Southern Writers & Humorists

In the pages of the Oxford American you'll find a Who's Who of Southern Lit.

From the Library Journal:
Editor Mark Smirnoff introduced the Oxford American in spring 1992, arguing that it was "time for a good general magazine to originate from the South." His goals included publishing various forms of excellent writing for the intelligent, nonacademic general reader. One of the magazine's great strengths has been Smirnoff's willingness to publish largely unknown regional writers, many of whom have gone on to substantial careers....The magazine has been both passionately praised and roundly criticized for its quirky approach to literature.

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You really should go pick up a James Lee Burke novel. Here, I'll give you a rec: Black Cherry Blues. Go get it. Read it. Come back on this site and tell me what you thought. I guarantee you will love it. And there's more where that got written from.

If they are honest, anyone who has ever read a James Lee Burke novel wishes they could write like him. He can make you smell the bourboned breath of criminals and feel the humidity of a shaded gallery and taste the air and the hot shrimp poboys. So when I found myself in New Iberia, Louisiana recently, I had to find a way to get to Books Along The Teche, downtown. It is advertised at Mr. Burke's favorite bookstore. It was.

New Iberia is James Lee Burke's hometown. His famous detective, Dave Robicheaux, lives here. Mr. Burke lives there half the year and spends the other half up in Montana. Because of his stories, I have read about New Iberia for years through several novels about crime and revenge and sweaty Southern acts of violence. His description of the place gives me deja vu all over again as I wander through the town.

Main Street is hugged on each side by 100 year-old, columned homes that look almost birthday cake-ish in their ornate architecture and detailed embellishments. Porches, so deep you could wander around them until supper, reach out as you drive by. Mossy trees bend and crook above thick St.Augustine grass and seem to hold the history of the place in their gnarled branches. The road follows the Teche River and I follow the road.

In the little bookstore, I find almost all of Mr. Burke's books. The lady in the store knows the famous writer and this makes me feel a bit closer to his words as well. Go get one of his Dave Robicheaux novels and tell me what you think. I'll be waiting.

Some old people down home tell me that Greg and Duane are somewhere in our family tree. If not, I'd like to invite them personally. What would it be worth to watch Duane Allman, one more time, shut his eyes and play his guitar like a man who knew he would die violently? You can't say you wouldn't pinch off a few Andrew Jacksons to hear Stevie Ray Vaughn squeeze sweet Jesus out of that steel axe again.

Like so many Southern teenagers in the 1970s, I was in bands - and I still have the hair and scars and memories to prove it. So it stands to reason that we should burn some good verbiage about Southern music. It's one of the few parts of the South that seems to have escaped stereotyping by people who think they know better, the other one being food. There are more than a few legendary Southern bands and I don't need to name them. You know who they are. But if you don't know the Drive-By Truckers, you need to crank up your iPod and aim it south.

If you have ever sweated or been in love or drunk or drove too fast on an Alabama back road or dodged beer bottles in front or behind a chicken-wired stage, you need to listen to these descendants of Ronnie Van Zant riffs and Dickey Betts' red guitar; they can make your iTunes smoke like it was 1972 all over again. It's hard. It's rock. It's Southern.

I am listening to their iconic Southern Rock Opera as I write this. It helps me remember why I love the South and love this band's music. The words are not just props for the tunes. The words do some heavy lifting. This band knows their history ­ - shared history that I can appreciate.

Looking out the window, the trees are getting closer it seems
These angels I see in the trees are waiting for me
Angels and fuselage

Southern rockers are not just good at writing music and singing it. They're good at dying while doing it. Too many have done just that. My father worked in Andalusia with a man who started the trend of living fast, dying young and leaving a good-looking corpse: Hank Williams. I have the "duality of the Southern thing" soaked, smoked and bred into me.

The Drive-By Truckers pour out the kind of music that plays in the backgrounds of a lot of Southern lives. It's not always pretty or clean or right. But it's always real. It faces up to the truth of who we are and why we are and where we came from. It sounds good woven between two guitars and a broken heart. And who can't understand that.