Monday, September 14, 2009

Elizabeth Spencer's Five Favorite Southern Novels

As if by internet magic, Elizabeth Spencer appears in the Wall Street Journal a day after I write about her.* She provides a list of her Five Favorite Southern Novels.

Let's see. On Agate Hill by Lee Smith. Walker Percy's The Last Gentleman. Ernest Gaines, A Gathering of Old Men; Edward P. Jones, The Known World; Padgett Powell, Edisto. I have read, let me check my fingers, none of them. I've read other books by Percy and Gaines, so that's something.

The thing I like about this list is that it's personal. See, my own list would go like this: Huckleberry Finn, As I Lay Dying, Delta Wedding - no, I'm going to stop. My list is boring. The books are not boring. They're fantastic. But my list is boring. The usual suspects. No surprises at all. For proof, see the recent Oxofrd American Best Southern Novels of All Time poll (1-10 - I've read 8 of 10, 11+).

This is one of my doubts about Appreciationism. I worry that I'm too susceptible to received opinion. I'm told books are great, and when I read them I discover that they're great. Perhaps my judgment is less independent, my thinking less critical, than I like to imagine. Not that something like the Oxford American poll doesn't have its use, especially for people new to the topic. It's a quick way to see the lay of the land.

Maybe Spencer is actually listing her Five Favorites That Aren't on Everybody Else's List. Or maybe she's cusséd and cantankerous. Regardless, her list is pretty interesting.

Hat tip to R.T., who pointed out the list to me.

* Magic or marketing. This is obviously tied into the reissue of The Southern Woman.

8 comments:

  1. You should definitely read The Last Gentleman. I, ahem, am only halfway through it...stalled sometime over the summer...but I stalled for a while with The Moviegoer too and I think that's just the reaction I have to Percy even though I end up loving him.

    Of course, that's the closest I come to having read anything on her list. I've only got 4/10 of the top 10 Oxford Americans, too. And half of those I was not a fan of (I need to re-read Huck Finn, though). Ach, I am as provincial in (American) literature as in life.

    I know I am definitely too susceptible to received opinion. But I am, at the same time, cussèd. So maybe it balances out.

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  2. I'll give The Last Gentleman a try sometime. Definitely keep Huckleberry Finn on the re-read list - it has some serious problems, but the best parts are amazing.

    You think the accent on "cussèd" points to the right? That's probably correct. Now I'm filled with doubt.

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  3. I read Edisto when it was released and enjoyed it. Then again, I probably remember more about the kegger that happened the weekend that I read the book. Or maybe I'm equally ignorant of both. Such is the payoff from a wayward college education.

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  4. I'm curious about Edisto. Seems like the kind of thing I like.

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  5. >This is one of my doubts about Appreciationism. I worry that I'm too susceptible to received opinion. I'm told books are great, and when I read them I discover that they're great. Perhaps my judgment is less independent, my thinking less critical, than I like to imagine.

    Boy can I resonate with this, although there are a lot of great books out there whose reputation is deserved. I'm currently struggling to love Henry James. Some authors are just more loveable than others.

    I think I have more favorite Southern plays than novels...though no list of Southern novels should leave off To Kill a Mockingbird or The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

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  6. Jane, the response that gets my goat is the bored dismissal that so many great books get. I didn't get Wuthering Heights, it doesn't work as a romance, I didn't like any of the characters, therefore it's a bad book. Maybe I go too far the other way - but, like you,re doing with Henry James, at least I'm trying.

    I have vaguely formed plans of doing a big Henry James reading some time. I don't know him that well. I assume, amongst that mass of writing, that some of it is pretty bad. Also good, some of it must be pretty good. There's so much.

    The Oxford American poll of course includes both of the novels you mention (Lee at #5, McCullers at #11). So Spencer can't include either - that would destroy the integrity of her list.

    I've actually hever read Harper Lee.

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  7. I'm too susceptible to received lists, so I am off to explore that Oxford American poll . . .

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  8. Rose City Reader, I thought of you hwne i lionked to that list. I thought, Rose City Reader will want this list.

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