South Toward Home: Travels in Southern Literature

by Margaret Eby

"Fascinating…Eby lyrically uncovers a bit of the magic that makes a Southern writer Southern ." ―Josh Steele, Entertainment Weekly What is it about the South that has inspired so much of America’s greatest literature? And why do we think of the authors it influenced not just as writers, but as Southern writers? In South Toward Home , Margaret Eby goes in search of answers to these questions, visiting the stomping grounds of ten Southern authors, including William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Richard Wright, Truman Capote, Harper Lee, and Flannery O’Connor. Combining biographical detail with expert criticism, Eby delivers a rich and evocative tribute to the literary South. 1 map

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, Books About Books, Essays, Southern, Writing, History

240 pages, Paperback

First published September 8, 2015

About the author

Margaret Eby has written for the New York Times, The New Yorker, the Paris Review Daily, Bookforum, Salon, Slate, and the Los Angeles Times. Originally from Birmingham, Alabama, she now lives in New York City.

Reviews

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jackson, Mississippi and Eudora Welty
Richard Wright.
Faulkner
Flannery O'Conner
Harry Crew
Harper Lee and Truman Capote
John Kennedy Toole
Larry Brown
Barry Hannah
There are a few of these authors whose books I never read. This book definitely made me want to read them, so I will be reading from the reading list the author kindly provided in the back of the book. Looking forward to this task. This gives such a wonderful insight into their novels, their lives and how the testaments of many of them have lived on. Quite some characters they all were, some admired each other, others didn't care for the some of them and found their books to be cop outs. Used their own small spaces of earth to write about things that they questioned or just brought to life their own small corner of space.

Harry Crew is not celebrated at all in his town, where he has a cousin who still lives. Nothing was preserved and the people don't like to talk about his books. He ins one of the authors I have never read and I found interesting what was revealed in this book about his non fiction offering A Childhood: The Biography of a Place and his character as well.

A delightful read, revealing to me a different and fresh way of looking at these wonderful authors. She brought New Orleans, Bourbon street to life to life, following the path of the Confederacy of Dunces. Interesting to see how their legacies live on and how they are now perceived by readers.

ARC from publisher.

[Lorna · Rating 4 out of 5]

South Toward Home: Travels in Southern Literature was a delightful book by Margaret Eby. This author traveled through the South to determine what it was about the South that has inspired much of America’s greatest literature. Ms. Eby, herself a Southerner, traveled through the South visiting the hometowns and the stomping grounds of some of our most beloved authors. She was attempting to determine what distinguishes Southern writing from other regional writing. From Mississippi, the home of William Faulkner, Eudora Welty and Richard Wright, to Alabama, the home of Harper Lee and Truman Capote, to Georgia, the home of Flannery O’Connor and Harry Crews. Eby visited the places that these authors lived and wrote about. Ms. Eby is careful to say that her choice of authors was purely a personal one in that there are a lot of Southern writers including Zora Neale Hurston, Katherine Anne Porter, Tennessee Williams, and Shelby Foote to name a few. Eby is clear that the writers she highlights are each telling about their own little corner of the South.

“Eudora Welty, or ‘Miss Eudora’ as native Jacksonites call their literary patron saint, was a fixture in the capital city of Mississippi from her 1910s childhood until her death in 2001. Her presence is still inescapable. . . . . Welty captured the local culture around her as with a butterfly net, preserving the specimens of doddering Southern ladies and mischievous children.”

“The complex fictional galaxy of Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County is all based on his sleepy hometown. Returning to Oxford from New York and New Orleans, he told the ‘Paris Review’: Beginning with ‘Sartoris’ I discovered that my own little postage stamp of native soil was worth writing about and that I would never live long enough to exhaust it, and that by sublimating the actual into the apocryphal I would have complete liberty to use whatever talent I might have to its absolute top. It opened a gold mine of other people, so I created a cosmos of my own.”

“The birds of Hera squawking alongside the tree frogs in middle Georgia captured something essential about the contrasts in O’Connor’s persona; a Southern woman fluent in the graces of society, whose fiction portrayed a singular, searing vision.”

