Louisiana Books

This book is an extremely comprehensive collection of LSU Tiger Football history. I have had it for months and have just begun to scratch the surface. Anyone who ever played for the Tigers up until the publication year is listed in this book, along with the years and positions that they played. In addition, there are amazing facts and stories recorded here. Finney does a fine job of capturing the spirit of LSU Football. This ain't light reading, however as most people know, most Tiger fans don't do anything lightly.

This is a marvelous effort which offers insights into the philosophical background of key spokesmen in the Disunion/Secession movement. Focusing on nine such figures (such as Rhett, Wigfall, Ruffin...), Walther weaves a mini-biography of sorts, along with discussion of the contribution these "fire-eaters" made to the fruition of their efforts - formal Secession of core Southern states, after the election of Black Republican apostle, A. Lincoln. Walther shows the how the "abstract" art of politics finally leads to "tangible" armed conflict - conflict which in many ways was given an intellectual basis by the writings and actions of the nine Southerners outlined in this book. As I often tend to more military oriented studies, Walther's Fire-Eaters was a wonderful sidebar! I recommend this book to all Civil War students, especially, of course, those with a particular slant toward CSA studies.

Fred Chappell, First and Last Words (Louisiana State U., 1989)

If every poem in Fred Chappell's eighth collection, First and Last Words, were as good as "An Old Mountain Woman Reading the Book of Job," Fred Chappell would have written, hands down, the finest book of poetry released during the twentieth century. They aren't, not all of them, but a fair number are good enough to put this book in, say, the top twenty, sharing the rarefied air of Charles Simic's The World Doesn't End, Robert Lowell's Lord Weary's Castle, Hayden Carruth's Collected Shorter Poems, and other such lights.

First and Last Words, a book that can loosely be called the beginning of Chappell's modern period, is where the poet turned slightly from the hardcore imagist work he'd been doing previously and looked toward a more abstract notion of poetry. He did so, however, without falling prey to the vagueness (or, lord help us, the idea that poems should be "message-based") that turns so many potential poets into unreadable hacks. Nowehere is this better illustrated than in "An Old Mountain Woman Reading the Book of Job."

"...She moves her lips to read but does not speak.
What is there to answer these terrible words,
To these sharp final words that engrave the fate
Of a hammered old man?..."

Beautifully rendered images combine with musings of characters, animals, even the elements at times. First and Last Words is brilliant, and deserves to be on the short shelf. **** ½

I wrote the book to move the 1st Louisiana Special Battalion, "Wheat's Tigers," from the shadows or margins of history to its forefront. I felt that I had to improve upon the work of Charles Dufour, who did a solid biography of Roberdeau Wheat in: Gentle Tiger: The Gallant Life of Roberdeau Wheat, but who mentioned little if nothing about the rest of the battalion and who got too many of the battle sequences wrong (but what was accepted during the time of publication). Although am most pleased with my chapters on the filibuster wars, the battalion's formation in New Orleans, and the battles of 1st Manassas (esp. the phase on Henry Hill), Front Royal, and Gaines Mill, I have already found room for improvement, especially on the confusing engagement on Matthews's Hill. Since my publication, Ross Brooks has written a fine article entitled: "Desperate Stand: Wheat's First Special Battalion, Louisiana Volunteer Infantry on Matthew's Hill, 21 July 1861" in Military Collector & Historian Magazine. Hopefully, in a possible second edition, Ross an I will better articulate the confused battle. Either way, I recommend you read both accounts and synthesize them on your own. Also since publication, Ross Brooks has also found some new material that shows that the that the entire company of Tiger Rifles was outfitted with blue Zouave jackets with red cotton trim in New Orleans and that after the battle of Manassas, the survivors received a second issue of gray with burgandy trim so as to avoid any future friendly-fire incidents like that which occurred at the foot of Matthews's Hill (they therefore wore blue in 1861 and grey in 1862). I also recommend Ross's article in Military Collector & Historian Magazine: "Part Irish and the Rest the Flower of Southern Chivalry: Clothing, Arms, and Equipment of the 1st Louisiana Special Battalion of Louisiana Volunteer Infantry, 1861-1862." What I intended to do with the book was to take the Tigers from the shadows or margins of history and bring them to the forefront to elicit constructive debate and to spur future corrective research (i.e., Pie Dufour inspired me and maybe I can inspire others). Other good books to read about Confederate Louisianians are: Irish Rebels, Confederate Tigers: A History of the 6th Louisiana Volunteers, 1861-1865 and Lee's Tigers: The Louisiana Infantry in the Army of Northern Virginia (Civil War (Louisana State University Press)). You'll note that both titles use "Tigers" in them but thay are not the original--or Wheat's--Tigers, but those who assumed the moniker of Wheat's roughneck filibusters who conducted frontal assaults one too many times. I hope you enjoy the book as much as I enjoyed writing it, for it was a labor of love (although it was a very difficult unit to tackle). Today, the Tigers are best engendered by: The Fighting 69th: One Remarkable National Guard Unit's Journey from Ground Zero to Baghdad ,the New York National Guard unit, which, before 9/11, was considered to be at the absolute bottom of the Army food chain, but then rose to the occasion on the infamous day in their own way and ended up in Iraq, fighting like the Tigers of old. Some things just never change. A TIGER FOREVER!

