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.