The Improbable Era: The South since World War II

VIII. After the Southern Renaissance

VIII. After the Southern Renaissance Southern literature and fine arts in the postwar years were as subject as regional politics, economics, education, or religion to impulses from beyond the borders of the South. The growth of university programs in literature, theater, art, music, and architecture tended to draw these forms of regional expression into the national or even the international mainstream of culture. An almost universal literacy combined with the spread of libraries and the sale of relatively inexpensive paperbound books to bring about a virtual revolution in southern reading habits; no longer apt was the gibe that more southerners wrote books than read them. The ubiquitous radio and television had their effects, good and bad, upon the tastes of the region. The new wealth enabled the South to indulge its artistic yearnings in a measure never before possible. Out of it all came a unique medley of styles, indigenous and imported, traditional and novel, trite and original, vulgar and chaste, ugly and beautiful. They were the modes and tones of the recent South. Words remained the primary means of intellectual, spiritual, and aesthetic expression. Although in most places during the twentieth century, oratory had lost much of its appeal, the politicians, lawyers, and preachers of the South still relied heavily upon it to impart their messages and assert their personalities. Modern communications provided them with an infinite audience. Whatever differences might exist among such fellow southerners as Sam Ervin, Billy Graham, and Martin Luther King, Jr., they shared the regional cult of the spoken word. 138 After the Southern Renaissance Journalism also continued to be an important outlet for the regional mood. Every southern city published one or more newspapers of national scope, though none of them matched the major northern journals in the comprehensiveness of their reporting or the perceptiveness and cogency of their editorials. Among the regional newspapers that came nearest to these standards were the Louisville CourierJournal , the Atlanta Constitution, and the Houston Post, all founded in the nineteenth century. Southern journalism enjoyed the advantages and suffered the afflictions of journalism elsewhere; it tended to become merely a purveyor of news columns and syndicated comments sent down by the Associated Press and United Press International. Virtually gone was the fiery personal journalism that turned many nineteenth-century southern editorials into challenges to duels or provocations to homicide. Still, on such explosive issues as school desegregation or bussing, many southern editors, especially in the small cities and towns, continued to show the old-time spark. The small-town southern weeklies were perhaps the nation's most downto -earth journals in their advertisements, local events columns, and homespun editorials. Where else was a reader likely to find homilies on the rewards of thrift and industry, notices of family visits and homecomings, and accounts of birthday parties all in a single issue? The recent South was not the "graveyard of magazines" that the pre-Civil War South is said to have been. A significant number of periodicals were now published in the region. The most distinguished journals of literary criticism, general commentary, and history were established before World War II. Among these were the Sewanee Review, published by the University of the South; the South Atlantic Quarterly, published by Duke University; the Virginia Quarterly Review , published by the University of Virginia; the Southern Review, a venerable journal that resumed publication in 1965 by Louisiana State University; and the Journal of Southern History, published by the Southern Historical Association. Every state historical society also published its own journal of local history. The most popular southern magazine was Progressive Farmer, a longtime favorite among the rural inhabitants of the South. In 1974 it had a circulation above 1 million. The second most popular southern magazine was a newcomer, Southern Living, introduced in 1966 by the publishers of Progressive Farmer. It combined lively text with color- After the Southern Renaissance 139 ful illustrations to celebrate all aspects of life in the area. By 1974 it also had a circulation above 1 million. New South, published in Atlanta 1946-1973 by the Southern Regional Council, was primarily devoted to liberal social commentary. It was superseded by Southern Voices under the same auspices. But the presence of these magazines failed to give the South any significant measure of journalistic independence. Most of them existed only through university subsidies and they chiefly served a limited clientele of scholars. The bulk of southern readers...