My book was used as the basis for a documentary on Camp Ruston released September 2007 by PBS through Louisiana Public Broadcasting. See [...]. Wesley Harris, author

Shloss addresses Flannery O'Connor's use of rhetorical devices to infer "secondary levels of implication" in her stories.

Argues that, because of the "pointed relationship between the conclusions of inference and the mental resources of the perceiver," O'Connor carefully considered her reader's ability to understand and infer from her text. Cites evidence that O'Connor "addressed herself precisely to those who were untutored in religious belief," and argues that "it is in terms of those readers" that critics ought to "evaluate the success of her rhetoric."

Contends that because O'Connor frequently violated "the commitment to represent the concrete world with fidelity," and because she "did not think that reality was Reality," using the term "realism" to describe her fiction is inaccurate. Offers as evidence, her own comments, which point out how, for O'Connor, reality was "not the tangible world encountered without delusion, but a dimension of perception ... transcending the substantial field of sense impressions."

Uses these previous discussions as background for examining her use of symbols, Christian myth, similes, metaphor, and O'Connor's "romantic tendency to analogize" in order to "dehumanize and distance the human life rendered" in her fiction.

Follows with explications of "Greenleaf" and "The Displaced Person," to illustrate how O'Connor's "analogies begin with the concrete world as theme," and -- using the process of inference - then, lead the reader "not directly to the spirit, but to an expanded sense of the physical environment."

Explicates The Violent Bear It Away and contends that while the allusions in this novel are clear, O'Connor intrudes at the end and "defines the precise ordering of values on which a reader's judgment depends, even when biblical references are clearly presented."

Looks at O'Connor's manipulation of the reader's sympathy toward old Tarwater, and argues that the novel's characters serve merely as "a portrayal of monomania." Remarks that because her "manipulation of attitude toward Tarwater and the boy is [both] complex and ambiguous," she ultimately fails "to provide clear guidance" to the reader.

Concludes that -- despite O'Connor's hesitancy "to 'tell' enough to make textual meanings unambiguous to the nonreligious" -- her writings "retains a weight of human concern that makes the reading" of her fiction "a disturbing encounter, valuable to readers of any persuasion because its haunting truth rests on sharable experience rather than prohibitive religious allusion."

Appears to be based on the author's Ph.D. dissertation completed in 1974 at Brandeis University, titled: "The Limits of Inference: Flannery O'Connor and the Representation of 'Mystery.'"

R. Neil Scott / Middle Tennessee State University

Coles describes the "social scene" and the civil rights movement in Georgia during the early 1960s. Contrasts O'Connor's "northern reader"-- and the perspective of the South that he or she brings to a reading -- with the version of reality that O'Connor saw and portrayed in her fiction.

