purser, the own works for other gallery employees in to be, though, so he’s slowed his University’s first art department chair the museum’s stairwells and work areas. painting in recent years. Writing is his and the man Mayfield credits in his The nature of his involvement in the art now, he said. “I always doubted myself book with changing the direction of his art world has left Mayfield with and was very self-conscious, but writing life. Purser met Mayfield in the summer seemingly no bitterness, though he said the book has been a real neat of 1949 while driving to the campus he doesn’t like to speak about his time at experience,” said Mayfield, who keeps from his previous post at the University Ole Miss, since he believes it detracts his ideas for a possible second publication of Tennessee-Chattanooga. The art from the achievements of James in a scrapbook. professor was so impressed with the Meredith, who integrated the university Charles Reagan Wilson, director of the paintings he saw on the front porch of in 1963. “I didn’t accomplish the things Center, believes Mayfield’s book Mayfield’s family farmhouse that he he did. He was the one who took the represents a “parable of the contemporary stopped to speak with the artist. punishment,” Mayfield said of Meredith. South. He tells of someone who moved Then 26-years-old, Mayfield traveled “I’d really like to meet him one day.” through the rural segregated South to to Oxford that fall to work as a But Mayfield’s ties to the University something very different,” Wilson said. custodian in the art department, where remain strong. A number of his “He was a janitor and unable to attend he studied one-on-one with Purser and paintings, including a portrait of Martin classes, yet he drew from the real spent a number of hours listening to Luther King, hang in the University strengths of Southern culture to learn lectures from a broom closet. “The Museums, and the Center for the Study and express his creativity.” really fascinating thing about Mayfield of Southern Culture was the home of The Baby Who Crawled Backwards is this intersection with the world of one of Mayfield’s first big exhibits, in can be ordered by calling the Town fine art that he stumbled into,” said 1986. Following that show, Mayfield’s Square Post Office and Museum in Lisa Howorth, who taught classes on career flourished, so much so that he has Pontotoc at 662-488-0388. Copies are folk art at the Center for several years. sold almost everything he’s painted since available for $35 plus shipping. “He got to look at the art world at Ole then. His eyes are not as good as the used JENNIFER SOUTHALL

The Southern Register Winter 2004 Page 27 11th Annual Mississippi Delta Tennessee Williams Festival Celebrates Food, Art, Religion, Music, and Performance

This year’s Mississippi Delta Tennessee Williams Festival, held in Clarksdale, October 9-11, 2003, stretched out in an entirely new direction when Randall Andrews (a celebrity chef introduced frequently on culinary television shows as “Chef to the Stars”) and Carl Pitts (an accomplished chef and veteran social studies and history instructor at Coahoma Community College) teamed up to celebrate the ethnic foods of the Mississippi Delta and focus on recipes for Southern food and drink mentioned in Tennessee Williams’s plays: Big Daddy’s hot buttered biscuits and hoppin’ john; Aunt Rose’s greens, pot liquor, and Eggs Birmingham; Baby Doll’s and Amanda’s lemonade; and Maxine’s rum-cocos. The food preparation demonstrations and festival feasting delighted a community crowd of over 200 who overflowed the Colby H. Kullman confines of Clarksdale Station. Seated: Ruth Moon Kampher; standing, from left: Travis Montgomery, William Spencer, This year’s special event was the Janna Montgomery, and Robert Canon, at Morgan Freeman’s Ground Zero restaurant dedication of St. George’s Episcopal and blues club Church’s former rectory as a National Literary Landmark. Tennessee Williams’s Walter Dakin, was rector there from Williams spent significant amounts of beloved grandfather, the Reverend 1915-1933; and Tennessee and Rose time living there during their youth. Kenneth Holditch officiated by explaining the significance of the rectory to the world of Tennessee Williams— and now all of us.

