The Companion to Southern Literature: Themes, Genres, Places, People, Movements, and Motifs. Edited by Joseph Flora and Lucinda MacKethan. Louisiana State University Press, 1,054 pages, $69.99.
There are plenty of anthologies of southern literature, but only one companion.
The Companion to Southern Literature is a near-exhaustive reference on the South as it appears in literature. Want to know about Kmart fiction? How about mules or guilt? It’s all here, in 500 articles that cover everything from abolition to Yoknapatawpha, William Faulkner’s fictional Mississippi setting.
Two hundred fifty scholars, graduate students, fiction writers, and poets contributed articles to the book. Over 40 of those contributors are here at Carolina, in departments ranging from English to Exercise and Sport Science. The book’s contributors explore customs and cultures — Gone With the Wind, snake handling, the Sears Catalog, voodoo, grits — as well as literary styles, movements, and genres, among them postmodernism and the tall tale.
“We learned so much from the book,” says Joseph Flora, professor of English. “Our contributors were enthusiastic and dedicated.”
As Flora and his coeditor Lucinda MacKethan were putting the book together, their contributors suggested more topics, and each topic seemed to suggest another. “The book grew and grew, rather like Topsy,” Flora says. Even so, the editors began to realize there were topics they wouldn’t have time to tackle.
“As soon as my sons saw the book, they rebuked me for not having an entry on the dog,” Flora says. “There are some splendid dogs in southern literature — and the phenomenon of the dog fight. My sons were right.”
Flora is no stranger to Southern literature, having co-edited several bibliographical and critical studies. He’s written books on Vardis Fisher, William Ernest Henley, and Ernest Hemingway. He’s also on the editorial board of The Southern Literary Journal. Flora contributed fifteen entries to The Companion to Southern Literature, including discussions of the Bible Belt, Jimmy Carter, sex and sexuality, and Sunday school.
MacKethan got her master’s and doctoral degrees in English from Carolina. She is now an English professor at N.C. State.
Todd Taylor, assistant professor of English at Carolina, was the book’s associate editor. Among other things, Taylor helped turn hundreds of submissions — written on different kinds of software and disks — into a finished book. “I am not a master of technology, to put it mildly,” Flora says. “So it was wonderful to get Todd Taylor to come on board to handle that end of things.”