Tom Dent and Southern Studies
TOM DENT AND THE NEW
WAVES OF SOUTHERN STUDIES
On July 11, 2017, I had the pleasure of reading the
uncorrected proof of
Title: New Orleans
Griot: The Tom Dent Reader
Edited by Kalamu Ya Salaam
Retail Price: 28.95
Publisher:
University of New Orleans Press
Format: Paperback
Page Count: 446
ISBN: 978-1-60801-149-0
Trim: 6 x 8.75 in
Publication Date: 12/01/17
Distributed by Hopkins Fulfillment Services
Media Contact:
G.K. Darby, gkdarby1@uno.edu
504-280-7457
Dent was one of my closest friends from 1973 until his
death on June 6, 1998. Our shared
interest in literatures, cultures, and histories shaped, and continue in part to shape, my commitments social, academic and otherwise. Dent introduced me to many of his friends in
New Orleans, the vernacular intellectuals who have given depth and breadth to a
unique city in our nation. As I read the
proof, I was blessed by the African connectedness of the spirits of then and
the spirits of now. I got some secret
messages from Dent about the motions of the new waves of Southern Studies that
are reconfiguring the cognitive mindscape of the United States of America.
I hope New Orleans
Griot will get special notice from the emerging scholars who contributed to
"Blast South: Manifestos of Southern
Vorticism." Mississippi Quarterly
68.1-2 (Winter-Spring 2015): 5-42
and from another cadre of scholars associated with the
Society for the Study of Southern Literature who wrote manifestos published in "the changing
profession" section of
PMLA 131.1
(January 2016): 157-196,
and from non-academic readers in the USA and elsewhere
who can profit greatly from the legacy of Tom Dent.
In flashes of the spirit, Tom Dent teaches lessons before
dying. And we are indebted to Kalamu Ya
Salaam for his timely, in-the-tradition intervention.
Jerry W. Ward, Jr. July 13, 2017
HYPE
ReplyDeleteHype matters.
In his foreword for
Didion, Joan. South and West: From a Notebook ( New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2017)
Nicholas Rich asserts that Didion's prose has "cool majesty" as well as "an immaculacy as intimidating as Chelsea porcelain" (xi). The assertion and the subject of the assertion invite scrutiny. Truth be told, the sentence "Everyone in the place seemed to have been there a long time, and to know everyone else." (29) is neither immaculate nor intimidating. It might refer as much to several restaurants in New Orleans or a now defunct restaurant in Oxford, Mississippi where everyone used to have breakfast as to a café in downtown Biloxi in the 1970s. Rich's exaggeration is like a Donald J. Trump tweet, a desperate move. But its banality excites no one who knows red beans and rice about public relations in the Republic of American Letters. Inflation is the hot air that keeps a reputation afloat.
Didion is an iconic name in American literature, although it is less revered than Welty, Mitchell, or Lee in the white mythology of the Deep South. As Didion admits in the "California Notes" section of South and West, she is "at home" in the West. In the 1970s when she wrote up her notes, she was just an exotic outside agitator as far as the South is concerned. She still is.
The content rather than the prose of "Notes on the South" (5-107) might be intimidating. It's intimidating to know so much about the South has remained intact since Didion meandered through it nearly fifty years ago. Rich himself feels obligated to note that "a plurality of the population has clung defiantly to the old way of life" (xix). Now that is intimidating. Yes. The rock of ages is still nearer than God to thee.
Jerry W. Ward, Jr. July 14, 2017