Writers of the American South: Their Literary Landscapes - Hardcover

Howard, Hugh

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9780789324146: Writers of the American South: Their Literary Landscapes

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0789324148 ISBN 13: 9780789324146

Publisher: Rizzoli Universe Promotional Books, 2011

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Flannery O'Connor, Peter Taylor, Thomas Wolfe. The South has long revered its literary luminaries. Their talent for evoking a sense of place in their settings and in their characters reflects an elemental connection to their home soil. William Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha County, Eudora Welty and the Delta, Pat Conroy and the Low Country. Renowned author and photographer team Hugh Howard and Roger Straus III set out to examine the imaginative link between Southern authors and their geography and the impact on their writings. The result is an intimate, engaging, and poignant look at twenty-two of the South's most important contributors to the pantheon of great American literature. We learn, for example, that three generations of writers, Faulkner, Shelby Foote, and Ann Patchett, share the same dreamscape: the battlefield at Shiloh. The compelling tension in Carl Hiaasen's life is the ruthless development around him in the fragile Florida Keys. And when asked who influenced them, most of the living writers profiled came up with the same three names: William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and Flannery O'Connor. Through vibrant, evocative, and intimate photographs and a mix of prized storytelling and interviews, Writers of the American South offers an exhilarating opportunity to visit with Southern literary royalty and deserves a permanent place on the bookshelves of every American literature library.

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About the Author:

Hugh Howard and Roger Straus III are also the collaborators of Natchez, Thomas Jefferson Architect, and Wright for Wright.

From Publishers Weekly:

The place is a protagonist in my stories," says James Lee Burke. And photographer Straus and writer Howard provide a dazzling tribute to the power of place in the lives of Burke and 20 other Southern writers, ranging from Miami mystery writer Carl Hiaasen and Virginian Jan Karon to classic Southern writers like O'Connor, Welty and Wolfe. Combining literary criticism, biography and photo essay, each short chapter includes sometimes humorous anecdotes about a writer's development and a brief tour of the writer's house and environs. For example, Hiaasen writes comic thrillers about the ecological destruction of South Florida from his hurricane bunker of a house with a view of Florida Bay. Both Zora Neale Hurston and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings drew deeply on the isolated but rich fictional soil of scrubby and arid central Florida. Although one wishes for glimpses into the literary landscapes of writers like Reynolds Price, Harry Crews, Lee Smith and Kaye Gibbons—some of whom refused to be a part of the book—the authors still capture in rich prose and stunning photos the enigmatic power of the South over its writers. 200 color and b&w photos, 5 gatefolds.
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