“Crews’s childhood was one move after another, spurred by a string of catastrophes both crop and family-related. Crews could never point to a single house that contained his childhood, and it plagued him. The absence of a single home placer, Crews wrote, was a ‘rotten spot at the center of my life.’ It made him feel anchorless, forever denied a spot to moor his memories.”

These are just a few of the beautiful excerpts from Margaret Eby’s travels in the South to learn more about what distinguished Southern writers. It was a lovely jaunt, and, of course, I have added some books to explore further. In addition I have added some iconic bookstores to my itinerary when exploring the South, such as Square Books in Oxford or Lemuria Books in Jackson and Parnassus in Nashville. I am looking forward to my next journey to the South.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

The South is not just the setting, it’s the soul of the thing.

In South Toward Home: Travels in Southern Literature, Margaret Eby has taken her reader on a literary tour of the deep South, Mississipi, Alabama, Louisiana and Georgia. She visited the homes and the haunts of a handful of the marvelous writers the region has produced, the well-known in Welty, O’Connor and Faulkner; the lesser known, like Richard Wright, Harry Crews and Larry Brown. (It occurred to me everyone would know the first group by last name only; with the second group, I needed to be specific).

With each author, Eby relates tidbits of interest to the reader, some well-worn anecdotes, but some truly surprising and humanizing ones as well. She has a knack for zeroing in on even artifacts that have not had attention before, like Faulkner's liquor cabinet.

I thought about making a short comment on each author, but I think this is a book best left to the reader to enjoy and digest. I will say that she did not win me over to thinking of O’Toole as a great writer, but she did make me consider his agony and struggle a little more closely…and I whispered a prayer of thanks for my own marvelous mother, I would not have wanted his.

Eby has a nice cadence and style to her own writing that does justice to her subject. I did not agree 100% with her take on the writers, but then who does always see literary figures the same as another reader? Like her subjects, Eby is a Southerner, and she gets to the heart of what makes that different and essential. Maybe only a true Southerner can know what it is to be one, but it is nice to think the rest of the world might get a little light shone on the subject through the angst, anger and excellence of Welty, Wright, Faulkner, O’Connor, Crews, Lee, Capote, O’Toole, Hannah, and Brown.

The South is a place and a passion, and like Larry Brown, who said he "was no longer ashamed of being from the most derided state in the Union", I am proud to be part of it. Enjoy the trip.

[Brina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Imagine taking a road trip to visit the home of your favorite authors. I’m sure most of us have plotted out such trips over the years. Mine is tricky because I’ll read anything by anyone as long as it’s well written, so I suppose I would have to design multiple trips by region or genre. Recently a goodreads friend read and reviewed this gem of a book and whetted my appetite for such a literary roadtrip through the south. When I searched my library, the first book listed was one by the same title by Julia Reed; I did what any responsible reader would do in such a situation- I read both. Reed’s writing set a sense of time and place of the region in exposing the quirks and charm and laid back way of life that make the south what it. With the other South Toward Home as a guide, I went along for the ride in Margaret Eby’s journey through southern literature as she paid homage to those writers who were undoubtedly a product of their distinct upbringing.

Margaret Eby calls a number of southern towns and cities home, but she came of age in Birmingham, Alabama, where she learned to love literature both at home and at school. Her parents fostered a love of reading and allowed their children to read at the supper table. I like that rule and think I will evoke on those days when I am close to finishing a book when it is supper time. At school, Eby thanks those teachers who encouraged their students to read and write. By the time she finished middle school, Eby had learned to love southern literature, and she thusly became a lifelong connoisseur of the region’s writers. After moving to New York, the center of the publishing world, Eby had a hankering for home, both the ambience of the region and that of its quality writing. Descending in Birmingham, Eby, often accompanied by a friend or relative, traveled to the hometown of eight of the south’s golden authors. Along the way, she visited some touristy destinations and brought readers along for an enlightened trip through the south and all the region’s literature had to offer.

