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New Stories from the South
New Stories from the South 2009
In the twenty-fourth volume of this distinguished anthology, Madison Smartt Bell chooses twenty-one distinctive pieces of short fiction to tell the story of the South as it is now. This is a South that is still recognizable but no longer predictable. As he says, "to the traditional black and white recipe (ever a tricky and volatile mixture) have been added new shades and strains from Asia and Central and South America and just about everywhere else on the shrinking globe." Just as Katrina brought out into the open all the voices of New Orleans, so the South is now many things, both a distinctive region and a place of rootlessness. It's these contradictions that Madison Smartt Bell has captured in this provocative and moving collection of stories.Here you'll find the well-known-Wendell Berry, Elizabeth Spencer, Jill McCorkle-alongside those writers just making their debuts, in stories that show the South we always thought we knew, making itself over, and over.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
357 pages, Paperback
First published August 25, 2009
3 people are currently reading
64 people want to read
About the author
Madison Smartt Bell
57 books174 followersMadison Smartt Bell is a critically acclaimed writer of more than a dozen novels and story collections, as well as numerous essays and reviews for publications such as Harper’s and the New York Times Book Review. His books have been finalists for both the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, among other honors. Bell has also taught at distinguished creative writing programs including the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, Johns Hopkins, and Goucher College. His work is notable for its sweeping historical and philosophical scope matched with a remarkable sensitivity to the individual voices of characters on the margins of society.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
December 26, 2009
Bound Miami SunPost September 24, 2009
Standard-Bearers
New Stories from the South Lives Up to Tradition
John Hood
There must be something in the muddy water south of the Mason-Dixon Line that makes folks inordinately drawn to story, especially the short story. Maybe it’s the way the form allows one to neatly arrange things that are inherently messy. Perhaps it’s that a tale seems to be best told in a single afternoon or evening. Or it could just be that the legacies left behind by writers like Eudora Welty and Flannery O‘Connor are too rich to not be continued. Whatever it is, the South does tend to lend itself to narrative. And Southerners seem ever ready to step up and do the narrating.
That’s why collections such as New Stories from the South (Algonquin $14.95) appear every year; and why every year more and more people appear to be reading new stories from the South.
The thing about it is though, as this edition’s editor Madison Smartt Bell so succinctly notes in his “Introduction,” the South, particularly the white Old South, “has pretty well gone up in smoke.” “To the traditional white and black recipe have been added new shades and strains, from Asia and Central and South America, and just about everywhere else on the shrinking globe,” writes Bell. Consequently, the rootedness which “used to be the core quality of Southern culture… has drifted into polarity with the nomadic quality of so many Southerners’ lives.”
Yet even if the South, such as it was, has long disappeared. The geography of place cannot be denied, whether you’re an arrowhead counterfeiter in South Carolina (George Singleton’s “Between Wrecks”) or burying a dead dog in an Oklahoma backyard (Clinton J. Stewart’s “Bird Dog”).
Of course Southerners don’t have a monopoly on being broke and wishing you were drunk (Kevin Wilson’s “No Joke, This is Going to Be Painful”), nor are they the only people who want to get back at the one that was loved enough to do everything they asked (Jill McCorkle’s “Magic Words”). And high school girls get pregnant everywhere (Geoff Wyss’s “Child of God”). But even universalialities such as these seem to take on a higher color when they’re told with a certain twang.
And, as Bell indicates, the twang itself has begun to go global, be it through something as simple as the Chinese take-out in Michael Knight’s “Grand Old Party” or the Little Indian immigrant song of Rahul Mehta’s “Quarantine.”
This is the 24th edition of New Stories, and its 21 tales were culled from the original 80 that Algonquin editor Kathy Pories offered up for inclusion. And though I consider myself to be relatively well-read (hey, 20 books a month has to be considered something), there were but three writers with whom I was already familiar, and only one (excluding Bell) that I had previously read. I don’t know about you, but I dig stumbling upon a scribe for the very first time. It kinda makes me feel I’m learning something.
So why not do like Stephanie Soileau’s heroine does in “The Camera Obscura” and “pick someone you like well enough and dig in.” ‘Cause chances are you’re gonna get to like ‘em more and more as you read along. And who knows? You may even end up liking their friends.
Standard-Bearers
New Stories from the South Lives Up to Tradition
John Hood
There must be something in the muddy water south of the Mason-Dixon Line that makes folks inordinately drawn to story, especially the short story. Maybe it’s the way the form allows one to neatly arrange things that are inherently messy. Perhaps it’s that a tale seems to be best told in a single afternoon or evening. Or it could just be that the legacies left behind by writers like Eudora Welty and Flannery O‘Connor are too rich to not be continued. Whatever it is, the South does tend to lend itself to narrative. And Southerners seem ever ready to step up and do the narrating.
