I feel the same compulsion to "get this down for the record," like part of being a Southerner is a holy calling to simply bear witness to loss and not let it slide into the gulf of the past unremarked.
Admittedly, I had not heard of Drake before reading your piece. I’m grateful for the invitation. As a fellow book collector, I now await the arrival of The Home Place: A Memory and Celebration. Thank you!
So much here connects with how I feel about my West Virginia birthplace and being able to spend the night sleeping in the bedroom where my mother was born on the land that's been in my family since just after the Civil War. I reflect on Andersonville and the death of a young man taken from his homeland to die of dysentery in hellish torment, his widow then marrying another Union soldier, one who survived two long enlistments. My Great great grandparents and the purchasers of that land, so many descendants, including noted drummer Chad Smith, that were born only because of that notorious disease ridden prison camp.
Lest anyone think I'm taking sides, my Grandfather's other Grandfather fought for the Confederacy and carried that pride all the remainder of his days.
Thank you. This is fascinating read. Every October my kin gather at a community center in rural Tipton County, named for a late cousin, for a family reunion. You can see the water tower in Ripley, Tennessee in the distance.
This piece makes me wonder about how much we are people simply living in our times, caught up in whatever the zeitgeist is, or how much of some of us, as Southerners, are connected to our history, our People, our place. And, as a Baby Boomer at the short end of the candle, how much of our "Southern-ness" lives in the two generations younger than me. I know they know they aren't Yankees. But, how much more is there to their identity than that?
You're welcome and thank you for reading and for the thoughtful comment. Family reunions matter more than we admit. I live in a different world than most of my family, even though we’re close by, and I never regret showing up. A few months ago at the Steely reunion, I sat with eighty-year-old cousins who still carry the old stories. I plan to keep them alive.
In Drake, I (seventh-generation southerner, born and raised in a town of 2,500) recognize the kind of southerner who refers to the "horrors" of Reconstruction and "muggings" in the big city without much self-awareness. Who, for all his grand thoughts on place and history, is not-so-secretly often petty like the rest of us, e.g., in his rivalry with other writers, to feed which he is greedy for minute details of what prep school, writing program, and literary journal smoothed some rival's path to acclaim and prizes. Who can let drop the phrase "from a good family" confident that his interlocutor will know what he means. It's a type I can make room for, though I find the tendency toward smugness (it's not enough for them to simply reject certain aspects of modernity; they sometimes denigrate different choices made by other people) off-putting. The example of Flannery O'Connor is apposite: without the Iowa Writers' Workshop, without the experience of living up north with the cosmopolitan Robert and Sally Fitzgerald, without having ventured intellectually far beyond the confines of a place like Milledgeville, Georgia, she wouldn't have been Flannery O'Connor, and she knew it: that's what enabled her to create both Julian and Julian's mother in "Everything That Rises Must Converge," a story that bears reading against the background of *I'll Take My Stand*.
I feel the same compulsion to "get this down for the record," like part of being a Southerner is a holy calling to simply bear witness to loss and not let it slide into the gulf of the past unremarked.
Cultural hoarding.
Admittedly, I had not heard of Drake before reading your piece. I’m grateful for the invitation. As a fellow book collector, I now await the arrival of The Home Place: A Memory and Celebration. Thank you!
His must-read essay "What it Means to Be a Southerner" and Home Place were my introduction to him several years back.
So much here connects with how I feel about my West Virginia birthplace and being able to spend the night sleeping in the bedroom where my mother was born on the land that's been in my family since just after the Civil War. I reflect on Andersonville and the death of a young man taken from his homeland to die of dysentery in hellish torment, his widow then marrying another Union soldier, one who survived two long enlistments. My Great great grandparents and the purchasers of that land, so many descendants, including noted drummer Chad Smith, that were born only because of that notorious disease ridden prison camp.
Lest anyone think I'm taking sides, my Grandfather's other Grandfather fought for the Confederacy and carried that pride all the remainder of his days.
Thank you. This is fascinating read. Every October my kin gather at a community center in rural Tipton County, named for a late cousin, for a family reunion. You can see the water tower in Ripley, Tennessee in the distance.
This piece makes me wonder about how much we are people simply living in our times, caught up in whatever the zeitgeist is, or how much of some of us, as Southerners, are connected to our history, our People, our place. And, as a Baby Boomer at the short end of the candle, how much of our "Southern-ness" lives in the two generations younger than me. I know they know they aren't Yankees. But, how much more is there to their identity than that?
You're welcome and thank you for reading and for the thoughtful comment. Family reunions matter more than we admit. I live in a different world than most of my family, even though we’re close by, and I never regret showing up. A few months ago at the Steely reunion, I sat with eighty-year-old cousins who still carry the old stories. I plan to keep them alive.
In Drake, I (seventh-generation southerner, born and raised in a town of 2,500) recognize the kind of southerner who refers to the "horrors" of Reconstruction and "muggings" in the big city without much self-awareness. Who, for all his grand thoughts on place and history, is not-so-secretly often petty like the rest of us, e.g., in his rivalry with other writers, to feed which he is greedy for minute details of what prep school, writing program, and literary journal smoothed some rival's path to acclaim and prizes. Who can let drop the phrase "from a good family" confident that his interlocutor will know what he means. It's a type I can make room for, though I find the tendency toward smugness (it's not enough for them to simply reject certain aspects of modernity; they sometimes denigrate different choices made by other people) off-putting. The example of Flannery O'Connor is apposite: without the Iowa Writers' Workshop, without the experience of living up north with the cosmopolitan Robert and Sally Fitzgerald, without having ventured intellectually far beyond the confines of a place like Milledgeville, Georgia, she wouldn't have been Flannery O'Connor, and she knew it: that's what enabled her to create both Julian and Julian's mother in "Everything That Rises Must Converge," a story that bears reading against the background of *I'll Take My Stand*.