A negative and badly written New York Times review of John Grisham’s new book of short stories states that he grew up in the Delta (some of the time in the Arkansas Delta, perhaps, where his father’s roots are, I think, but I thought mostly in Southaven, which is not in the Delta, and where he moved at 12), and then notes:
Aside from the Upper West and Lower East Sides of Manhattan, the Mississippi Delta has probably generated more and better short fiction per acre than any other real estate in America. Faulkner wrote from here, and Welty, and Larry Brown, and Ellen Gilchrist, and others too numinous to mention. (All right, it is possible to oversanctify these matters. But still.)
It’s unfair, of course, to compare a self-acknowledged writer of popular fiction with such avatars. Yet Grisham seems to ask for it. Southern-Gothic grifters, drunks, misfits, the downtrodden, the dollarless, the desperate and the dying — the timeless rank and file of Delta literature — populate this book. Grisham has read Faulkner, and his fictional Ford County might be seen as a stand-in for Yoknapatawpha County. Listen close, Grisham seems to be urging us, and you can hear the beating of the human heart in conflict with itself.
Did any of these “write from here?”– that is, write from the Delta? Larry Brown’s subject is the hills he lived in without doubt. Faulkner and Welty both set major works in the Delta, but never “wrote from there” and largely set work elsewhere. Ellen Gilchrist mostly “writes from” Fayetteville, Arkansas and Ocean Springs, I think. Without doubt, Yoknapatawpha is not in the Delta. Oh, and the review contains one big clue that Grisham might not be writing about the Delta– “Grisham’s Mississippi may contain precious few African-Americans…”
I agree with all aspects of the above post.
As for “Grisham’s Mississippi may contain precious few African-Americans…,” “Grisham’s Mississippi may” could be replaced with “The Oxford Enterprise contains.”
To those who haven’t traveled much but still assume they know everything, the Mississippi Delta is everything west of Philadelphia, south of Denver, and east of Phoenix. You can always tell an Easterner … but you can’t tell him much.
Grisham writes from the Delta the same way Cormac McCarthy writes from the West; Cheever from New York; Alexander Solzhenitsyn writes from the Far East; and Wole Soyinka writes from Africa. Has the NY Times Book Review fired its editors and/or fact checkers?
I agree with everything you said, but DeSoto County is a member county of the Delta Council. Even though Southaven isn’t in the Delta, it is on the edge, much like Yazoo City. Yes, I know, worlds apart. But not necessarily worlds apart 30 years ago.
Desoto County is the space between Tunica and the Peabody.
Continuing Mississippiman’s thought, “and the Delta begins (at it’s North boundry) In the lobby of the Peabody Hotel.”
“Lanterns On The Levee” is true Delta literature
“Delta” should evoke region among rivers edge whether you have set foot away from the eastern seaboard or not. The mighty Mississippi is big, but not that big. And the NY Times is published from the Catskills…
What? No reference to Ellen Douglas? Walker Percy? W.A. Percy? David Cohn? Hodding Carter, Jr.? helby Foote? Charles Bell? Clifton Taulbert? All lived or wrote in the Delta.
The book, “Lanterns On The Levee,” was written by William Alexander Percy.
As much as many national “journalists” seem to love to bash Mississippi, they have inexplicably failed to study and learn much about the subject of their perennial whipping post. The overall ignorance about Mississippi and its true history, geography, and culture by most northern journalists, who prefer to write about Mississippi by substituting Hollywood stereotypes and myths for fact, is astounding. But such is repeated so often now, that from my perspective, it is expected. I am actually shocked when these folks get it right on rare occasions.
Oddly enough, no mention of Tennessee Williams, who may not have wrote from the Delta but spent much of his youth in Clarksdale and based many of his characters and stories on good ol’ Clarksdale/Coahoma County/Delta folks.