Southern Books

Victoria Lancelotta is an exquisite writer. The thirteen stories in this collection are woven by powerful prose and a keen detail to depth, emotion, and place. The stories are engaging and strike the reader in the dead center of the chest. The characters never falter and Lancelotta brings us into a world where the mundane is beautiful and the taboo is extraordinary.

Sex, sin and redemption lie at the heart of Lancelotta's disturbing short stories of women who live in a world different from others. These are flawed characters: women who experience the world differently and examine it with a sordid eye. Her dark stories are striking accounts, and hard to put down.

I'm a Roman Catholic who accidentally grew up in the south. The Baptists would swing by our neighborhood in their buses labeled Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. They'd knock on my door and, upon seeing my Catholic schoolboy outfit, would tell me I was going to hell. And I liked the sensation. This is probably why I like Victoria Lancelotta's book so much.

It's been said that there are two types of Catholic -- devout and fallen. Perhaps Victoria Lancelotta makes up a third category, someone who lingers inbetween.

In these stories we find that here, down below Heaven, we taste of suffering drop by greasy drop. Men look into your makeup-coated face, but God looks into your heart -- even in a smoky bar. Men see and smell and touch your body, but God sees your intention. Your fundiment is hidden from sight, but is of the first importance. The great inner struggle is fought during times of darkness, and suffering. A pure life is just beyond our reach -- we heard it slip past, tip-toeing down the stairs, maybe going to that loud party down the street -- but now it's gone, replaced by vague regret.

Note to Catholics: Buy now, and you may receive a Plenary Indulgence. Let's say three years.

This is a spectacularly beautiful book. Hundreds of exquisite photographs of Indian pottery and other pre-historic artifacts, plus maps, drawings, and paintings illustrate the text.

The illustrations accompany about 20 essays on the Indians of southern and midwestern United States from archaic times until contact with Europeans. The essays vary in quality and interest, but most are well written in scholarly but accessible prose. The contributors include anthropologists, art historians, folklorists, and members of several Indian tribes. Footnotes and a substantial bibliography round out a scholarly and artistic book of real merit.

Throughout the book the continuity of ancient Indian cultures with those known to the Europeans is emphasized. One of the most interesting essays concerns the people of Cahokia, the largest Northamerican archaelogical site dating from about 1200 AD, in which the author speculates about the identity of the inhabitants, relating them to present day Indian tribes. Other essays concern the Bread Dance of the Shawnee Indians -- written by a Shawnee -- and the cultural continuity from pre-historic to present day Caddo Indians. Hopewell, Poverty Point, Moundville, and other important pre-historic Indian cultures are also given meticulous attention.

Smallchief

The sheer number of gorgeous images in this book is breathtaking. But for many readers I suspect the most astonishing image might be a fairly simple one on page 17: a rendering of a orderly semicircle of structures facing a river, it is a city in Louisiana----in 1500 B.C. This book reveals Native American civilizations rivaling what we know of the Maya and Inca, but in the heartland of North America.

In the south and Midwest a series of sophisticated cultures left behind artifacts and even structures that we are just now beginning to study and understand. For example, the Hopewell site in Ohio, where "the most dramatic" sacred structures were "geometric in form and combined circular, oval, square, octagonal, or other elements in compositions covering hundreds of acres."

The artistry of the artifacts presented here is amazing, and this book has a generous selection of large, excellent photographs. But the prose is equally good: intelligent but intelligible, often with an interesting narrative. Even the occasional semiotic language is used as vocabulary rather than jargon. Not only does this book explore so much about these next-to-unknown cultures, but it provides an exemplary context of explaining a worldview shared by many Native cultures and peoples. Although this is a scholarly presentation based on a traveling art exhibit, it is pretty graceful about integrating contemporary Native views and information. It's only in recent years that scholars have taken the testimony of contemporary Native Americans about their own culture as seriously as they take their own theories about old artifacts that survived.

For all of these reasons I count this book as instantly one of my most treasured.

I saw the show in Chicago!!! Amazingly, the book, due to the excellent phothgraphy and printing comes close to the gallery experience. The text is insightful. A definite buy. I bought the book at the museum shop($60) and immediately purchased two copies for friends from my favorite bookseller - Mother Amazon!

"Hidden Tennessee" like all the other Hidden books are really great for the traveler looking for something different. In our travels, we always attempt to avoid the commonplace and crowds, and the Hidden guides help us find the unusual.

