South Carolina Books

Ann George (associate professor, Texas Christian University) and Jack Selzer (professor of English, Pennsylvania State University) combine their insight in Kenneth Burke in the 1930s, a thoughtful study of author Kenneth Burke's work during the restless 1930s. Chapters examine how Burke's literary contribution reflected and influenced cultural history, and Burke's philosophy of the literary form. Of especial interest is Burke's association with intellectual communities of his era, including the leftists in the League of American Writers, activist contributors to "Partisan Review", southern Agrarians, the New Critics, and more. A scholarly, in-depth literary analysis of Burke's classic 1930's period work as well as an exploration of the principles and life of the man himself, ideal for college library literary studies shelves. Also highly recommended is Selzer's previous study of Burke, "Kenneth Burke in Greenwich Village: Conversing with the Moderns, 1915-1931".

What a wonderful memoir! It is always interesting when we find African Americans who can document their origins as Earl Middleton has done. His personal history gives you a bird's eye view of how life really was both in the military and civilian life and especially in South Carolina. Mr. Middleton's book gave me new information about my hometown, Orangeburg, South Carolina, and some of its citizens as well as its history.
The book is well written, interesting and full of history. Once I started reading, I couldn't put it down. I would certainly recommend this book to everyone. It reminds people that life is not always easy, but if you treat people well you will reap the benefits.

This book is full of practical gardening knowledge! It's written for the lay person. No big botanical names. Just simple sound advice. If you belong to a garden club you should order copies for all your members. It makes a great gift for guest speakers at your garden club as well.

As is my habit with art books, I leafed through to view the images before reading the text. The bucolic scenes transported me back to a genteel time, when American was young and rich and full of promise.

Which is precisely the dilemma of plantation art. Typically hung in the landscape section of galleries, it reinforces the seductive myth of the Antebellum South as paradise lost. But in reality plantations were slave labor camps, and mostly absent from the paintings are the slaves upon whose labor the plantation rested and who, when depicted at all, are merely quaint accents or contented pets of benevolent masters.

LANDSCAPE OF SLAVERY serves as a companion to a traveling exhibit of the same name organized by the Gibbes Museum of Art and the Carolina Art Association. It explores the complex and incompatible experiences of plantation life represented in works by diverse artists, from picturesque painters such as Thomas Coram through Winslow Homer (who, as Michael D. Harris writes, appears to have been "more sensitive to different notions evoked by the word `plantation'") to Hale Woodruff whose work is full of rage.

All of the essays provide thought-provoking commentary on this complex dynamic. "Picturing the Plantation" provides an overview of the landscape tradition and its idealizing vocabulary, while "Identifying Spaces of Blackness" explores the African aesthetic found in rituals, ceremonies, dance, music and art created by slaves as a means of resistance and survival. "The Most Famous Plantation of All" about the politics and painting of Mount Vernon sent me to the internet where the web site of the Mount Vernon Estate and Gardens offers this rationale for why the Father of Our Country owned human beings:

"George Washington was born into a world in which slavery was accepted."

Of course, the "acceptance" of slavery depended upon one's vantage point. Ditto "nostalgia." I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in American art in general, and Southern history and culture in particular. It will definitely enrich your next visit to the landscape gallery.

I purchased this book several years ago and I was very impressed with the information that is in this book. Everything from planting instructions, soil requirements, and so on! It is also very detailed with "actual" color photos of the plants. It is a handy guide for those landscape architects and landscape contractors out there and it is very useful for the home gardener.

This anthology could have included a lot more than fifteen poets: North Carolina is for some reason full of remarkable writers, many poets among them. But by limiting the number of authors represented, Michael McFee is able to offer us a significant profile of each. Would that more anthologists took this approach! And this is a pretty varied crowd. There's A.R. Ammons, two-time winner of the National Book Award, and Maya Angelou, known to practically everyone after her appearance at the 1992 Presidential Inauguration--and then there's little-known Jonathan Williams, whose whimsical, often outrageous poems have usually been published by small presses. There's Robert Morgan, who writes of Appalachian life, and James Applewhite, who writes about the tobacco country down east. Some of these writers, such as Angelou, James Seay, and Betty Adcock, grew up in other parts of the South, and virtually all of them have traveled widely; despite its subtitle, this collection is anything but provincial. It's a must-have for those interested in North Carolina writing, but anyone who appreciates good poetry will enjoy this book.

Let Us Meet In Heaven is a compendium of letters written by James Michael Barr of the 5th South Carolina Cavalry, during the American Civil War. Editorial notes explaining place names and the like help make the letters instantly and immediately understandable to any reader; extensive familiarity with the battles of the Civil War is not needed to read and understand Barr's testimony. Let Us Meet in Heaven also includes an index makes for quick and easy reference. Let Us Meet In Heaven is a compelling, informative primary source and an invaluable contribution to Civil War studies reading lists and historical reference collections.

