The Mississippi Quarterly articles from March 1999

The Mississippi Quarterly archives from March 1999

IN MEMORIAM: THOMAS COVINGTON DENT, 1932-1998.(Brief Article)(Obituary)
March 22, 1999... THE DEATH OF THOMAS COVINGTON DENT on June 6, 1998, marked yet another loss for Southern literature. Dent had recently published Southern Journey: A Return to the Civil Rights Movement, an accomplished work on social and political change based...

Backstage and Onstage: The Drama of Native Son(*).
March 22, 1999... IN THE SPRING OF 1940, ON HIS FARM OUTSIDE Chapel Hill, North Carolina, the dramatist Paul Green walked through the woods, musing about Native Son, Richard Wright's best-selling novel published on March 1 as a Book-of-the-Month Club choice....

James Dickey and the Narrative Mode of Transmission: The Sheep Child's Other Realm.(Critical Essay)
March 22, 1999... IT MAY SEEM STRANGE TO UNDERTAKE A DIALOGIC ANALYSIS of a contemporary American narrative poet, especially when one considers how narrative has been devalued in contemporary anthologies. In his introduction to The Vintage Book of Contemporary...

Communal Responsibility in Ernest J. Gaines's A Lesson Before Dying.(Critical Essay)
March 22, 1999... ERNEST J. GAINES'S ENTIRE CAREER HAS BEEN MARKED BY a search for a useful African-American cultural tradition. Implicit in his narrative is the recognition that, while cultures change and evolve, the basis for any civilization is an inherited...

Images of War and Peace: Parallelism and Antithesis in the Beginning and Ending of Cold Mountain.(Critical Essay)
March 22, 1999... In my beginning is my end. ... In my end is my beginning.(1) CHARLES FRAZIER'S CIVIL WAR NOVEL OF A MAN'S DESERTION from the Confederate army and his violence-packed odyssey across the state of North Carolina is, at the literal...

Aesthetics at the Southernmost Point: Towards a Definition of Florida Poetry.
March 22, 1999... CARL HOLLIDAY'S 1908 COMPILATION Three Centuries of Southern Poetry, 1607-1907 questions the wisdom of locating American poetry so much in New England and attempts to rectify this imbalance. Surprisingly, or, perhaps not, Holliday follows the...

Where No Flag Flies: The Correspondence of Donald Davidson and John Gould Fletcher.
March 22, 1999... An outlaw fumbling for the latch, a voice Commanding in a dream where no flag flies.(1) IF SOUTHERN POETRY HAD FLOURISHED PRIOR TO THE Civil War, it became increasingly dormant in the half century after Appomattox. During this time, only...

Interview with Elizabeth Cox.(Interview)
March 22, 1999... ELIZABETH COX IS A WRITER OF WIDE-RANGING TALENTS. The author of three novels--Familiar Ground (1984), The Ragged Way People Fall Out of Love (1991), and Night Talk (1997)--she also writes poetry and essays. Her short story "The Third of July"...

A New Letter from Varina Howell Davis.
March 22, 1999... SEVERAL YEARS AGO, IN THE SCATTERED REFUSE on the floor of an attic in Athens, Georgia, was discovered the following letter by Mrs. Jefferson Davis. It was written to Mrs. Howell Cobb Jr., while Mrs. Davis was sojourning at Mill View Plantation...

Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America.(Review)
March 22, 1999... Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America, by Saidiya V. Hartman. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. viii, 281 pp. $45.00 cloth. $19.95 paper; SOME THINGS CHANGE, BUT MANY THINGS do not. It...

Mastered by the Clock: Time, Slavery, and Freedom in the American South.(Review)
March 22, 1999... Mastered by the Clock: Time, Slavery, and Freedom in the American South, by Mark M. Smith. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. xx, 303 pp. $45.00 cloth. $16.95 paper. SOME THINGS CHANGE, BUT MANY THINGS do not. It is...

The Papers of General Nathanael Greene, Vol. X: 3 December 1781-6 April 1782.(Review)
March 22, 1999... The Papers of General Nathanael Greene, Vol. X: 3 December 1781-6 April 1782, edited by Dennis M. Conrad, Roger N. Parks, and Martha J. King. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. xlvi, 663 pages. $85.00 cloth. THIS VOLUME...

Cotton, Fire, and Dreams: The Robert Findlay Iron Works and Heavy Industry in Macon, Georgia, 1839-1912.(Review)
March 22, 1999... Cotton, Fire, and Dreams: The Robert Findlay Iron Works and Heavy Industry in Macon, Georgia, 1839-1912, by Robert S. Davis, Jr. Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1998. x, 198 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, appendixes, bibliography,...

Florida's Black Public Officials, 1867-1924.(Review)
March 22, 1999... Florida's Black Public Officials, 1867-1924, by Canter Brown, Jr. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1998. 312 pp. $44.95 cloth. $22.50 paper. FLORIDA'S BLACK PUBLIC OFFICIALS WILL STRIKE TEACHERS of African-American, Southern, and...

Seizing the Day: African Americans in Post-Civil War Charleston.(Review)
March 22, 1999... Seizing the Day: African Americans in Post-Civil War Charleston, by Wilbert L. Jenkins. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. xvi, 240 pp. $29.95 cloth. NEITHER SOUTH CAROLINA NOR ITS LARGEST AND MOST prized antebellum city,...

American Voudou: Journey Into A Hidden World.(Review)
March 22, 1999... American Voudou: Journey Into A Hidden World, by Rod Davis. Denton: University of North Texas, 1998. 380 pp. Photos. $32.50 cloth. IT IS, PERHAPS, UNWISE TO BEGIN ANY SEARCH for the authentic in New Orleans. A commonplace here describes the...

Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt.(Review)
March 22, 1999... Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt, by Christine Leigh Heyrman. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. xi, 336 pp. $16.95 paper. THE MAINSTREAM OF HISTORICAL WRITING on the interplay between early national and...

Ellen Glasgow, A Biography.(Review)
March 22, 1999... Ellen Glasgow, A Biography, by Susan Goodman. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. xii, 308 pp. $34.95 cloth. ELLEN GLASGOW IS ONE OF AMERICA'S VENERABLE writers (albeit a consistent best-seller) whose reputation is in need of a...

In Jewish Texas: A Family Memoir.(Review)
March 22, 1999... In Jewish Texas: A Family Memoir, by Stanley E. Ely. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1998. xiii-xx, 276 pp. $24.50. STANLEY ELY'S IN JEWISH TEXAS, IS NOT A HISTORY of the Jewish community in Texas, nor is it a discussion of...

Blacks in Eden: The African American Novel's First Century.(Review)
March 22, 1999... Blacks in Eden: The African American Novel's First Century, by J. Lee Greene. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996. x, 306 pp. $49.50 cloth. STARTING WITH EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY POET PHILLIS WHEATLEY and proceeding to...