Category Archives: Southern Fiction

Adventure, Book review, Manly Wade Wellman, Southern Fiction

Cahena

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In his foreword to Cahena: A Dream of the Past, Manly Wade Wellman describes the last novel of his brilliant and prolific career as an historical novel. That’s mostly true. The book is rich in historical details, from the hardscrabble life of the Berbers to their preparations for battle, which are especially vivid and convincing. But this intriguing tale is also spiked with the sorcerous, including a demon that stalks the camps searching out doomed warriors, and a vampire.

The tale revolves around the military leader and enchantress known as the Cahena, who leads her people against invading Muslims from the east. The setting is north Africa around the beginning of the eighth century. The novel is told from the point of view of Wulf, a Saxon career soldier whose military prowess earns the Cahena’s trust, boosting him to the position of advisor and later her lover. The story moves smoothly and forcefully through military campaigns and romantic complications.

This book is a treasure to be enjoyed, from the gorgeous cover to the bittersweet conclusion. Brace yourself for realistic action, romance, betrayal, and heroism. History aficionados will especially appreciate the well-researched details of training and organizing an army. Call it historical fantasy, sword-and-sorcery, or historical romance, it delivers an entertaining, gripping tale.

Kudos to DMR Books for keeping Wellman’s legacy alive.

History, Southern Fiction

July 3, 1863

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“For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet.”

William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust

Edgar Allan Poe, Horror, Science fiction, Southern Fiction

Happy 216th Birthday, Edgar Allan Poe!

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Edgar Allan Poe

Poe’s influence on world literature is profound and far reaching. He inspired many writers, including H. P. Lovecraft, Stephen King, and Ray Bradbury, and also defined modern horror, science fiction, and crime fiction.

Here’s my birthday tribute to a great teller of tales, Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Premature Burial.”

Southern Fiction

Ron Rash named to North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame

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Ron Rash, the Parris Distinguished Professor in Appalachian Cultural Studies at Western Carolina University (my alma mater), has been recognized once again for his outstanding contributions to Southern fiction. From Western Carolina Stories:

“We are thrilled that Ron Rash is being inducted in the NC Literary Hall of Fame, a well-deserved honor,” said David Kinner, dean of WCU’s College of Arts and Sciences. “Like WCU, Ron’s work is tied to our region, its history and its people, and through his writing, he has entertained us, moved us and made us think. Ron is a prolific author, an integral part of our community and our students benefit from being able to learn from him.”

Rash said he was grateful to be placed among authors who impacted his journey as a writer.

“What makes this honor so meaningful is that previous inductees, especially Thomas Wolfe, Fred Chappell, Lee Smith and Robert Morgan, are writers who have inspired and influenced my own work,” Rash said.

The books I’ve read by Rash include The Cove and Serena, haunting, lyrical works that will certainly contribute to the legacy of Southern fiction.

Science fiction, Southern Fiction

The Baptism of Time

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There’s a powerful and alluring line in Haruki Murakami’s novel Norwegian Wood I’ve always loved: “I don’t want to waste valuable time reading any book that has not had the baptism of time.”

The character meant that in a limited sense; he felt only old books that had endured for generations were worth reading. But I would add that works that acknowledge and explore the deep and often inscrutable influence of the past are also “baptized of time” and make the most moving and inspirational reading. William Faulkner captured that insight perfectly in Requiem for a Nun: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity.”

I’ve long believed the healing power of literature rises from its ability to let us see our deep connections to others, the world around us, and the cosmos. Rachel Carson once wrote that “To understand the living present, and the promise of the future, it is necessary to remember the past.”

Growing up around Civil War and American Indian sites, I absorbed a deep appreciation of the past, and that is reflected in the stories I write. My latest is “Making a Ton,” featured in the Minstrels in the Galaxy anthology, The protagonist, a pilot in the Asteroid Belt, reflects on his connections to the trailblazers who led humanity into space:

Ray stepped towards the window. “We got to this moon on the shoulders of giants,” he announced. “Pioneers, heroes, every one of them. Giving up would be an insult to their memory. They were men and women who roared into space in ships powered by chemical fuel that could’ve exploded and turned them to space dust. But they did it anyway. They were people with backbones, muscles, and scars, and courage. That’s what space travel is about, not technology. I feel like I’m with them when I’m piloting.”

Riveting adventures, echoes of lives lived well, and guideposts for discovering what makes us what we are — that’s the goal of all good stories.

Southern Fiction

Quote of the day

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“The South is a very alluring and otherworldly place. It’s very easy to feel completely surrounded by an invisible presence down there, for lack of a better word. Everything is very rich. The air is very heavy. The trees feel like they’re descending on you. It really permeates your physical being while you’re down there, it does.” J. Nicole Jones

I know that presence well, having grown up here. Which is why I set so many of my stories in the South. MT

Southern Fiction, Writing

Quote of the day

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“Place in fiction is the named, identified, concrete, exact and exacting, and therefore credible, gathering spot of all that has been felt, is about to be experienced, in the novel’s progress. Every story would be another story, and unrecognizable as art, if it took up its characters and plot and happened somewhere else.”

Eudora Welty

Science fiction, Southern Fiction

William Gibson, Cyber Rebel

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Mention the term Southern fiction, and people typically think of the works of Flannery O’Connor, William Faulkner, Ron Rash, or Charles Frazier. The term evokes scenes of snowy-white cotton fields, simmering tension between characters sipping bourbon, or protagonists haunted by an aching nostalgia for a rural life long gone.

Most folks wouldn’t associate memory uploads, runaway AI systems, or megacorporations as proper subjects for Southern fiction. But maybe my article on cyberpunk author William Gibson might just change your mind. It’s the featured post over at the Abbeville Institute blog. Read it there, and comment on it here. Enjoy!

Southern Fiction

What Is a Southern Writer, Anyway?

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Writing in the New York Times, Margaret Renkl grapples with the nature and resilience of the Southern literary tradition. Not only does Southern literature claim such past greats as William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, and Eudora Welty, but modern-day Southern writers, such as Wendell Berry, Ron Rash, and Ann Patchett, who continue to build on that tradition. How can this be, Renkl asks, in a region that is undergoing such profound changes? Her conclusion is worth considering:

It has all made me wonder: What if being a Southern writer has nothing to do with rural tropes or lyrical prose or a lush landscape or humid heat so thick it’s hard to breathe? What if being a Southern writer is foremost a matter of growing up in a deeply troubled place and yet finding it somehow impossible to leave? Of seeing clearly the failings of home and nevertheless refusing to flee? … Maybe being a Southern writer is only a matter of loving a damaged and damaging place, of loving its flawed and beautiful people, so much that you have to stay there, observing and recording and believing, against all odds, that one day it will finally live up to the promise of its own good heart.

Much has been said about how art often arises from pain, something the South has known all too well. Sometimes, suffering can lead to insights not obvious to those who have evaded bad times. In addition to such recurring themes as the joys and anguish of family, history, and nature, Southern literature often questions the triumphalism and confidence in progress seen in the works of Northern writers. And yet, Southerners love their heroes, characters who press on despite the odds, as well as tales of glory and derring-do. Robert E. Howard’s stories are well-known for both their pessimism about progress and their celebration of courage in desperate situations.

I’d argue that the chief attraction of Southern writing is the genre’s celebration of the human ability to stagger to one’s feet after disaster and relish the beauty and mystery of life despite it all. As William Faulkner wrote in The Sound and The Fury, “Wonder. Go on and wonder.” Good advice.