Colby H. Kullman Kenneth Holditch’s opening address on “Tennessee’s Delta: Cotton, Rising Tides, and Blues” set the stage opulently for the grand show that was to follow. The scholarly part of the Festival focused on Williams’s short plays 27 Wagons Full of Cotton and The Unsatisfactory Supper as well as his screenplay Baby Doll, which was shown as part of the program. Scholars Robert Canon, Erma Duricko, Kenneth Holditch, Jay Jensen, Colby Kullman, William Spencer, and Ralph Voss commented on the two one-act plays that were put together to make the screenplay. Later, Vernon Chadwick presented Sarah Wright, Erma Duriko and Jody McDowell at moon Lake Casino “Tiger Tail: The Exorcism of Farce”; Ruth Moon Kempher, on “Baby Blue

Page 28 Winter 2004 The Southern Register real site of the playwright’s Moon Lake A highlight of the Williams Festival Casino), Duricko herself performed since its early days has been the student Blanche Dubois’s monologue about the acting competition, with over $ 2,500

Colby H. Kullman death of her 17-year-old husband, in cash prizes going to the drama Allan Gray, as he ran out of Moon Lake departments of the winning actors’ Casino to shoot himself; and actors schools. This year top honors in Jimmy Ireland and Marissa Duricko monologue, scene, costume, and recreated the roles of Dr. John “Stella!” shouting went to Oak Grove Buchanan and Alma Winemiller from High School of Hattiesburg, APAC of Summer and Smoke as they spend part of Jackson, Coahoma County High an evening at Moon Lake Casino, then School of Clarksdale, and Rankin High run by Papa Gonzales. School of Jackson. Special guest, JoAnn C. McDowell, Once again, food and music added president of Prince William Sound just the right spice to the Williams Community College in Valdez, Alaska, program. The opening Thursday night and founder and director of Alaska’s feast at Uncle Henry’s Place on Moon Last Frontier Theatre Festival, spoke Lake, the Friday night dinner at Belle about her prestigious festival as well as Clark with music by guitarists John about Kansas’s William Inge Theatre Ruskey and Tater Foster playing blues Festival (with which she was connected ballads by Tennessee Williams, and the for over a decade). Along with the Saturday night banquet at Clarksdale Williams Festival, all three programs, Station on Blues Alley with musical among the best in the nation, are entertainment by the Wesley Jefferson supported by outstanding community Band brought each day’s activities to a colleges: Prince William Sound close with a truly “Most Satisfactory Community College, Independence Supper.” Community College, and Coahoma COLBY H. KULLMAN Community College.

Dakin Williams, in front of festival coordinator Panny Mayfield’s house

Ribbons and Roses,” a study of womanly images in selected Williams plays and paintings; and Travis Montgomery, on “Leaving Laurel: Migration and the Failure of Geographic Cure in Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire.” Porch plays are an innovation of the Williams Festival that make it unique. For the best in This year Janna Montgomery performed monologues of Williams’s heroines while Coahoma County High School students acted in a scene from Blues, subscribe Cat on a Hot Tin Roof on two of the porches of the old homes in the historic area of Clarksdale near St. George’s to Living Blues. Episcopal Church and rectory. With the festival from the beginning, Erma Duricko (who has directed off and off-off Broadway and at theatres across the country) once again brought actors from her Blue Roses Productions, Inc., to perform at the Williams 800.390.3527•www.livingblues.com Festival. At Uncle Henry’s Place (the

The Southern Register Winter 2004 Page 29 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

ANGELINA ALTOBELLIS joined the Center’s staff in July as advancement associate. She earned her M.A. in comparative literature from the University of Texas at Austin.

JOAN WYLIE HALL teaches in the English Department at the University of Mississippi. She is the author of Shirley Jackson: A Study of the Short Fiction and articles on Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner, Grace King, Frances Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama, Newman, and other authors. will host a Summer Institute of Christian Spirituality comprised of biblical, DONALD M. KARTIGANER holds the William Howry Chair in Faulkner historical, pastoral, and moral courses Studies at the University of Mississippi and is director of the Faulkner led by faculty from its division of Conference. He is the author of The Fragile Thread: The Meaning of Form in philosophy and theology as well as Faulkner’s Novels and is near completion of a book-length study, “Repetition visiting faculty. Session 1 will be held May 30 - June 5, and Session 2 will be Forward: A Theory of Modernist Reading.” June 6-12. Among the visiting faculty will be Charles Reagan Wilson, director COLBY H. KULLMAN is professor of English at the University of Mississippi. of the Center for the Study of Southern Among his publications are articles on Tennessee Williams and other Culture, who will teach on course on modern dramatists, Theatre Companies of the World, and Speaking on Stage: Southern Spirituality. For more Interviews with Contemporary American Playwrights. He is coeditor of Studies information, contact the Office of Graduate Studies (251-380-3094), visit in American Drama: 1945-Present. the Web site at www.shc.edu/sics, or contact Pat Warren, coordinator of the NASH MOLPUS is a second-year graduate student in Southern Studies at the Institute, by telephone (251-380-4670) University of Mississippi. She received her undergraduate degree at Furman or by e-mail ([email protected]). University in Greenville, South Carolina. She is presently working as an d intern at the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation.

