Introduction

It is a special pleasure to write a brief Introduction to this issue of South Central Review. It contains the work of distinguished writers, literary critics, and historians, some of whom I have admired at a distance, and others who I have known as colleagues and friends for many years. It also includes a short piece by my son James, a writer living in Austin.

A word on the origins of this eclectic mix of essays is in order. It was our pleasure at South Central Review to sponsor the Keynote lecture by the novelist Lou Berney at last October’s SCMLA annual meeting in Dallas. I confess I did not know of Lou’s work until Julie Chappell nominated him as speaker for the conference. I ordered a copy of The Long and Faraway Gone, and was absolutely enthralled by it. I recommended it to everyone I knew, and I’ve received nothing but rave reviews from all (Lou, you owe me some royalties money!). I’ll let James describe it to you in his Introduction here. In the meantime, I’m looking very much forward to Lou’s next effort, which he described to us in Dallas.

In April it was an honor and a pleasure to welcome Pulitzer Prize winner Philip Caputo to the Glasscock Center for Humanities Research at Texas A&M University. For many of those of us from the Viet Nam Generation, Caputo’s Pulitzer Prize winning memoir, A Rumor of War is what the French historical Pierre Nora labeled a lieu de mémoire, a “locus of memory.” It brought the terrible experience of Viet Nam to life, and in my own case, made me most grateful that I had never had to face the ordeal of participating in a conflict that scarred so many members of my generation. To this day, it is a staple of courses on modern American history as well as many English classes. At Texas A&M, Caputo gave a lecture entitled “Putting the Pen to the Sword,” and he was gracious enough to allow us to publish it in these pages.

In September 2016 Humanities Texas supported an event held at the Bush School on “Pivotal American Elections: American Democracy at Issue,” (made possible in part by a Public Square Grant from the NEH). It featured talks by my colleagues in History, Kate Unterman and Terry Anderson, and from Political Science, the distinguished presidential scholar George Edwards. All generously agreed to allow us to publish their brief talks here. In the Q&A afterward, no one anticipated the outcome of the 2016 presidential election!

Finally, in April 2016 the France/TAMU Institute, the Hagler Institute for Advanced Study, and the Glasscock Center hosted a series of events centered on modern and contemporary Europe and its crises. As part of these events, we hosted a round table on the French Jewish novelist Irène Némirovsky, author of the posthumous global best seller Suite Française, (2004) a powerful unfinished account of France’s calamitous defeat at the hand of Nazi Germany and the impact of that defeat on the French from all classes and all walks of life. Némirovsky was deported and died at Auschwitz before she could complete the novel. As it is, the novel has drawn glowing comparisons with works like War and Peace. Among the speakers were my colleague Nathan Bracher, independant scholar Oliver Philipponnat, and Dillon Professor of French Emeritus at Harvard, Susan Suleiman. Both are eminent scholars of Némirovsky and her work, and both contributed their essays to this issue.

I hope you’ll enjoy this issue as much as we did putting it together.