I purchased this book as a birthday gift for my son-in-law who is an avid hiker and prefers naturalist areas that are less traveled. He was very pleased with the content in this book

We used this book to tour the whole state of Tennessee for our Anniversary. Every time we went to a "hidden" recommendation, we found exactly what the book said. We were never disappointed. We also used the AAA book of Tennessee. "Hidden" gave us a better idea of things to do and see. It had general descriptions of areas in addition to city information. We only used the AAA book when we wanted to stay in a chain hotel. The "Hidden" book only suggest non-chain lodging

Wow, Wendell Berry wrote this book when he was only 34. At the Wisconsin Book Festival, Rick Bass said it was his favorite Wendell Berry book. It is an amazing chronicle of a man looking honestly at his beliefs and his culture regarding racism and trying to wipe away the cob webs and face the real life effects on blacks and whites alike.

This book was published in 1970 and I don't think our culture has yet faced the "wound" as Berry tries to in this book as illustrated by the reaction to Barack Obama's "Racism" speech. By chance the next book I picked up to read is a compilation of essays about the state of America, "These United States: Original Essays by Leading American Writers on Their State Within the Union" edited by John Leonard. The first essay is by Diane McWhorter as she discusses these same issues in present day Alabama. It is subtitled "The Past is Still Not Past". I highly recommend it as a continuation of the issues discussed in "The Hidden Wound".

It's hard to believe Berry first published this essay in 1970. It is still a cutting edge exploration of the way in which racism is a disaster for white people. He writes beautifully and movingly about the self interest of white people to end racism and the deep life changes necessary to do it.

Wendell Berry, English professor at the University of Kentucky and farmer of his family's farm in Kentucky, comes to grips with the burden of being the descendent of slave owners. Like so many white Americans, he wants racism to end and does not want to pass either the guilt or the racism on to the next generations. Here he tries to address the many complex issues of racism in this country. People of all races will be engaged by his fine writing and sensitivity. You might want to look at some of his other books as well. Fidelity is a series of gracious short stories exploring the relationships between individuals and families in a small Kentucky town called Port William. He has picked up this theme in several other books as well. He is well known for his poetry which is published in collections and in another one of my favorites, Sabbath.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not really a sports fan, but this book is about much more than baseball. The themes of fathers & sons, the assassination of JFK, and others make this a worthy read of anyone who enjoys short fiction. Kurt Vonnegut called Meissner "A storyteller with remarkable gifts," and he couldn't have been closer to the truth--Meissner's got a knack with his storytelling-techniques. If you like this one, make sure to check out his newest short story book, "The Road to Cosmos" and also his soon-to-be-released novel, "Spirits in the Grass."

Bill Meissner was my English advisor in college almost 10 years ago. He had mentioned he wrote this book and I picked it up out of curiosity. The stories are wonderful and so vivid. Every now and then I pick the book up and read aloud a story to my husband.

As a big fan of WP Kinsella, I was anxious to read these stories and they did not disappoint. Bill Meissner has used baseball as a theme in his stories but they are about much more than the great game. Bill is a great story teller in the way he develops the characters and makes you care about what will happen to them in end. These stories are filled with everyday life decisions and situations that we all can relate to. You do not have to be a baseball fan to enjoy Mr. Meissner's writing. Do yourself a favor and pick up this book, read it this summer out in yard. If you are a baseball fan than you can read it while listening to your favorite team on the radio.

Few critical works have the power to change the way a whole genre is perceived. This is one of them. The reader who digests this book will never look at American literature, and most particularly Southern literature, the same way again. I enjoyed it thoroughly. The writing is lively and will not bore to tears---as the great majority of current careerist criticism out of academia is likely to do. While scholarly, it is a work that is open to a wide audience, any audience who likes to read.
I give it my highest commendation.

Ask any student and you'd learn the majority would think the culture and literature of the white South evolved from English roots: not so, researcher James Cantrell reveals in HOW CELTIC CULTURE INVENTED SOUTHERN LITERATURE. His account presents historical and literary evidence that it was the South's Celtic peoples who had the most influence on Southern culture - an influence that can clearly be documented today. Writers published after the Civil War are all featured, with special emphasis on Celtic influences and even Irish Christianity's appearance in traditional works by Flannery O'Connor and others. From the myth of the white roots of the Southern epic novel to the lives of authors inspired by Celtic sources, no serious college-level student of Southern literature should be without HOW CELTIC CULTURE INVENTED SOUTHERN LITERATURE.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

I'm a general reader and admirer of Southern literature. It is an easy to read and thought provoking book. It's helping me appreciate my culture and its great writers. I particularly enjoyed the chapter on Pat Conroy. I appreciate how the scholar-like Cantrell takes fellow Georgian Margaret Mitchell seriously.