Eby began her journey in Oxford, Mississippi at the home of Eudora Welty. Her home is preserved by volunteers who recreated Welty’s luscious flower gardens. In Oxford, Eby next visited Rowan Oak, the estate home of the most southern of writers William Faulkner. In his Pulitzer winning The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner gave credence to the south as a literary hotbed. One did not need to be ashamed of hailing from Mississippi even if the state often ranked near the bottom in both education and literacy. In Faulkner’s time, Oxford was home to the University of Mississippi but was still a quaint town. After he achieved literary fame, the university town grew to become a hotbed of literary activity. He and Welty were not exactly friends but exchanged letters and critiques; both of these upper echelon authors encouraged others to write. Later, Eby returned to Oxford after it had grown up in the literary world. John Grisham hailed from Oxford and wrote his first novels there, including one he had ambivalence about, A Time to Kill. Larry Brown and Barry Hannah also rose to literary fame in Oxford around the same time as Grisham but they are known more as regional writers. Eby lists others who studied in the Faulkner MFA program, maintaining Oxford’s hold as a literary hotbed. The town is full of bookshops and cafes and ringed with farms and rolling hills on the edge of big sky offering writers endless inspiration to write. Although not on my author trip radar, I added Oxford to my bucket list.

The high point the trip for me was to the courthouse in Monroeville, Alabama, home to Harper Lee and Truman Capote. Visiting the Peacocks at Flannery O’Connor’s Andalusia farm outside Millegeville, Georgia came in a distant second if only for the peacocks. Yet, Harper Lee is Harper Lee, and To Kill a Mockingbird remains in my view the perfect American novel, and rightly achieved this honor from multiple sources when creating top hundred lists. Being from Alabama and moving to New York and then home, Eby found many similarities between herself and Lee. At the time of the visit, Lee had long stopped giving interviews and viewed the press with skepticism. Much of a recluse in her older age, Lee rarely left the confines of her room. For years the eastern press thought that Capote might be the true author of To Kill a Mockingbird, only because he lived with an extroverted flair and she was happy keeping to herself. Their friendship has been well documented and both used the other as a character in their books. Monroeville is only famous because of Lee as it is in an out of the way hamlet and not close to any major cities. The town stages To Kill a Mockingbird days by acting out a play for six weeks each year, including scenes in the famous courthouse and on the street where Lee’s house once stood. The festival might be taking advantage of the book and it’s reluctant celebrity; however, tourists bring revenue to the town and residents have a right to be proud. Eby lists herself as a fan and if given the opportunity to meet Lee, she admits that she would have been in awe. Don’t we all. After this high point of the trip, Eby pressed on, yet the rest of her travels included much literary analysis and not as much travel and encounters along the way. Such is life achieving the literary climax too soon in the arc of a book about books.

A literary trip does sound fun but I admit I’d rather go to a cabin and read. Old homes don’t call my attention too much, but, again, unlike Eby, I read from a wide range of genres and authors so having one author that I really want to meet or visit is hard to achieve. The one spot on the trip that does sound intriguing is New Orleans although John Kennedy Toole has never beckoned to me as a reader. I would start in Julia Reed’s Greenville, Mississippi because she got the ball rolling for me. I would also like to visit the New Orleans of Natasha Trethewey, the Charleston of Sarah Addison Allen, and end up in Monroeville in time for the To Kill a Mockingbird festival. As Eby notes, the authors who she visited gave way to generations more of writers who have kept southern literature alive. We all have our own favorites, and I was happy to be along for the ride because who doesn’t enjoy a good road trip of any variety.

3.5 stars

[Connie G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Margaret Eby, a Birmingham native, takes the reader for a tour of the Southern towns important to ten writers. She starts at the lovely home and gardens of Eudora Welty in Jackson, MS. The black author, Richard Wright, spent an impoverished childhood in Jackson, but became a well-respected writer when he was living in Chicago and Paris.

No book about Southern writers would be complete without William Faulkner and a trip to Oxford. She visits Oxford again to see Larry Brown's writing room and fishing spot, and Barry Hannah's favorite bar.

I never knew that Flannery O'Connor loved birds, and kept chickens and peacocks on a farm in Georgia. I've read Harry Crew's memoir about his childhood so there were not many surprises when a cousin showed Eby some important places in Crew's life in Bacon County, GA.

Eby traveled to Monroeville, Harper Lee's hometown, right before "Go Set a Watchman" was published. The old courthouse is now a museum with exhibits about her and Truman Capote who spent his summers in the Alabama town.

New Orleans was the hometown of John Kennedy Toole whose "A Confederacy of Dunces" was published eleven years after his suicide.

I had read six of the ten authors, and recognize that Eby chose authors whose hometowns are featured in their writing. They wrote about the type of people and situations they were familiar with. Their hometowns were in the Deep South, so readers would be getting a different look at Southern writers if she had gone to other parts of the South.

I enjoyed the book, although I had read some of the information elsewhere. Eby is a good storyteller as she writes about the authors' lives, their works, and the reactions of the folks who live in the writers' hometowns.

[Diane Barnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an excellent tour of the homes and haunts of 9 iconic southern writers. (Eight chapters, but Harper Lee and Truman Capote have to share Monroeville.) Margaret Eby does more than just visit their homes; she checks out the places and things that made the author's and their creations what they were. By writing from a little different perspective, we learn some surprising things. Why peacocks were so important to Flannery O'Conner that they over-ran her farm in Milledgeville; How Eudora Welty's garden affected her writing: Why the schoolhouse that Richard Wright attended in Jackson, MS is the only structure left that survived destruction. And imagine, if you will, checking out William Faulkner ' s liquor cabinet. The New Orleans of John Kennedy Toole is explored, as is Harry Crews Hurricane Creek that he wrote about in "A Childhood". Last but not least, Barry Hannah and Larry Brown share a chapter about their lives in and around Oxford, MS.
(Turns out Brown, Hannah and Crews were friends. How would you like to have gone bar - hopping with those three wild men?)

Margaret Eby not only shares what she found on her literary tour of these authors of the deep south, she quotes passages from their books, and talks to family members still alive. They come back to life in her skillful hands (Harper Lee is the only one of the 9 still alive), as do the places and things that were important to them. I was sorry to see this slim book come to an end. Hopefully, she plans another tour soon with other authors.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

South Toward Home is well described by its subtitle: Travels in Southern Literature. In reading this book we not only move geographically through four states in the American south (Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana), we also move through American southern literary history meeting some of the major writers of the past century. Along the way we receive a picture of the cultural state of the region and its people and how it accepted these men and women.

The authors whose homes were discussed are Eudora Welty, Richard Wright, William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Harry Crews, Harper Lee and Truman Capote, John Kennedy Toole, Barry Hannah and Larry Brown. While I knew all the names, I have not read all of these writers. But now my to read list is longer. Only Toole has still not ingratiated himself with me. The background on each writer’s home town or actual home as well as information on writing process and family, etc has added to my prior enjoyment or prompts me now to read some books I have ignored. Author’s job well done!

Recommended for anyone interested in American Southern literature.

[Diane Barnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

My second reading of this literary tour has me (again) wishing I could head to Mississippi and Georgia to see these places for myself. Eby writes about more than the places themselves though. She tries to understand what it is (was) that made these authors write what they did and how that connects to the sense of southern-ness that makes the area so different. Lots of little known tidbits that were a joy to read.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

This tour through Southern literature was a great introduction for someone like me whose familiarity with Southern authors is minimal.* Starting off in her home state of Mississippi, Eby travels through Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, and back to Mississippi in a roughly circular road trip. Her chosen subjects are Eudora Welty, Richard Wright, William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Harry Crews, Harper Lee, Truman Capote and John Kennedy Toole; once back in Oxford, Mississippi she also visits Square Books and touches on a couple of more recent authors, Barry Hannah and Larry Brown.

Eby includes biographical information, accounts of her travels to the places still associated with the authors, descriptions of some of the most famous works, and an appraisal of the author’s critical reputation then and now. My favorite chapter was on Flannery O’Connor, but I was also interested to learn about Harry Crews, who I’d never heard of before – it certainly sounds like he was a character. It’s a shame that her chapter on Harper Lee is now out of date after the news of Go Set a Watchman; maybe this can be revised in the few months before its September publication.

“To be Southern is to grow up among the ruins,” Eby writes. “Southern-ness suggests a deep, inescapable past, an inability to move forward without the weight of your ancestors.” It’s no wonder that many a dark, Gothic novel has arisen from such psychological fodder. Many people think that Southern fiction has a more recognizable, intrinsic sense of place than other American literature. As Larry Brown once said, “I know now that the little place I live in is full of stories. I don’t think I’ll ever tire of writing about them. There’s too much beauty in the world that I know, about ten miles out of Oxford, Mississippi.”

