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ix Any project that takes as long as this one to come to fruition is bound to incur a multitude of intellectual and personal debts along the way. I’m delighted to be able to acknowledge them here. Numerous friends and colleagues have read and commented on portions of the manuscript, sometimes large portions. I want to thank Debra Rae Cohen, Richard Godden, Adam Gussow, John Hellmann, Abdul JanMohamed , Don Kartiganer, Barbara Ladd, John Norman, Joy Harris Philpott, Will Power, Frank Ridgway, Jesse Scott, Annette Trefzer, Joe Urgo, and Patricia Yaeger for sharing their wisdom and tactfully offering their advice— some of which I even took! Their feedback has made this book immeasurably better, though they should not of course be held accountable for the lapses that remain. Members of the North American studies “klubi” at the University of Helsinki ’s Renvall Institute for Area and Cultural Studies, the American Studies seminar at Uppsala University, and the English Department faculty-student colloquium on modernism at the University of Mississippi, along with audiences at the Southern American Studies Association, Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha , and Southern Writers, Southern Writing conferences—all responded with helpful suggestions to early rehearsals of some of the arguments made in these pages. I want to express my appreciation to these generous colleagues , and acknowledge a special debt of thanks to the University of Mississippi graduate students in English and in southern studies who signed up for engl 676, a 1995 seminar on southern literature and the body where I first tried out a number of the ideas and approaches that have come to fruition in this study. My deep appreciation also goes out to the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Mississippi for the semester of sabbatical leave in 1995 that Acknowledgments x Acknowledgments allowed me to get under way with this book in earnest, for the sabbatical semester in 2009 that enabled me to complete the manuscript, and for the Faculty Research Summer Support grants in 1995, 1998, and 2001 that underwrote work on some of the individual chapters. It is a privilege to teach at an institution that not only values but actively supports scholarship in the humanities. An early version of chapter 3 appeared in Faulkner and the Natural World: Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha 1996, ed. Donald M. Kartiganer and Ann J. Abadie (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1999), 66–96. I wish to thank the University Press of Mississippi for its support of this project. It has been a pleasure to work once again with the University of Georgia Press. I’m very grateful to Nancy Grayson, executive editor, and to Jon Smith and Riché Richardson, editors of the New Southern Studies series, for their initial interest in the manuscript and their continuing encouragement as it came along. Jon made a key suggestion about how to frame the introduction that helped clear up a number of difficulties I was having with the initial presentation of my argument, and for that I owe him special thanks. Bob Brinkmeyer and another anonymous reviewer for the press provided reports that pointed out some crucial gaps in my reading and thinking, doled out tough love where it was needed, and yet also gave me confidence about the ultimate merit of the project, for all of which I am truly grateful. I continue to benefit from the expertise of Jon Davies, Beth Snead, and everyone else at the press who has helped shepherd this book along toward publication. At every level, the press sets an impeccable standard for professionalism in scholarly publishing. Then there are the acknowledgments of the heart. I want to thank my parents , as always, for their love, their support, and their genuine intellectual interest in my work. I look forward to the debates we will have about the South and its literatures once this book reaches your hands. To my wife and best friend, Susan, I want to say that the only thing I have ever worked on harder than this book is the life we’ve made together for twenty-three years, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love you for your fierce intelligence, your energy and feisty wit, and the no-nonsense outlook on life that helps me remember where my real priorities are. Every time you said, “Just finish the damn thing!”—a phrase I grew surprisingly fond of over the years, both for its refreshing directness and for the flexibility with which it could...

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