This book contrary to the note attached to the title notation that it is "womens" diarys and letters. It deals with one indiviual Andrew Sheffield daughter of (yes daughter) James L Sheffield Confererate Colonel,Senator and politican from Marshall County Alabama. Andrew was committed to Bryce Hospital the State Asylum at Tuscaloosa by her father and stepbrother who was the probate judge in Marshall Co at the time. It is doubtful that she was insane, however she had disgraced the family by having an affair and committing an attemped act of arson at the request of her lover Dr William May. James Sheffield shot Dr May for dishonoring his family, he was arrested but no billed. When it became apparent that Andrew was to be tried for attemped arson. She was commited to Bryce. This book is almost entirely composed of letters written by Andrew from the time of her commitment until her death in 1920. She wrote to her father and brother as long as her father lived begging to be released and allowed to stand trial for her "criminal act". She over the years wrote long intelligent and lucid letters to all the Govenors who served during her confinment. Several considered releasing her,however her family was well connected enough to keep her there. It is very painful and depressing reading these letters, however it very clearly reflects the total lack of control women had over their lives in this period. It is interesting to note that her father this pillar of the community had a second family only a few miles away by his long time mistress. A very interesting example of the double standards of the period.

This is a marvelous study not only of a poignant African-Brazilian woman persecuted for daring to state her beliefs, but one that reveals the different ways that American (Levine) and Brazilian (Meihy) scholars perceive the problems of race in society. A must read for anyone interested in Latin American society or the history of women or of blacks in the hemisphere.

This book by Robert Boak Slocum is a fine introduction to Austin Farrer, who is considered by many to have been the greatest Anglican theologian in the 20th century. Consisting of seven short chapters, each of which deals with a specific theme, Slocum's work is something like a theological encomium to Farrer. He clearly has a grasp on the material, delineating it in a systematic fashion, but also including a number of Farrer's own statements. The reader is given the sense that rather than being introduced by Farrer to Slocum (which is how these types of books can sometimes come across), the reader is introduced by Slocum to Farrer himself - which is exactly how it should be.

After a preface entitled "The Challenge and Promise of Farrer", in which Slocum encourages us to heed Farrer's statement that we need to go "beyond our powers and out of our depth" (xiii), the first chapter briefly looks at Farrer's personal background, the method of his theological work and his major theological perspectives. This chapter is well joined to the second chapter, which looks briefly at some of the major systematic trends in Farrer's thought. The third - seventh chapters ultimately get into the real meat of Farrer's theology; each chapter has a specific focus: the eschaton, theodicy, Farrer's notion of "transforming images", poetic and literary inspiration, and finally the relationship of God's action with free will.

The fifth and sixth chapters are worth the price of admission alone. In the fifth chapter is a discussion of Farrer's ideas about images - both verbal and artistic - as being central to human imagination and understanding. He grounds his view with the theological claim that "the rejection of idolatry meant not the destruction but the liberation of images" (52). One is given the sense that this facet of Farrer's thought is rich for the development of theological aesthetics - including but not limited to something such as iconography. Images, in Farrer's theology, are given through revelatory events, and seen through "inspired vision" (55) of the sort that the Apostles had.

In the sixth chapter, one is brought face-to-face with the fact that Farrer was well ahead of his time with his ideas about literary interpretations of the Bible. Farrer held that inspiration was the "midway point between poetry and metaphysics" (64) and that, because the Bible was an inspired text, rather than being read as a work of theology, a work such as The Gospel According to St. Mark should be read as "a play of images and allusions of the subtle and elusive kind which belongs to the imagination rather than to rational construction" (70). Slocum notes some of the criticisms made of Farrer in his day on precisely this point, as well as the way that he has been picked up and defended by literary critic Frank Kermode (in The Genesis of Secrecy). One is inclined to think that the Bible might be - at least in Farrer's hands - something like a truly divine text to be read critically and immanently, imaginatively and deeply.

Slocum is wonderfully transparent throughout the majority of this book, and is seen only at those times when connections are drawn between Farrer's work and other Anglican theologians. I confess, however, that although I appreciate his desire to draw links between Farrer and those that preceded him - such as American theologian William Porcher Dubose - and those that came after him - such as John MacQuarrie - his inclusion of the thematic similarities within the narrative sometimes subtracted from the narrative itself. It's interesting, for example, that Dubose and Farrer thought similarly about a number of things, but am I supposed to think that Dubose influenced Farrer? At no point does Slocum claim so; is the claim, then, implicit? I think that Slocum's desire here is to show that there are continuities of thought within the Anglican tradition, but rather than scattering these comparisons throughout the text, it would have been preferable to have read about these thematic connections in a concluding chapter - especially as the book itself does not have a conclusion, which is a bit of a disappointment.

For those seeking a clear introduction to Farrer's theology, as well as to some of the ways in which it connects with the theology of some other Anglican thinkers, Light in a Burning Glass is a fine place to begin. Along with the recent reader put out by Canterbury Press, The Truth Seeking Heart, inquiring and interested minds will have fine glimpse through the Burning-Glass to divine light.