Set in rural Kentucky around WWII, this book is so good, it should replace Huckelberry Finn as "the great american novel". It is a shame that it isn't better known, but unfortunately Arnow-Simpson is thought of as a regional writer. This is a very deep book, but it also has some very funny parts. Her description of pre-consumerism country life is very detailed and insightful. She saw how the world was changing, and captured a piece of it that is now long gone. I'm not even an hunting type, and I wanted to go out and get a couple of hounds after reading this. Better even than The Dollmaker, and not half as sad. Highly Recommended!

This book captures the spirit, character, and complexities of the mountain people of eastern Kentucky better than any other I have read. The individuals are simple, strong-willed, and proud like many of the people I grew up with. The descriptions of the landscape are detailed, accurate, and compelling as I remember them. For anyone interested in a better understanding of the depth of human character explained in a very readable way, this is a terrific book

If you've never read Harriette Arnow, or only know her through The Dollmaker, you'll be shocked at how stunning this novel is. Beautiful written, with some of the most complex and moving characters in literature.

If you have ever read even one book or short story by Ellen Gilchrist, then you have had a special experience that will never leave you. She is simply unique--there is absolutely nobody else like her.

This collection of short stories, which span several decades in no particular order, are full of heart-rending, exquisitely written, slices of life that have such pathos, such reality, such a truly human essence, that we can even love Rhoda Manning's Daddy, who is a racist to the extreme. Impossible, you say? Yes, with any other author, it would be impossible, it would be repugnant. But it is not...not that we FORGIVE him, but we see him through the loving eyes of his daughter from the age of 5 well into adulthood.

Other stories cover a wide range of different experiences including, eerily, a story about Middle Eastern terrorists who plan to murder several people on their leader's request. Gilchrist explains at the end of the book that this story was written BEFORE 9/11, which is truly scary. She had no clue that something REAL would happen. The difference is that in her story, there is a happy ending.

Rhoda Manning loves her daddy. She invariably disobeys him, but she loves him as a five-year-old in the first story of this collection, getting in trouble with a gun. She still loves him as a 60-year-old, getting in trouble climbing a tree to retrieve a golden bough so she can descend into the underworld and commune with him. Along the way we too get to know her daddy, Big Dudley. In one story, he takes charge of her wayward, pot-smoking teenaged sons in 1970s New Orleans. In another, he ups and moves to Wyoming and teaches the whole family to ski. In yet another, he sends middle-aged, newly sober Rhoda down the Wind River with her 12-year-old son in a canoe. He's frequently racist, often stubborn, but he's also fiercely protective, forceful, strong, and sensible. "He was always turning out to be right, and when we abandoned the clear paths he wanted us to travel we were always sorry."

Ellen Gilchrist fans may have some trouble recognizing this older, wiser Rhoda Manning, but underneath the sobriety and wisdom, our favorite smart aleck still holds court. "Watch nature videos. See who rules a group of chimpanzees and why. Then decide if you want your president to keep it zipped." Charmed as ever by Ms. Gilchrist's easy, droll storytelling, I realized that getting to know Rhoda over the years in these bite-sized vignettes makes Rhoda seem more alive and genuine than she would if I read an entire novel about her. This way we learn about her in bits and pieces, over time, the way we learn about people in real life.

There are Rhoda-less stories, too. One of them is sufficiently prescient of the events of September 11, 2001, that the author notes in a foreword that it was written in the fall of 2000. That particular piece features new characters, but the last story is in the voice of Traceleen, one of my longtime favorite Gilchrist creations. A former maid and current friend of a white woman she still calls "Miss Crystal," the Creole Traceleen now studies yoga and Buddhism. These disciplines stand her in good stead as she confronts the nanny her niece has hired for her precious grandnieces and, later, this nanny's drug-crazed boyfriend. I've always loved Traceleen because she's so dignified and serious, such a wonderful counterpoint to the crazy, selfish behavior of her rich employers. "I sighed. Once again lack of understanding had caused a problem. Could I find a way to set things right? It would have to begin in my own heart, as Jesus taught and I sometimes know."

