Perhaps since the War Between the States itself, and certainly since the literary Southern Renascence became conscious of itself in the 30’s and 40’s, educated Southerners, and Southern writers especially, have taken their sense of history as a point of pride. Now, as the end of the century approaches, one may be tempted to wonder...
Author: Madison Smartt Bell (Madison Smartt Bell)
When the Old Order Passes
“The course of a river is almost always disapproved of by its source.” —Jean Cocteau There’s a story about the filming of The Big Sleep that ought to be true even if it isn’t. When Howard Hawks was supervising the final cut he realized he didn’t know who had killed the butler, so he summoned...
Andrew Lytle Talks
Andrew Lytle lives in a log house on the Assembly Grounds in Monteagle, Tennessee. It is a busy area in summer, but in the wintertime most of the other houses are closed, and he has few immediate neighbors. The house is built on a cross plan and has somewhat unusually high ceilings. Most often Mr....
George Garrett Talks
This interview took place on September 18 and 19, 1985, at Garrett’s house in Charlottesville, not far from the University of Virginia. It is a sizable stone house, rented, with most of the available wall space covered with hastily erected brick-and-board bookcases. Not quite settled yet, Garrett and his wife, Susan, joked about how they...