The Holly Springs Garden Club will JENNIFER SOUTHALL is a communications specialist for the Office of Media host its 66th annual pilgrimage April and Public Relations at the University of Mississippi. She taught high 16-18, 2004. Seven historic antebellum school English and worked as a magazine editor before returning to the homes will be open for tours, including University, where she received a B.A. in English. Walter Place (1858-59), a blend of Gothic and Greek Revival styles, home of General and Mrs. U. S. Grant during JIMMY THOMAS is managing editor of a new edition of the Center’s the planning of the Vicksburg Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. He received B.A. degrees in English and campaign, and Strawberry Plains philosophy at the University of Mississippi and has worked for publications (1851), a two-story Greek Revival in Oxford and New York. home now owned, with its surrounding 2,000 acres, by the Southeastern DAVID WHARTON is assistant professor and director of documentary projects Headquarters of the National Audubon Society. Three antebellum churches, at the Center, where he teaches courses in Southern Studies, fieldwork, and the Marshall County Historical photography. He is the author of The Soul of a Small Texas Town: Museum, and the Kate Freeman Clark Photographs, Memories, and History from McDade. Art Gallery will also be open for tours. For additional information, call 662- CHARLES REAGAN WILSON is director of the Center and professor of history 252-6479 or 662-252-1537. and Southern Studies. Among his publications are Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause and Judgment and Grace in Dixie: Southern Faiths from Faulkner to Elvis.

Page 30 Winter 2004 The Southern Register For a complete list of posters, cds, videos, and other items, see the Southern Culture Southern Culture Catalog Catalog on our Web Site The University of Mississippi International Orders Barnard Observatory • University, MS 38677 Other video formats Phone 800-390-3527 • Fax 662-915-5814 may be available. POSTER Please call for information. The Sixth Oxford Conference for the Book Sold To: Poster (1999) Poster features Name Eudora Welty portrait by Address Mildred Nungester Wolfe City State Zip from the National Portrait Gallery, Country Smithsonian Institution, Daytime Phone Washington, D.C. J Payment enclosed (check, money order, international money order in U.S. currency or international check drawn on a US bank; made payable to The Southern Culture Catalog) J Charge my: J Visa J MasterCard Account # Full color, 17.5 x 23.5” M9901 ...... $10.00 Exp. Date Signature Friends...... $9.00 How To Order Delivery By mail: Southern Culture Catalog Orders for delivery in the continental United 29th Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Barnard Observatory • The University of States are shipped by US Postal Service unless Conference Poster (2002) Mississippi • University, MS 38677 other means of delivery are requested. Orders for delivery outside the continental United “Faulkner and His Contemporaries” By e-mail: Credit Card orders only: States are shipped by Parcel Post. Poster is illustrated with Sidney J. Waintrob’s [email protected] image of Eudora Shipping and Handling Costs By telephone: Credit Card orders only: Welty and United States: $3.50 for first video or other item, 800-390-3527 (Monday-Friday, 8:15 William Faulkner $1.00 each additional item sent to the same a.m.-4:45 p.m. CST) in the US. on the occasion address. Foreign: $5.00 for each item. Outside the US call 662-915-5993 of Faulkner’s Posters. United States: $3.50 for any number of receiving the By fax: Credit Card orders only: posters sent to the same address. Foreign: National Institute 662-915-5814 (Daily, 24 hours a day) $10.00 for any number of posters sent to the of Arts and same address. Letters Gold Medal for Fiction All sales are final. No refunds will be made. If an order in May 1962. Return Policy contains faulty or damaged goods, replacements will be made when such items Black & white are returned with problem(s) noted. photograph, mauve background M9901 ...... $10.00 Item # Title/Description Qty. Price Total Friends...... $9.00 CD “The Memory Is a Living Thing” Songs based on the writings of Eudora Welty Lester Senter, mezzo-soprano 1996 ROS Production. SR2001 ...... $16.00 Friends...... $14.40 Songs of Faith: African American Shape Note Order Total Singing from the Deep South, Volume One This form may be Mississippi residents add 7% sales tax Selections from shape note singing conventions photocopied. throughout Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana. Shipping and Handling SR2002 ...... $16.00 Faxed orders Friends...... $14.40 accepted. TOTAL

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