Saturday, December 8, 2012
A Novel Review: End of Summer by Michael Potts
A Novel Review: End of Summer by Michael Potts: Reviewed by Charlotte End of Summer is a story told by a grown man as he returns to his childhood home and recalls memories of the sum...
Sunday, September 23, 2012
The Breadth of Southern Fiction
Southern Fiction is a major genre in the United States, but its limits are ambiguous. When subgenres are considered, their boundaries are vague. What is Southern Gothic? When does a Southern fiction novel become a Southern Gothic novel? Where does Southern Horror fit in?
Is Southern fiction defined solely in terms of its setting? For example, it is clear that Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury is Southern fiction--any critic will agree with that classification. Would Gresham's The Firm be classified as Southern fiction due to its setting in Memphis? Is it about a law firm that happens to be set in Memphis but could have been set in any other American city? I would not classify The Firm as Southern fiction, and I think most critics would probably agree.
Southern Gothic has unclear boundaries as well. The writers about which critics agree as being Southern Gothic include William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, Larry Brown, Harry Crews, William Gay, Cormac McCarthy, and Tennessee Williams. Their writings occur in a bleak landscape of poverty and what my parents would call "rough people." Some characters have wildly distorted character traits--this is especially seen in Flannery O'Connor. Relationships are skewed, and often dark family secrets are rediscovered, often leading to disaster for a family.
Some Southern Gothic writings could also be classified as horror stories. The classic example is William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily." The horror is implied--a woman murders her husband, keeps his body in her bed, and from then on the reader can imagine what happened behind the bedroom doors. Cormac McCarthy's novel, Child of God, definitely can be called "horror" given its subject matter of a murderer who keeps dead bodies in a cave and does "things" to them. There are works sometimes classified as horror that could also be classified as Southern Gothic, such as the V. C. Andrews series of books with its array of characters who are locked inside houses by wicked parents or other relatives and dark family secrets of incest and abuse. Scott Nicholson's supernatural horror novels, such as The Red Church and The Barn, lie on the borderland between Southern horror and Southern Gothic. Robert McCammon's Boy's Life is probably the clearest example of Southern Gothic with some horror elements. It seems to me that the best way to classify Southern horror is as a subset of Southern Gothic, with loose boundaries so that some works could be placed on the border between the larger circle of Southern Gothic and the smaller circle of Southern horror.
When I consider my novel, End of Summer, it seems to fit best into the category of Southern literary fiction. It has Southern Gothic elements--bizarre characters, hideous images a boy sees in his nightmares, and a spiritual/mystical experience of a character. Yet its tone is not as edgy as most Southern Gothic. It is a story about a boy who has suffered extreme loss in his life and who faces the death of his beloved pet, Fuzzy, a large Spitz dog, and worse, the final illness and death of his beloved granddaddy. How does he deal with such a loss when he is just nine-years-old? Can his religious faith survive? One reviewer on Amazon, Mark Sneed, labeled the book as a theodicy, an attempt to show how an all-good, all-powerful God can create a world that includes pain and death. There is something to say for that, although I try to show, not tell--the book is not preachy. I have finished the first draft of a new novel that is clearly Southern supernatural horror since it is about a demon haunting a teenaged boy, but there are also bizarre Southern characters with exaggerated character traits, a characteristic of Southern Gothic. After the final revision, I think this novel will fit both into Southern Gothic and into Southern horror.
Is Southern fiction defined solely in terms of its setting? For example, it is clear that Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury is Southern fiction--any critic will agree with that classification. Would Gresham's The Firm be classified as Southern fiction due to its setting in Memphis? Is it about a law firm that happens to be set in Memphis but could have been set in any other American city? I would not classify The Firm as Southern fiction, and I think most critics would probably agree.
Southern Gothic has unclear boundaries as well. The writers about which critics agree as being Southern Gothic include William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, Larry Brown, Harry Crews, William Gay, Cormac McCarthy, and Tennessee Williams. Their writings occur in a bleak landscape of poverty and what my parents would call "rough people." Some characters have wildly distorted character traits--this is especially seen in Flannery O'Connor. Relationships are skewed, and often dark family secrets are rediscovered, often leading to disaster for a family.
Some Southern Gothic writings could also be classified as horror stories. The classic example is William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily." The horror is implied--a woman murders her husband, keeps his body in her bed, and from then on the reader can imagine what happened behind the bedroom doors. Cormac McCarthy's novel, Child of God, definitely can be called "horror" given its subject matter of a murderer who keeps dead bodies in a cave and does "things" to them. There are works sometimes classified as horror that could also be classified as Southern Gothic, such as the V. C. Andrews series of books with its array of characters who are locked inside houses by wicked parents or other relatives and dark family secrets of incest and abuse. Scott Nicholson's supernatural horror novels, such as The Red Church and The Barn, lie on the borderland between Southern horror and Southern Gothic. Robert McCammon's Boy's Life is probably the clearest example of Southern Gothic with some horror elements. It seems to me that the best way to classify Southern horror is as a subset of Southern Gothic, with loose boundaries so that some works could be placed on the border between the larger circle of Southern Gothic and the smaller circle of Southern horror.
When I consider my novel, End of Summer, it seems to fit best into the category of Southern literary fiction. It has Southern Gothic elements--bizarre characters, hideous images a boy sees in his nightmares, and a spiritual/mystical experience of a character. Yet its tone is not as edgy as most Southern Gothic. It is a story about a boy who has suffered extreme loss in his life and who faces the death of his beloved pet, Fuzzy, a large Spitz dog, and worse, the final illness and death of his beloved granddaddy. How does he deal with such a loss when he is just nine-years-old? Can his religious faith survive? One reviewer on Amazon, Mark Sneed, labeled the book as a theodicy, an attempt to show how an all-good, all-powerful God can create a world that includes pain and death. There is something to say for that, although I try to show, not tell--the book is not preachy. I have finished the first draft of a new novel that is clearly Southern supernatural horror since it is about a demon haunting a teenaged boy, but there are also bizarre Southern characters with exaggerated character traits, a characteristic of Southern Gothic. After the final revision, I think this novel will fit both into Southern Gothic and into Southern horror.
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