Any Southern Literature fans out there?

[Distracted]

I miss The Carol Burnett Show. It's so hard to find comedy that isn't filthy these days.

[lfvoy]

I'm not sure how modern you're trying to get but I could recommend The Prince of Tides and/or Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. There's a special kind of madness and hysteria that comes out of the Southern mystique.

[WarpGirl]

Yeah, definitely too long. I haven't read that one either. I have to admit my favorite thing about Gone With the Wind is Carol Burnett's take on it. That curtain rod made me laugh so hard I couldn't breathe.

You've never read it!

[Distracted]

Well, if you're gonna go modern then Anne Rice is fair game.

Also Deborah Smith. Love her book "A Gentle Rain". Very unique.

[Alelou]

Yeah, definitely too long. I haven't read that one either. I have to admit my favorite thing about Gone With the Wind is Carol Burnett's take on it. That curtain rod made me laugh so hard I couldn't breathe.

You've never read it!

I know. My bad. It's just that I thought the movie was so awful, just one godawful stereotype after another. But I ought to read it. It's a big part of the white Southern mythos, and the book has to be better than the movie (right?).

I just finished Gibbons' Ellen Foster (short book!). Love the narrative voice, but it feels an awful lot like a first novel and it ends on what seems to me a weird patronizing note. I'll keep it on the maybe-but-probably-not list.

I'm willing to go contemporary, but it still needs to be at least a bit literary.

[WarpGirl]

The book is a great deal more raw and gritty. Not so shiny and clean. But really, in 1939 there was a production code in place and it was practically illegal to not make the movie the way it was made.

You're brave, I don't think I'd have the guts to teach this class not having read it.

[panyasan]

I really don't like Gone with the wind. Scarlett keeps on pining away with that wimp Ashley, while Rhett Butler is great!

I don't know if this counts, but for me a true Southern story is Forrest Gump . The books is written by Winston Groom.

[Alelou]

While the people of Atlanta probably consider Gone With the Wind Southern canon, I doubt most English professors would. It's really considered popular culture. Anyway, I'll let you know how many of my students have read it. I'm not sure this generation (up here) will even have heard of it.

Forrest Gump strikes me as more an American story than a Southern one, but then I haven't read that book either.

[WarpGirl]

Well how many people considered The Great Gatsby true Lit, in 1922? Or Jane Eyre? Or many other books written by the "greats" in their time. Charles Dickens greatest novels were originally serialized for syndication in the news papers of his day.

Sometimes art becomes Iconic without being thought of as important. For example, Andy Warhol is Iconic, he did Pop art including a Cambell's soup can! Yet nobody denies his impact on his chosen demographic of his medium.

I wouldn't be to quick to say a book like GWtW is merely a "popular" book. As you said before it is a large part of the Mythos of the South in Lit, and for decades defined it.

Personally, Hemmingway and Dickens don't do it for me. I just don't get the appeal, but I get why they're considered some of the best writers in their respective genres. Still, they weren't considered the "canon" of their day when they were writing.

[lfvoy]

While the people of Atlanta probably consider Gone With the Wind Southern canon, I doubt most English professors would. It's really considered popular culture. Anyway, I'll let you know how many of my students have read it. I'm not sure this generation (up here) will even have heard of it.

I have read GWTW, Alelou, and I agree it's much more gritty (and realistic) than the movie. It also has several passages that are meant to be nostalgic lookbacks at antebellum Southern culture. If you approach it with a literary analysis attitude and realize that the romance aspect (highlighted in the movie) is really not the main thrust of the book, it can be considered very Southern in terms of literature.

By the way, only 25% of people living in the Atlanta metro are actually from the Atlanta area. There are a lot of Southern expats out there, and even more "immigrants" into the area. Southern culture and popular culture inform each other in the U.S. more than most people realize, and I'd argue it's a false dichotomy to pretend there's a line between them.

[Silverbullet]

Gone with the wind raised all sorts of Hell. In the end Rhett butler says "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn"

Well ministers ad other holy men were sure that the U.S. was sinking in to Hell fire and Brimstone. That word "Damn" shook them to their coat tails.

You can't say that.

Lots of folks remember the movie solely on that one word.

"Gosh," "Golly," "Darn" "Shoot" "Gee" all acceptable. The fact that one heard most four letter words each day was besides the point.

Dialogue

"Gosh, you're swell"

"Gee, do you really think so"

Scene, couple on train in a drawing room on their Honeymoon. Male gets out deck of cards "Want to play double solitaire?"

Couples slept in twin beds.

We were Moral Yup

SB

[WarpGirl]

SB I think your post more accurately describes the movie, rather than the book. In the book, the language is very harsh, or as a gentleman as yourself would probably say "salty." D-- and H--- and other not so polite and refined words litter the pages. And while yes, it *does* have the famous Rhett Butler line, compared to the other things he says in the book, it's downright tame!

