Letters to the Editor
hfk
Published Letters: 1
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"It is like a little short story from the South."
[Read the article: The strange case of midnight renegade oleander gentrification camouflage]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What the hell is that supposed to mean?
I certainly hope, Cary, you are not insinuating that petty class struggles such as the one described in that letter are more prevalent in the American South than in other parts of the country - that Southerners are more prone to hickish feuding and squabbling than, say, level-headed love-thy-neighborly Manhattanites or Los Angelenos. Is that what you mean?
As someone who no longer lives (or has never lived? I think you've written before about having been raised in some part of the South, but I'm not sure) in the American South, you need to be circumspect when making statements such as this. Ask yourself these questions: Does your statement smack of regionalism? Are you participating in belittling and bashing the American South, a long-practiced tradition in other parts of the country that is sanctioned by many of even the most liberal intellectual rank and file of the Northern and West Coast commentariat (I guess everyone has to feel better than someone, huh?)?
Oh, Lord, I'm so disappointed. I'm such a fan. Please don't let me down. Please tell me you can honestly, with a clear conscience, answer "no" to those questions. Please tell me that even on a subconscious level those things aren't true.
Please tell me you are simply comparing the letter writer's compositional style and subject matter to those of great Southern writers like Carson McCullers or Flannery O'Connor, and the story is "little" because it is precious, tied up in a ribbon and presented to us for our consideration, a disposable little parable, just like a short story by Katherine Anne Porter.
Of course, this would also be quite far off the mark.
You can probably tell I'm a native Southerner and somewhat sensitive to generalizations about my home. The South has long been held up as an example of entrenched ignorance, racism, and brutishness in this country. However, this is not because these traits are more prevalent in Southerners than they are in Northerners or Midwesterners or folks on the West Coast (I know - I've lived all over); it's just that they might be (or historically might have been) more apparent or more easily detected in Southerners.