I’d especially recommend this to fans of The Trip to Echo Spring by Olivia Laing.

*I’ve read To Kill a Mockingbird, a couple books by Truman Capote, and a few by William Faulkner, plus I sampled Richard Wright’s Black Boy in high school.

[Charlene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good. Just stumbled across this one when looking for an audiobook on Libby and was very pleased.

Author has taken 5 or 6 places which are very closely identified with authors (Jackson, MS =Eudora Welty and Richard Wright, Oxford, MS = Faulkner and Larry Brown) and described how these places both formed the authors and how they honor them or not. Especially fascinating to me was the chapter on Richard Wright, an author I should have read and should know more about.

I think I tried to read Harry Crews 40 years ago and failed but after reading about his life & place in Bacon Co., GA (which does not acknowledge him), I may try again.

Short book; I hope that Eby will write a sequel with more authors. I wish she had included Alice Walker to go along with the chapter about Flannery O'Connor. Would be nice to have photos and a map included -- maybe the print edition had those.

Really enjoyed this.

Al

[Chrissie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book reads as a collection of mini-mini biographies, each mini in a separate chapter. There is a chapter discussing each of the following Southern authors and their respective books:
*Eudora Welty
*Richard Wright
*William Faulkner
*Flannery O'Connor
*Harry Crews
*Harper Lee and Truman Capote
*John Kennedy Toole
*Barry Hannah and Larry Brown

This book was not the right choice for me. It could be perfect for you. You must decide if what I am looking for matches up with what you are looking for. I will explain what the book contains and my own preferences.

When I read about an author I am not satisfied with only a teeny snippet about them; I want their whole life story; I want depth. Neither am I interested in a repeat of gossip in the news. The chapter on Harper Lee and Truman Capote is all about which one actually wrote To Kill a Mockingbird, their friendship / estrangement and the controversy around the publication of Lee’s Go Set a Watchman. No new information is provided.

The book reads at times as a travel or museum guide. The author travels to where the writers lived. If there exists a museum or a statue commemorating them, that she visits too. I’m on a different continent, and a travel guide is not what I was looking for! I must further state, that the places as they are described did not entice me.

I prefer reading a book and drawing my own conclusion on what the author could be saying. Book analyses by a person whose views seem to be quite different from my own cannot guide me. The analyses provided here of books and authors which I have read do not match up with my own views. How can I then imagine that Margaret Eby’s views, on the authors I have not read, will foretell how I will react?

Three of the above authors I have not read. Toole and Hannah, as they are described here, do not appeal to me. This confirms my earlier suspicions. I would like to read Crews’ A Childhood: The Biography of a Place, but it is not available to me. I have read the other authors and have enjoyed their writing to a varying degree, but not necessarily all their books and not necessarily those favored by Eby.

Personally, I find other Southern authors more tantalizing. I will name but a few that stand out for me:

*Carson McCullers
*Shirley Ann Grau
*Silas House
*Zora Neale Hurston
*James Agee
*Erskine Caldwell
*Dorothy Allison
*Lee Smith
*Rick Bragg
*Wendell Berry
*Pat Conroy

My two all-time favorites are McCullers and Grau. In her choice of authors Margaret Eby wanted to show that Southern literature is not of the past and thus both classical and contemporary authors are included. My list too has classical and contemporary authors.

The audiobook is narrated by Susan Bennett. Her narration is wonderful. Great lilt. Perfect speed and simple to follow. She helps calm you down when the book’s content annoys or bores you.

If what you are looking for is Southern literature, as well as Southern culture and life in the South today, then I would recommend Deep South: Four Seasons on Back Roads. Published in 2015, it is up-to-date. The author, Paul Theroux, is not only well traveled, but also well read. His book covers racism and poverty in the South today, gives historical background and a thorough study of Southern literature and its authors.

I did learn a bit about the authors on which Margaret Eby’s book focuses. Richard Wright is my favorite of the ones discussed. Reading her book has not been a waste of time, but neither did I find it terribly satisfying. I should remind myself that books about books cannot be expected to capture the beauty of the writing which makes the books sited outstanding.

[Julie Durnell · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars I started this and then thought to myself-I have already read this I think! Turns out I had read Scarlett Slept Here! The two books are very similar. I was reading this for the Southern Literary Trail group read for March; but doing so while visiting my sisters in Alabama made great timing!