The book is actually amazingly complex and the characters are not nearly so simple. Melenie Hamilton-Wilks is far more than an angelic moral compass, although she is the only truly moral decent person in the whole tale. Scarlet is far more vulnerable. Rhett is considerably not charming at times, but always funny. Ashely is a pathetic excuse for a man but trapped in his own smallness, and definitely NOT a victim of Scarlet's obsession which he equally encourages and repells. Mammy, is not so nice all the time.

Really, you can't judge the book entirely by the movie, and this is someone who LOVES the movie. For example, Scarlet has two children by her first two husbands that were never mentioned in the movie! They add a huge piece of the puzzle!

[Alelou]

Gone With the Wind was published in 1936. The Sun Also Rises (Hemingway) was published 10 years earlier, just a year after The Great Gatsby. The latter two get taught far more often than the former, which is considered genre fiction (a romance novel). Hemingway and Fitzgerald were published as serious fiction and stood the test of time to be included in literary canon, and Gone With the Wind did not, though it's by no means out of print. Partly this is a reflection of how seriously people took the two authors and judged the artistry of their technique. The argument about how one ends up in "literary" canon and the other doesn't could certainly be interesting, and maybe there's some sexism (or even anti-Southern prejudices) involved. However, since it's not considered literary, and since it's also a rather long book, it's not going to suit my needs for this course. I probably should try to get it read, though, since it does reflect/inform popular attitudes.

That tidbit about Scarlett is really interesting. It does make me more curious about the book.

There are people in my field who DO sneer at Dickens as popular fiction. Honestly, I would sneer at Dickens myself if all I'd ever read was A Tale of Two Cities or A Christmas Carol, but I've enjoyed other works of his quite a bit. Twain is another author who was very popular in his day who is now in the canon. (I'd be tempted to include Huck Finn, but it's also pretty long, and I believe still taught in many high schools, although I may be wrong about that.)

Old time Atlanta folks are going to be serious about their Margaret Mitchell, from what I've read. But yes, I'm sure it is a very cosmopolitan area. When I was growing up, Tampa was a bit like that, with a core of old families that were either old-time Southerners or old-time Cubans, as well as the local poor and middle class who'd been there for generations, the group my mother belonged to even though she was a navy brat, because both her parents had grown up around Tampa. But the majority of folks would be from somewhere else in the country.

Is there a dichotomy between the South and the rest of the country anymore? Some people argue that the South has essentially triumphed in the end and dominates American culture and politics today. I expect a great deal of interesting discussion.

[lfvoy]

The book is actually amazingly complex and the characters are not nearly so simple. Melenie Hamilton-Wilks is far more than an angelic moral compass, although she is the only truly moral decent person in the whole tale. Scarlet is far more vulnerable. Rhett is considerably not charming at times, but always funny. Ashely is a pathetic excuse for a man but trapped in his own smallness, and definitely NOT a victim of Scarlet's obsession which he equally encourages and repells. Mammy, is not so nice all the time.

And in a way each of the characters you've described could be an archetype, WG. The Melanie of the book, for example, represents the best of Southern society but she also ultimately succumbed to that denial-of-the-negative that could sometimes be so positive (she was repeatedly warned not to have another baby). Rhett and Scarlett are definitely "survivor" archetypes and there's a not-so-subtle theme throughout the book about how far a person should go to survive and care for themselves. Ashley's the archetype of the person who just plain can't handle change despite being superficially intelligent and capable. Take him out of his carefully constructed artificial world and he just collapses. (There are themes there about "the good old days" and artificiality of one's world, as well.)

I can go on, but you get the idea. Getting back to the original topic, Alelou, I think it'd behoove you to at least acknowledge the existence of GWTW in the American consciousness. If I remember right, you're in the Northeast? When I've traveled outside the South I've encountered a lot of stereotypes and I wouldn't be surprised if your students had them. And the movie version of GWTW is very much a stereotype in some people's awareness.

Oh, and Atlanta as a cosmopolitan area? *snort* Atlanta is a bunch of small towns that all happen to be in the same place (I say this as a resident of the area for nearly six years now). Not all of those towns originated in the Southern US. In fact, not all of those towns originated in the US, period. And very few of the towns have much to do with each other. But that's another topic for discussion. My point was that there's a lot of mobility that has rather blurred the line between what's "Southern" and what's "American."

[Alelou]

I think it'd behoove you to at least acknowledge the existence of GWTW in the American consciousness. If I remember right, you're in the Northeast? When I've traveled outside the South I've encountered a lot of stereotypes and I wouldn't be surprised if your students had them. And the movie version of GWTW is very much a stereotype in some people's awareness.

No argument there -- and none earlier on that point, as far as I can recall. But I can't count on my students knowing it. We'll probably start the course by brainstorming about all our preconceptions.