These stories often have a fairy tale quality about them, and Ms. Gilchrist dispenses the lessons subtly and gently. There is real wisdom here, in simple, conversational prose. It's gratifying to see these characters settling down, to learn what they've learned. "Why in the name of God after all these years have I decided this is funny? Because everyone lived through it. Because no one died or was maimed or had their lives ruined."

Nearly everyone in these stories is well-off, and some are very rich. The women are gorgeous and talented, if sometimes troubled by men, children, diet pills, Arab terrorists, and unwanted pregnancy. If I had one tiny quibble, I'd like to see what Ms. Gilchrist would do with more ordinary characters --- those of us not so rich and not so beautiful. But that's not a flaw --- merely curiosity stimulated by a mature writer at the top of her form.

--- Reviewed by Eileen Zimmerman Nicol (ezn1@aol.com)

Rhoda Manning is five years old when readers meet this recurring character in this collection of short stories by award-winning author Ellen Gilchrist. Rhoda Manning owns the stories and reveals them as a five year old child in the title story.

She also reveals herself as a mature adult and divorced mother of three and as an elderly woman clinging to all that is good from the past. Parents of teens will have no problem identifying with Rhoda's tale of woe as she parents three teenage boys who are wreckless and wild, spending their days crafting ways to defy their mother and their authoritarian grandfather.

It is a tale of pot and lies and the overwhelming job of parenting in the 70's. The brash and bold Rhoda is almost equaled by another Gilchrist regular, Nora Jane Harwood.

In this tale written prior to September 11, the protagonist finds herself in the locker room of an athletic club in Berkley, Ca when an earthquake jolts Nora and her two year old, Little Freddy. ...

...This is a story that ends too soon with characters so real you want them to live on.

Another story, "The Abortion", Gilchrist's characters reveal their courage and character ...

Gilchrist's stories and characters are above all else real. Their trials and tribulations are woven loosely in some cases, but always with an echo of familiarity.

I've gotten pretty into butterfly gardening and developed a pretty thorough interest in lepidoptera, and this book is part of what sparked that in me. It's a great intro, because it shows some of the more conspicuous local species, plus the information's less dry than your average field guide. Even if you're not a beginning butterfly watcher, chances are you'll learn SOMETHING from it, and it's a great book to own, especially since it gives specific locations where you can go see the butterflies. The photographs are awesome. If you decide you get more into butterflies after this book, I recommend the Butterflies through Binoculars series; this book gives you some of the knowledge to know what to look for in more advanced guides.

Herbert Clarke's gorgeous and colorful photos (over 250 of them) fill butterfly expert Fred Heath's An Introduction To Southern California Butterflies with clear close-ups of Southern California butterflies, enabling identification of almost 90 species and highlighting their favorite foods and plants. Heath has lectured, led field trips, and written many articles about the butterflies in his area: his region-specific Introduction To Southern California Butterflies is a strongly recommended pick for all butterfly enthusiasts!

Worth every penny! Great book! It's maybe 9" x 6". Pages are thick and glossy and good quality. Lots of photos. My only request to the authors would be to add a bit more info to help butterfly gardeners, such as the Latin name of "thistle". I would also love a companion book that provides extensive photos of caterpillars, so that when I find a caterpillar, I can figure out which butterfly it is going to become.

The Whistle Stop Cookbook is a delightful compendium of original recipes from the Irondale Cafe in Irondale, Alabama. Cafe (dubbed the "Whistle Stop" by Fannie Flagg, and owned since 1973 by Mary Jo and Bill McMichael). Mary Joy has compiled a spiral bound cornucopia of good eating recipes ranging from Buttermilk Biscuits, Skinless Fried Chicken, Cheese Grits, Refreshing Scallop Salad, Country Ham and Red-Eye Gravy, and Southern Corn Pudding to Mississippi Mud Cake, Hot Pineapple Salad, Marinated Cabbage Slaw, Banana Split Cake, Peanut Brittle Sauce, and Green Tomato Pie. Whistle Stop Cookbook is a very welcome addition to any family kitchen collection.

The Irondale Cafe Cookbook is a must for every cook, young or old. The recipes are easy to follow and use ingredients that most of us keep on hand. The macaroni and cheese and rice pudding especially remind me of wonderful childhood memories that I was unable to duplicate until I found this cookbook. My copy is well worn. The recipes are full of old fashioned flavor but can be prepared in a short amount of time. This book could make a terrific cook out of someone who doesn't know how to boil water.

I love, love, love this cookbook!! I crave my grandma's excellent home cooked meals and this cookbook has the recipes and advice to let you cook just like her.