Thesis, W.J. Cash and Me

It's about to be a long summer, friends. I've almost completed my MFA in Writing with only one thing standing in my way: my thesis, which I'm scheduled to defend on August 20. D-Day.

My thesis is based on proving and disproving the ideas put forth in W.J. Cash's book The Mind of the South. Before things start sounding too academic, allow me to clear this up for those of you who haven't read this 1941 treasure.

Cash, who incidentally hails from the piedmont of North Carolina, wrote and published a book that essentially bursts the bubble of Southern unreality. What do I mean by that exactly? By that I mean he claims the antebellum South wasn't quite as wistful and glamorous as it's made out to be. By that I mean he claims white men (and all men) worship white woman without just cause. By that I mean he basically said we were all full of horse shit and no great ideas had ever come out of South.

Crazy, right? Except that on many occasions he is -- dare I say it -- correct.

So the long and short of it is that my thesis will prove that he is right and that his arguments still have merit, but that those imperfections and flaws of character don't define the South. They mean we're bad people and they certainly don't mean we're stupid.

Bored yet? Good, because I'm not done yet.

One exciting discovery I made when re-reading ol' Cash is that he isn't as boring as I remember. I recall moaning and groaning my way through his text when I was forced to read it in undergrad. Now I'm willingly (sort of) picking it up, dusting it off and starting the journey all over again. And it doesn't suck.

I think I'm starting to grow up. Gasp!

Personally, I'd like another Southern Renaissance

I was having a conversation recently about the North -- Shocking, I know -- and I mentioned that the North is intriguing to me because of all the great authors that hail from that region. The names Emerson, Dickinson and Hawthorne come to mind.

But even as I cited New England authors as some of the American greats, the words felt sour on my tongue because the South has produced just as many influential authors. They just don't necessarily receive the same type of recognition.

William Faulkner, Robert Penn Warren, W.J. Cash -- these were some of the most transcendent writers of their time, and mine for that matter, but for the most unlikely reason.

Crazy guy that William Faulkner.

Robert Penn Warren, he's a funny one.

As my former Southern history professor used to say, these authors burst the Southern bubble of unreality. Meaning that they said the things Southern women had been sweeping under the rug for decades and decades. They exposed the secret that the South wasn't as romantic as it seemed.

Needless to say, things got a little messy. But the ensuing literary movement, the Southern Renaissance, which began in the 1920s and 1930s, helped propel the South from being known as the land of anti-intellectuals to a place that might have some semblance of a brain.

So the next time you hear someone mention the great American authors, you make sure they remember the Southern authors too.

Bless your heart William Faulkner, you did us proud even if you were crazy.