“If you look at social media, you see this leveling of American culture. Everyone has the same photo of the same beach, the same blue water, same wedding party, same slang, same songs, same movies. We have one lingua franca. We curate ourselves for mass consumption. But real speech, in the moment, in groups of two or three, tears at the veil. What we say that is not recorded. Drunken confession. Botched jokes. The rejected advance. Campfire at a deer camp. The novel as village gossip. The writer must rescue the whispered and the regrettable. I’m from a place totally shaped by talk, by verbal facility. All that silence, space, and privation gave people that gift, like the Irish, like Southerners.” – Matthew Neill Null
M.C. Tuggle, Writer 
The South contains a goldmine of stories waiting to be discovered, and I’ve been panning there all my life.
Love the quote.
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Mary Cathleen Clark,
Yes, it does. Those of us who know and appreciate that fact have a rich inheritance and duty.
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I agree.
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Spot-on quote. As a born and raised Southerner, even though I have lived well over thirty years in New England, I can attest to the stories that are told there. I’m not at all surprised. When I moved here I felt as though the verbal world had closed it’s door. It has taken me many years to understand the more subtle communication up north. Interestingly, writing is, and I think has been, “the way” up here. The problem is that so much is missed without the spontaneous real speech. -Jennie-
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Jennie,
Culture is so rich, so complex, and so much a part of our daily lives that we don’t really think about it, and when we do, think only of its superficial qualities. Like many other areas of living, it’s something we can never comprehend, though we can learn to appreciate it more.
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Absolutely!
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