A friend and I have talked frequently about the “Southern canon.” What constitutes the best Southern literature? (It’s Faulkner, right?) What are the quintessential books produced in the American South? These questions have driven me to Google more than once. Interestingly, I’ve just now turned up a stab at codifying such a canon.
The list at Agee Films is the work of “book editors, publishers, scholars and reviewers.” The candidates were limited to the past century, so much seminal Southern literature is excluded. And since it lists the top 25 Southern books, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry alike make the list. Following that is an unordered list of the next 100 books—the also-rans. I’d love to hear what the reviewers actually had to say about each book, how they justified their selections.
As much as folks like me love to make lists, I think we like to argue about lists even more. I certainly do. When the Modern Library’s list of the top 100 novels of the 20th century, I spent days on the bulletin boards arguing with people about the selection of books like A Clockwork Orange. The reason, I think, is simple. Aesthetics as a discipline has fallen on hard times, thanks to the critical schools that have come along since the 1950s. Consequently, value judgments are awfully hard to make in the early 21st century.
Naturally, then, I have some quibbles with this list. For example, I think some of the top nonfiction books are inferior to some of the novels below them. Same with the fiction. And what exactly constitutes Southern fiction, anyway? While not completely sufficient, Wikipedia’s list of Southern lit’s criteria isn’t all that bad:
a focus on a common Southern history, the significance of family, a sense of community and one’s role within it, the region’s dominant religion (Christianity, See Protestantism) and the burdens/rewards religion often brings, issues of racial tension, land and the promise it brings, a sense of social class and place, and the use of the Southern dialect.
I started to write a quick response to each book, but I’m embarrassed to say I haven’t read half of them. So suffice it to say that I think Ellison’s top spot makes little sense to me. While it is a fine novel, I find it difficult to understand how this could be the best Southern novel of the twentieth century. It depends, I guess, on what themes you think are central to Southern fiction. Racial tension is certainly on the list, but I find it much more compelling in a novel like Absalom, Absalom! or Light in August. All that said, here’s the top 25. (The ones I’ve read are in bold.)
1. Invisible Man Ralph Ellison
2. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men James Agee
3. The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner
4. The Mind of the South Wilbur Cash
5. Look Homeward, Angel Thomas Wolfe
6. To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee
7. The Color Purple Alice Walker
8. Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston
9. Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner
10. Lanterns on the Levee William Alexander Percy
11. All the King’s Men Robert Penn Warren
12. The Collected Short Stories Eudora Welty
13. The Civil War: A Narrative Shelby Foote
14. The Moviegoer Walker Percy
15. Tobacco Road Erskine Caldwell
16. Black Boy Richard Wright
17. Cane Jean Toomer
18. Native Son Richard Wright
19. As I Lay Dying William Faulkner
20. Gone With the Wind Margaret Mitchell
21. Up from Slavery Booker T. Washington
22. The Last Gentleman Walker Percy
23. The Complete Stories Flannery O’Connor
24. The Collected Stories Katherine Anne Porter
25. The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman Ernest Gaines
1 response so far ↓
Greg // December 28, 2007 at 7:11 pm
I’ve read fewer on the list than you have (of course), but of those I have read, All The King’s Men and O’Connor’s anthology are my favorites. I just bought The Moviegoer and am looking forward to digging into it.