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars at it truly exceeded my expectations of just another book on why Faulkner, O'Connor, Welty, etc. are so special. They're there, but don't suck all the oxygen out of the room, as the saying goes. Excellent narration helps nudge this one upwards as well.

I gave up on Confederacy of Dunces early on (even though the narration was very well done), as Ignatius was just too obnoxious and narcissistic for me. Here, the chapter on Toole was one of my favorites, although there is the question: how "southern" is New Orleans exactly? The contrast between Richard Wright's story and Eudora Welty's regarding the Jim Crow south is well handled, not heavy-handed at all.

Eby makes the pilgrimage to Monroeville in the hope of seeing Harper Lee, who sees no one, so no spoiler that it's a failed attempt. I watched To Kill a Mockingbird once to see what it was about, no interest in reading the book. The theory that Capote wrote the book is mentioned, and shot down. Me, I'm open to the idea that he ghost wrote it (essentially) based on a rough draft of hers. His Other Voices, Other Rooms is far more of a classic, IMHO. Neat trick that she wraps things up back in Tupelo, showing there's more to its literary tradition than just Faulkner.

If you think it sounds interesting, you should really like it.

[Kris · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am ready for a reread

[Sharon Huether · Rating 4 out of 5]

I won this FREE book through Goodreads first-Reads.If you like Southern fiction and it's writers, this book is for you. The author takes the reader on a tour of the homes and haunts of Southern writers. Eudora Welty, got inspiration for her books from her beautiful garden. Richard Wright, wrote Black Boy, using his own experiences. William Faulkner was well known more after his death. Flannery O'Connor loved birds, especially Peacocks. Other authors mentioned were Harry Crews, Harper Lee , Truman Capote, John Kennedy Toole, Barry Hannah and Larry Brown. An interesting book. Thanks Goodreads.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this short work of nonfiction about Southern writers and how a sense of place and community impacted their writing. The author went from place to place - investigating Faulkner's liquor cabinet, Flannery O'Connor's peacocks, and Harper Lee's and Truman Capote's courthouse, among others, to find out what it was about the spaces they inhabited that makes their writing unique to their settings, yet more universal than just local color. I particularly loved the two successive chapters that described the upbringings and background of Eudora Welty and Richard Wright. Both from Jackson, Mississippi, born a year apart, living about a mile apart, but because of segregation, destined to inhabit Jackson and reflect on its place in their lives in very different ways. The anecdotes she shares are rich in history and literary lore and she clearly knows and loves her subjects, which always makes this kind of travelogue a treasure for fans of literature. I listened to the audiobook, featuring excellent narration from Susan Bennett, as I read along.

[Lucy Johnston · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m prepping for a road trip to the South, and this was a nice little primer. My favorite chapter was Flannery O’Connor. In general, the essays were good but not great.

[John’aLee · Rating 4 out of 5]

My type of book! I love a book where the author goes on a quest, and especially when it is to learn more about a writer, the things that influenced them, the homes and towns that shaped them and their writing etc. This was a plethora of authors in the South, a place I love, that I was transplanted to 13 years ago, so I devoured it.

[John Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating travelogue featuring the homes and towns of some of the South's greatest writers. The chapters on Flannery O'Connor, William Faulkner, and John Kennedy Toole are especially good.

[Patty · Rating 3 out of 5]

I will add a quote when the book is published.

I don’t think I had encountered Eby before this book. I know very little about her, but I now know that she grew up in the South and loves Southern literature. I am happy to have that in common with her. That was enough to get me to go looking for a review copy of her essays.

Long before I moved to Virginia, I had read a lot of Southern writers. It is hard to be an American reader and not read a book by a Southerner. I read To Kill a Mockingbird and the quintessential Southern novel, Gone with the Wind in high school. I think I first encountered Carson McCullers and Richard Wright in college. By the time I got to the South, I knew that some of our most amazing American writers were born or lived in the Southern states.

Eby does a great job with her choices. She has eight chapters and talks about ten authors who are important to her. She writes about authors that are both familiar and unfamiliar to me. I don’t know much about Harry Crews or Barry Hannah. It was good to meet them. It was also interesting to hear about John Kenney Toole from someone who loves his writing. (I am afraid I just did not get A Confederacy of Dunces. This is sacrilege, I know.)

No matter that Eby could not possibly write about all Southern novelists. I am sad that some of my favorite authors are not in these essays. Eby knows how to tell a good story. I want to hear what she has to say about Zora Neale Hurston, Virginia Glasgow or Ron Rash. Maybe she will visit other authors’ haunts and write a second volume. I can only hope.

In the meantime, if you are interested in Southern literature, try these essays. You may find out something new about a favorite author or learn about one that you have not yet read.

Thank you to Edelweiss and Norton & Co. for allowing me to read this book early.

[Bob Schnell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Advanced Reading Copy review Due to be published September 2015

Did you ever want to take a literary road-trip to the home towns of some of your favorite authors? Margaret Eby does just that in "South Toward Home", focusing on Southern authors and exploring how their surroundings influenced their styles. I suppose this would have been more interesting to me if I had read more of the authors covered. As it was, I was mostly interested in the chapters on the authors with limited output, Harper Lee and John Kennedy Toole. But even those chapters were little more than brief biographies highlighted with emotional visits to landmarks of the towns associated with their stories. Recommended to anyone looking for a basic primer on modern Southern literature.

[Rob Saunders · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ms. Margaret Eby takes the reader on a fan-girl road trip across the deep south to visit the hometowns of ten (all now deceased) authors. Interesting and informative, South Toward Home (2015) is a lovingly written travelogue, full of insight, hometown tidbits, personal profiles, and author quotes.

There seems to be no singular essence that distinguishes Southern writers as a class beyond the confines of place. There are many factors that contribute to subject matter, many ways to observe, many styles of interpreting and describing. There are many reasons that art and literature creation and production processes occur.

Eby writes that any would-be Southern literature holy grail ultimately comes down to that which is extracted and put into stories about the region's people, history, "mannerisms and myth...entwined with place. The South is not just the setting; it's the soul of the thing." And it does indeed come down to how Southerners define their own idiosyncrasies.

I was familiar with the writings of most of these authors. (See list below.) Several, I have not read. Ms. Eby does a nice job looking for trajectories through time that connect all Southern writers. She deftly provides a gateway to each author. I came away inspired to try to get through Faulkner - again. (Though based on my past failures, I am not covering any bets.)

I'd recommend this book for all who enjoy learning about authors and the craft of writing, and of course, those interested in Southern literature. Here are a few quotes.

Ms. Erby wrote:

"The deep South," Faulkner wrote in Absalom, Absalom!, "dead since 1865 and peopled with garrulous outraged baffled ghosts." To be Southern is to grow up among the ruins. Southernness suggests a deep, and inescapable past, an inability to move forward without the weight of your ancestors...There is a deep emotional conflict of the heart of his work and at the heart of the town of Oxford itself. /65

Mississippi is the land of debutantes and lynching, a defeated country, stuck and reveling in its own stagnancy. / 65

When I first read The Sound and the Fury, it struck me as a breathtaking account of the paradoxes of the region. That was what it meant to be Southern, to be obsessed and repulsed by the past to not be able to get over things. Faulkner's writing became all mixed up in the beauty and tragedy of Mississippi, appearing effusive, jumbled, glorious, threatening to spill over the page at any moment. / 66

Some tattered, half-understood Faulkner tome was always in the back of my car, underlined to near extinction. / 67

Many [Flannery] O'Connor stories are, by nature, more easily digestible than novels or discourses about the Catholic writer. But partly it is because many of them are extraordinarily effective at fulfilling the O'Connor doctrine that acolytes like Harry Crews would later take the heart: that the best way of capturing people's attention was through unsettling and enduring characters. She did not hope to placate or comfort...her readers... / 90

Harry Crews was particularly fond of the dictum O'Connor set forth in The Fiction Writer and His Country, when he often quoted: "When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs as you do, you can relax a little and you use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock - to the hard of hearing you shout, and to the near blind, you draw large and startling figures." /97

In Gainesville, Crews garnered fame as a roughneck poet and deep-fried weirdo, the commander of a new wave of gritty Southern writing that depicted the harshness of rural Georgia without the cushion of metaphor. / 101-102

Content listing of authors
Eudora Welty, Richard Wright, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Harry Crew, Harper Lee, Truman Capote, John Kennedy Toole, Barry Hannah, and Larry Brown.

[Nina · Rating 3 out of 5]

A sweet easy road trip through Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and New Orleans with a bookworm girlfriend. Trading favorite literary passages, chitchatting about the authors, touring homes and gardens, comparing about how various books/essays impacted us vs. how they were received by contemporaneous audiences, and musing about what does it mean to be a "southern writer" anyway. This is intentionally more of a "casually nerdy series of chats over ice tea and fried catfish" kind of book than a "serious lecture in hallowed university halls," and Eby nailed that vibe with precision. Her suggested reading notes at the back are well worth lingering over.

[Melinda · Rating 4 out of 5]

My bookstore owner friend said they could sell a bunch of these books by putting them cover out. It's true, but what surprised me was the quality of the essays inside the covers. I appreciated the literary quality of these various essays about Southern writers and their quest to examine the particulars of place that so captured the South, old and new. I have been to several of these writers' homes, but still learned something I didn't know about each of them. For example, Eby writes about the symbolism of the peacock feather and why Flannery O'Connor, so in love with all birds, adopted it as her talisman. I was also introduced to Harry Crews, Larry Brown, and Barry Hannah, and I have some new books-to-read for my life list. Eby meanders through the South meditating and investigating the places that inspired this bunch of Southern writers. Her book is part literary essay and part road trip and certainly worth the journey.

[Eva Langton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this book. It isn’t a must-read, but for people who love Southern literature, it’s a treat. She’s a good Southern writer, too. I’m curious to explore more of her writing.

[Denise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full disclosure: I received this as a Goodreads giveaway, but that in no way affects the review which follows.

What is it about southern writers and southern literature that create a unique literary genre? Answering that question is the purpose of South Toward Home: Travels in Southern Literature by Margaret Eby. (And, yes, the title was inspired by Willie Morris' 1967 memoir, North Toward Home.)

Let me begin by saying that both the Introduction and the Coda are well worth reading - don't be tempted to skip over them! Here are two quotes from the introduction to whet your appetite:

First, "Southern writing at its loftiest is a literature of opposition. It is a rebuff, in equal measure, to those who imagine the region as a place of shoeless yokels, and those who mythologize it as one where sweet-faced, big-haired debutantes in hoop skirts dole out petit fours, mind their manners, and maintain deep roots to their family elders."

And from the following page, "What makes a southern writer a southern writer is not just the circumstances of his or her birth, but a fierce attachment to a particular place, and a commitment to exploring its limits in his or her work."

On a journey following several of those notable southern writers through Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, and (New Orleans) Lousiana, Eby fleshes out her ideas about the connections between the writers she has chosen to include and special places in their writing lives. As someone with southern roots, I appreciated her careful crafting of the descriptions that draw the reader into her thesis, and I believe she supports it well. There really do appear to be tangible connections between particular places and these writers' affinities for them. What a well-written and enjoyable book!

My recommendation: Go ahead; read this book -- and delve into the southern soul.

[Pam Cipkowski · Rating 3 out of 5]

What exactly is Southern literature? In a quest to find out more about it, I picked this up. The author portrayed this as a road trip through the South, stopping in the hometowns and haunts of some of her favorite Southern writers. Although I was familiar with most of the authors, I was quite unfamiliar with many of the works discussed. Even so, the book proved to be an enjoyable read. I especially enjoyed the chapter on Harry Crews, of whom I was totally unfamiliar, and John Kennedy Toole--I had never read A Confederacy of Dunces, so this was a nice introduction to it.

Having finished the book, I'm still not quite sure how to describe Southern literature. But I did get the impression that it is created by a sense of place and feel for character. Ultimately, it is the writers who define Southern literature--those who can successfully convey those elements of setting and character to the reader.

[JC · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed listening to this book. Eby takes more time with some of the subjects and she provides more biographical information for some. Strangely though,this book didn't inspire me to visit any of these towns or compel me to pick up any of the authors' works. 3.5⭐

[Thomas Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just a wonderful mix of history, discussion and travel. A box of these books could be a wonderful Christmas gift called the 'South in a Box'.