That’s why collections such as New Stories from the South (Algonquin $14.95) appear every year; and why every year more and more people appear to be reading new stories from the South.
The thing about it is though, as this edition’s editor Madison Smartt Bell so succinctly notes in his “Introduction,” the South, particularly the white Old South, “has pretty well gone up in smoke.” “To the traditional white and black recipe have been added new shades and strains, from Asia and Central and South America, and just about everywhere else on the shrinking globe,” writes Bell. Consequently, the rootedness which “used to be the core quality of Southern culture… has drifted into polarity with the nomadic quality of so many Southerners’ lives.”
Yet even if the South, such as it was, has long disappeared. The geography of place cannot be denied, whether you’re an arrowhead counterfeiter in South Carolina (George Singleton’s “Between Wrecks”) or burying a dead dog in an Oklahoma backyard (Clinton J. Stewart’s “Bird Dog”).
Of course Southerners don’t have a monopoly on being broke and wishing you were drunk (Kevin Wilson’s “No Joke, This is Going to Be Painful”), nor are they the only people who want to get back at the one that was loved enough to do everything they asked (Jill McCorkle’s “Magic Words”). And high school girls get pregnant everywhere (Geoff Wyss’s “Child of God”). But even universalialities such as these seem to take on a higher color when they’re told with a certain twang.
And, as Bell indicates, the twang itself has begun to go global, be it through something as simple as the Chinese take-out in Michael Knight’s “Grand Old Party” or the Little Indian immigrant song of Rahul Mehta’s “Quarantine.”
This is the 24th edition of New Stories, and its 21 tales were culled from the original 80 that Algonquin editor Kathy Pories offered up for inclusion. And though I consider myself to be relatively well-read (hey, 20 books a month has to be considered something), there were but three writers with whom I was already familiar, and only one (excluding Bell) that I had previously read. I don’t know about you, but I dig stumbling upon a scribe for the very first time. It kinda makes me feel I’m learning something.
So why not do like Stephanie Soileau’s heroine does in “The Camera Obscura” and “pick someone you like well enough and dig in.” ‘Cause chances are you’re gonna get to like ‘em more and more as you read along. And who knows? You may even end up liking their friends.
Read
June 2, 2012What are the odds that I would read first -- picking at random -- the three second-person stories in this collection? A little creepy, in some ways, how I zeroed in on them like that, as if each of them was indeed speaking to me, though (of course) not to me, and yet.... Really great stories each, those three, by Tayari Jones, Michael Knight and Stephanie Soileau, each of whose work I've greatly admired elsewhere. Made me want to write a second-person story myself. And (as a reader) a great way of having entered another great installment of this series.
July 13, 2013
A strong collection of stories, although with a tendency towards perfervid prose and historical pieces that might not be to everyone's liking. (Also, dogs die in two of these stories, usually a pet peeve of mine, but at least here they were not cheap plays for an emotional response.) Standouts for me were Katherine Karlin's "Muscle Memory," a post-Katrina story of welding, blues, and a dead father's presence in his daughter's life, and Kevin Wilson's "No Joke, This Is Going To Be Painful," about ice fights, a rebellious, damaged young woman, and the simple man that falls for her.
June 23, 2016
I'm sure there are great stories in this book and I didn't read it all. Too often I would wonder why I was reading them at all. I couldn't relate to many of the stories. I may just be wanting them to give me an opening that has something to do with life outside the narrow frame of the characters. Too often the next and the next seem like more of the same. I felt the same about the 2010 volume edited by Amy Hempel.
May 5, 2010
I was disappointed by this year's edition--I must have very different tastes in Southern lit than Madison Smartt Bell. However, I am always happy to encounter new stories by Kevin Wilson and George Singleton, and Child of God and Camera Obscura were also standouts (the latter was very Lorrie Moore-esque).
February 20, 2010
Read most of the stories, some were good, others not. It's going back to the library now, because I've read about as much as I'm going to and I have a pile of library books to read that is very large.......
September 20, 2009
reviewed in Sacramento Book Review.
May 16, 2010
A so-so collection.
Authors to look for:
James, Juyanna (The Elderberries)
Berry, Wendell
Benedict, Pinckney (Aviator)
Holmes, Charlotte (Coast)
Authors to look for:
James, Juyanna (The Elderberries)
Berry, Wendell
Benedict, Pinckney (Aviator)
Holmes, Charlotte (Coast)
August 3, 2010
short stories, i especially liked one by elizabeth spencer and one by
george singleton
george singleton
September 30, 2012
superior collection of short stories. Most are very good, on the mark, and those that miss do so by a thin margin.
Read
July 27, 2011Wonderful collection of stories though I think collectivly they started off a little slowly.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews