Over at lewrockwell.com, a libertarian site that also at times embraces confederacy southron culture and its implied racism and agrarian aristocracy, Gail Jarvis present a Christmas list of southern American fiction.
Meanwhile, a different sort of culture emerges in Tom Palmer’s reading of Ole Edvart Rølvaag’s novel Giants of the Earth. According to Palmer, Giants in the Earth “is about accomplishment, rivalry (of various sorts), the joy of productive work, family, love, religion, common sense, and, above all else, striving.”
All this is a far cry from the so-called Southern scenario, where on a frivolous level “beautiful women [are] eagerly sought after by men,” and “young Southern aristocrats [try] to win the affection of their true loves during Charleston’s holiday season.” Also discussed are more serious issues in the “agrarian South” of ” conflicts arising when urbanism creeps into rural communities,” and where there are “strange yet kindly master[s].”
Both Rølvang and the southern authors mentioned by Jarvis deal with non-urban settings, but in terms of cultural ideas it seems you have to look to a Norwegian to express the ideas of true American values. Jarvis fails to mention my all-time favorite novel, and a book written by a person from the south Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Perhaps this book is too famous, or contains the wrong values, as Jarvis seeks to highlight works that “avoid the stereotypical Hollywood clichés about the region.”
