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

Comments

  1. Jerry W. Ward, Jr.July 14, 2017 at 2:48 PM

    HYPE
    Hype 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

    ReplyDelete

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