A New Life Stories and Photographs from the Suburban South (review)

think to myselfthat he don't look nothing like they say.") Butwhy all die Andrew Jackson stuffin the Mayberry chapter? Because SheriffAndy Taylor's full name is Andrew Jackson Taylor. (Andy Griffith himself seems to be Andrew Samuel Griffith.) And that's it. I'd expect a deep analyst of culture and the semiotics of the pig to pay attention to the "Taylor" as well, inasmuch as Old Rough and Ready was just as much a soldier and president as Old Hickory. Otherwise, I'd be disappointed, just as I would be ifI had spent $47.50 ofmy own money for a pretty unimpressive book. A New Life Stories and Photographs from the Suburban South Edited by Alex Harris, Afterword by Allan Gurganus W.W. Norton & Co., 1997 249 pp. Cloth, $29.95 Reviewed by Alex Albright, associate professor of creative nonfiction writing at East Carolina University. He was editor of the North Carolina Literary Review from 1992 to 1996, and has edited three collections of poetry, including leaves ofGreens: The Collard Poems and The North Carolina Poems by A. R. Ammons. This elegant and lavish anthology, published by DoubleTake magazine in cooperation with Norton, boasts eleven superb photographic portfolios intermixed with fine stories by several ofthe South's best writers. It also features Allan Gurganus's deft afterword, "Toward a Creation Myth of Suburbia." What it lacks, however, prevents it from being the defining document it seeks to be. That lackbegins with die introduction, which proves talent in one art does not yield talent in another, and begs the question: Who edits the editor? Alex Harris, who over his career has demonstrated excellence as both a photographer and editor of photography, ruins his own anthology in several key ways. He uses pseudo-statistics loosely, demonstrates an inexcusable ignorance ofcontemporary southern fiction, makes gross overstatements, and has, it seems, more interest in his self than in his subject , which explains, in part, why he makes thirty references to himself in the short, four-paragraph beginning of his eight-page introduction. He may know photography, but anyone who makes the claim, in 1997, that "the bulk of contemporary Southern novels and short stories" has us "stuck in the legendary past of antebellum homes, poor black servants, struggling white farmers, river bap134 Reviews tisms, clear moonshine, sadistic servants, and inbred mountaineers" has ignored Algonquin Press's canonical New Stories of the South for eleven years, as well as virtually every decent magazine coming out ofthe region. He has confused a generalized , clichéd mainstream media portrait of the South with what he's read, although he makes plenty sure—reminding us twice in the introduction—that he's read "hundreds" of stories over the last two years. "Thousands," he notes, have been written since 1990, yet "only a few hundred had suburban settings"— implying that he's done the work that revealed this pseudo-stat. Yet, with just ten prose selections, Harris includes, unfairly, a chapter of Marita Goldman's fine novel A Woman's Life, a chapter that needs background and context to understand the conflict generated when an older man marries a younger woman in a Muslim community. Though we're told repeatedly in this excerpt that the woman is "too young," we never know if she is Lolita-young, or if there simply exists a big difference in their ages. (Harris demonstrates, too, a careless inattention to detail: he says all of the stories he's selected were "written or published since 1990"; Goldman's novel was published in 1986.) There are, of course, several highlights in this anthology, although only a few of the prose pieces seem truly to fit, and the photographers demonstrate, collectively , a penchant for neighborhood scenes, portraits, and utility poles, and an aversion to retail establishments and religious imagery. Three ofthe portfolios are exceptional. Clarissa Sligh's portraits are accompanied by totemic photos enhanced with grafitti-like text added to address die personal history and cultural politics that undercut each surface smile. Margaret Sartor's portraits, like that of her mother, eyes downcast, standing beside a fading sunflower, are hauntingly allegorical . Her action shots are fraught with narrative. Sartor's photographs allfeel southern, although like...