Southern writers

[Idlefellow]

I'm on a new kick; reading Faulkner's short stories got me started, I guess. Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Conner, Breece D'J Pancake (yeah, I know; I thought it was a joke too at first). Any other "southern" favorites or suggestions?

 

[the macdonald]

Robert Penn Warren! All the King's Men was way more of book than I was ready for when I picked it up. I nievly expected a straight ahead political thriller and got "real literature." He has written alot more but up hear in New England only All the King's Men is carried in the stores.

 

[paddy-boy]

Walker Percy: The Moviegoer, Love in Ruins, Lancelot.. Hell anything by Percy is good.
John Kennedy Toole: A Confederacy of Dunces
And of course Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird

 

[sand18f]

Shelby Foote...Percy's good friend.

 

[Dillon]

Just about anything from Cormac McCarthy, if you can stomach it. Child of God is about a necrophiliac mountain man in Tennessee, and his most famous novel before The Road, Suttree, is about a lone fisherman on the Tennessee River in Knoxville. McCarthy was born in Rhode Island and sets most of his stories in the (south)west, but spent considerable time living in Tennessee, and is considered a Southern gothic writer.

Blood Meridian is his other big novel. An extraordinarily violent, well-written, and well-researched book about a 15-year-old from Tennessee joining up with a gang of scalp hunters in the West before the Civil War. It really impressed me when I read it a few years back. I haven't heard of anyone having a style much like McCarthy's, which is like free-verse poetry spanning about 400 years written in narrative form. The way he describes the desert and builds a scene is incredible.

 

[shootist51]

Robert Ruark
The honey Badger
Poor No More
Uhuru(?)
The Old Man and The Boy
The Old Man's Boy Grows Up.

The 3 of the first 4 are set in East Africa in the late 50's and early 60's
Poor No More is set in the south and New England
The last two are autobiographical and set along the Cape Fear River and environs.

 

[Ol'Dawg]

If you like outdoor writers, I'd suggest a couple of authors-- Archibald Rutledge from SC who wrote a number of books and also short stories for Outdoor Life and Field and Stream and/or my favorite, Havilah Babcock, from VA but I think an English prof at the University of SC. My favorite Babcock books are "My Health Is Better In November" and "Tales of Quail and Such". His books are hard to find but well worth the effort.

Jim

 

[Idlefellow]

Thanks for the replies and suggestions, and for resurrecting this old thread. I've read all the McCarthy stuff, and my outdoors interests have included all the Ruark, Rutledge and Babcock works. Fine stuff it is! I was thinking more of "southern writing" as a particular genre. Harper Lee, of course; years ago. Thanks for the Foote, Percy and Toole suggestions; I'll be chasing those down!

 

[thedeep]

a modern southern writer, James Burke, does it very nicely for me. You can see, and smell, Louisiana in every story. Faulkner was the king of "decay" in a story, but Burke comes close.

 

[Airborne]

If you enjoy mysteries/crime novels, you can't beat James Lee Burke. I recommend any of the Dave Robicheaux books. They're all set in Cajun country.