My Tears Spoiled My Aim: and Other Reflections on Southern Culture (Volume 1) - Hardcover

Reed, John Shelton

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 082620886X ISBN 13: 9780826208866

Publisher: University of Missouri, 1993

Synopsis

The Kansas City Star calls John Shelton Reed "an H. L. Mencken of Dixie." "A writer this funny is dangerous," says the Raleigh News and Observer. Here Reed is in peak form as he takes a hard, often humorous look at a region he claims has created its own quasi-ethnic group: the American Southerner.
Is the South changing? You bet, says Reed. Industrialism, urbanization, and desegregation are just a few of the things that have changed it almost beyond recognition. In fact, one constant in the South is change. "Those who like their boundaries well defined should not attempt to talk about Southerners, " writes Reed. But for those willing to ask some difficult questions about the life and culture of the elusive Southerner, this is the place to start.
Where is the South? Does it begin at the Mason-Dixon Line or the "Hell, yes!" line - where people begin to answer that way when asked if they're Southerners? Is it where kudzu grows? Or where bourbon is preferred over scotch? How do Southerners come by their reputation for laziness? What happens to Southern ways when Southerners leave the South - or Yankees come to it?
How does the rest of the world perceive Southern women? To address that question Reed examines the Southern belles and good ol' girls who have made it into the page of Playboy. (Sorry, pictures not included.)
In the title piece of this collection, Reed peruses country music lyrics to explore white Southern attitudes toward violence, from more-or-less-traditional homicides - romantic triangles and lovers' quarrels - to brawls that target everything from dogs to vending machines. And he cites his own "My Tears Spoiled My Aim" as one of the great unrecorded country songs of our time: My tears spoiled my aim; that's why you're not dead. I blew a hole in the wall two feet above the bed. I couldn't see where you were at, my tears were fallin' so. I tried to shoot by ear, but y'all were lyin' low.
Perhaps one of the things that best defines the South is like my favorite pair of blue jeans," says Reed. "it's shrunk some, faded a bit, got a few holes in it. It doesn't look much like it used to, but it's more comfortable, and there's probably a lot of wear left in it." My Tears Spoiled My Aim will leave you chuckling - and reflecting - as one of the most perceptive observers of the South shows that no matter how much it changes, it's still the South.

About this title

About the Author

John Shelton Reed taught for thirty-one years at the University of North Carolina, where he directed the Howard Odum Institute for Research in Social Science and helped to found the university's Center for the Study of the American South. A founding coeditor of the quarterly Southern Cultures, he has received many fellowships and prizes and has been president of the Southern Sociological Society and the Southern Association for Public Opinion Research. He was once a judge at the Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest, and in 2001 he was elected to the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Reed has written many books including Kicking Back and Surveying the South (both with University of Missouri Press). He lives and writes in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Reviews

Where exactly is the South? Why do southerners so love it? Why have more and more blacks been moving there? Is the southerner's reputation for laziness really deserved? Those who know Reed (Sociology/University of North Carolina) only as the author of Southern Folk, Plain & Fancy (1986)--a vastly entertaining collection of southern stereotypes--will be gratifyingly surprised with the present essays, which effortlessly cut through a century's worth of bias to answer the above questions and more. Reed insists that to ask ``Where is the South?'' is pointless. Southerners, he contends, are America's only genuine ethnic group and are bound together by culture--patterns of diet, religion, music, manners, and the like--rather than by geography. There are sizable southern enclaves in Ypsilanti, Michigan; in Bakersfield, California; in Brooklyn; and in many other places. Asked what they like about the South, southerners who live below the Mason-Dixon Line invariably speak of the pleasant natural conditions and the amiable people: ``It's green, clean-looking, not eaten-up with pollution''; ``I have a great feeling of being respected and welcomed here.'' What about returning blacks? Reed says that the years 1963-65 evidenced a watershed reversal of white prejudice; that ``more blacks now hold public office in the South than any other region''; and that ``average black incomes in the South have exceeded those in the Midwest, and increased in the 1980's while declining elsewhere in the US.'' And as for southerners' supposed laziness, Reed notes that they watch less TV and listen to less radio than their compatriots. The author also quotes a 1973 Harris poll that found favorite pastimes to include fixing things around the house; helping others; eating; developing one's personality; having a good time with friends and family; taking naps; and ``just doing nothing.'' Wonderfully authentic: an admirably lighthearted supplement to W.J. Cash's classic The Mind of the South. (Maps.) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Missouri
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 082620886X
• ISBN 13: 9780826208866
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 168