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Twenty, Twenty-One

Twenty, Twenty-One In an essay publIshed In our pages In 2000, our friend Jerry Leath Mills surveyed around 30 prominent twentieth-century southern authors, which led him "to conclude, without fear of refutation, that there is indeed a single, simple, litmus-like test for the quality of southernness in literature, one easily formulated into a question to be asked of any literary text and whose answer may be taken as definitive, delimiting, and final. The test is: Is there a dead mule in it?" We were curious if Mills's hypothesis held up so we brought the question to some of our favorite authors: Is there a "quality of southernness" in 21st-century southern fiction? Is Mills's mule now truly dead? risk a prophecy: Not far into this century, a Faulkner-sized talent will emerge from among those very Latin American expatriates Donald Trump imagines he can wall away. How will our New South look to a gifted narrator whose mother papoosed her across the Rio Grande? Aren't we overdue a fresh perspective on our retread confederacy? Who's better equipped than someone discovering the United States and the English language at the selfsame time? She will have the brown eyes that can look straight through http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Southern Cultures University of North Carolina Press

Twenty, Twenty-One

Southern Cultures , Volume 22 (3) – Oct 26, 2016
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Publisher
University of North Carolina Press
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of the American South.
ISSN
1534-1488
Publisher site
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Abstract

In an essay publIshed In our pages In 2000, our friend Jerry Leath Mills surveyed around 30 prominent twentieth-century southern authors, which led him "to conclude, without fear of refutation, that there is indeed a single, simple, litmus-like test for the quality of southernness in literature, one easily formulated into a question to be asked of any literary text and whose answer may be taken as definitive, delimiting, and final. The test is: Is there a dead mule in it?" We were curious if Mills's hypothesis held up so we brought the question to some of our favorite authors: Is there a "quality of southernness" in 21st-century southern fiction? Is Mills's mule now truly dead? risk a prophecy: Not far into this century, a Faulkner-sized talent will emerge from among those very Latin American expatriates Donald Trump imagines he can wall away. How will our New South look to a gifted narrator whose mother papoosed her across the Rio Grande? Aren't we overdue a fresh perspective on our retread confederacy? Who's better equipped than someone discovering the United States and the English language at the selfsame time? She will have the brown eyes that can look straight through

Journal

Southern Cultures – University of North Carolina Press

Published: Oct 26, 2016

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