Discusses her view of the grotesque, her treatment of black characters, and the various philosophical and religious themes seen in her work. Provides a fairly close, but informal reading of "The Displaced Person." Sees it as reflective of the South as a region, and asserts that, through this story, O'Connor "pursued her main business of storytelling as a means of showing the depth of God's mysteries." Contends that the result is "a series of reminders about God's earth as well as His universe, [and] His Commandments," resulting in "a rare and exceedingly high kind of sociology, history, [and] social psychology."

Discusses her comment that the South's alienation was "`not alienation enough,'" and her belief that the South was finding itself forced not only out of its sins, but its "`few virtues'" as well. Considers such topics as: pride, intellectual conviction, "practical heresies, the South's "`old-time religion,'" and "backwoods fundamentalism" as seen in "Parker's Back," "Good Country People," and "The Artificial Nigger." Suggests that O'Connor's "own theological sophistication enabled her to connect the sights and sounds of back-country, southern twentieth-century life to a history that began in Christ's time, and even before."

Coles illustrates his points with lengthy explications of O'Connor's novel, Wise Blood and her story, "Parker's Back." Regards O'Connor as a "Southern intellectual" who "steeped herself" in literature, religion, art, psychology, and in "her own sharp fashion, the South's social and political matters." Sees this background evident in "her repeated jabs at social science, psychology, theorists, and ... the entire liberal, secular world." Reads "The Lame Shall Enter First" as O'Connor's attempt "to dramatize an incompatibility she has seen about her in this modern world: intellectuals who mock traditional religion, then take a certain religious way of getting along with others."

Contrasts intellectual and spiritual knowledge in "Good Country People," "The Enduring Chill" and The Violent Bear It Away. Refers to works by Simone Weil, St. Thomas Aquinas, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and Georges Bernanos.

Concludes that O'Connor was "a writer with few peers...of enormous promise...a soul blinded by faith; hence with an uncanny endowment of sight."

R. Neil Scott / Middle Tennessee State University

Read "Tell Me", on "The Writer's Almanac" daily e-mail. Had to read the last line twice. A great thought: To be done with caring so much about what others think of me; No more secrets between us. I see myself reading this collection, appreciating life, gaining a little wisdom. Thank you to the author.

This is the third Robert Penn Warren book that I've read. The first was All The King's Men, followed by At Heaven's Gate. If I were to rank them, ATKM would be first followed by Flood then AHG.

If you're familiar with Robert Penn Warren's writing you will know that it is rich in poetry and deep in meaning. His characters have profound ideas and there is a large scope of understanding within which they express themselves. In this book more than in his other two that I've read, RPW's storyline is driven by his characters and their interactions and less from a sense of action and plot. While I don't clamor for a detective-style fueled-up page ripper, I think giving the story a bit more of an internal engine would have eased the demands on this novel's sometimes fatiguing characters.

The main idea and plot begin with a town that is being flooded to make room for a dam. After reading over breakfast a newspaper article about these plans, a famous filmmaker comes to the little town of Fiddlersburg to make a film. He is joined by one of Fiddlersburg's more famous progeny, and the local reunites with his roots.

The book brings us to understand that this little town breeds a dispossessed clan who cannot make connections with the outside world but are never free from the self-consciousness of their own insularity.

Flood could be one of the best books of our time. I say that it *could* because I found the book to be flawed in some respects. At times it was too opaque and idle in its dreamy meditation of the characters' experience and circumstance. Yet I got to know the importance of Place from which people come and continue to grow, and I felt a tangible loss as this connection was lifted away and the waters rose and the people began to lament. I think this is a great comment on modernity.

RPW has written another long and very good book.

Baldwin's Flush Times is a great historical resource. Baldwin paints an interesting tale of frontier Alabama and Mississippi and the characters which lived in the region. Overall, a great illustration of the American frontier and the Jacksonian era.