between a king and a knave. Her friendnA.L. Rowse explains that since shenbegan her life as a Virginia belle shennever felt inferior to anybody.nCertainly Nancy Astor was proud ofnher origins. Rowse writes that she wasn”an unreconstructed Southerner, anVirginian first and last.” When shenentertained Virginia soldiers atnCliveden during Worid War II, shenalways told them, “When you getndrunk and disorderiy, tell people thatnyou are from New York.” She died atnage 85, in 1964, and was buried with anConfederate flag in her hands.nLike Richard Wilson, Nancy Astorngot away with a lot, in part because shenwas a Southerner and acted the waynpeople expect Southerners to act. Ifnyou’re not Lady Astor or one of Then400, though, acting out somebodynelse’s idea of what Southerners are allnabout can be a risky business. You risknyour dignity and self-respect, in thenfirst place; there can be an element ofnSamboism in all this. In the secondnplace, you risk becoming something ofna house Southerner, subject to dismissalnwhen folks don’t find the act amusingnanymore.nWard McAllister found that out thenhard way. His memoir, published inn1890, turned out to be his undoing.nHis chronicle of dinners, cotillions, andnfancy-dress balls was seen in somenquarters as a betrayal, a portrait of richnYankees as insecure tradesmen in neednof Southern (specifically, McAllister’s)nguidance. Mrs. Astor abandoned him,nand Stuyvesant Fish announced thatn”McAllister is a discharged servant.nThat is all.”nThe Astors and Fishes were wrongnabout McAllister. He was a silly, vain,nself-absorbed little man — sort of anTruman Capote, a proto-Capote, withoutnthe talent. But his book wasn’tnmalicious: he wasn’t smart enough fornthat. He didn’t mean to offend his richnand powerful friends; he just miscalculated.nCapote may have done the samenwith Answered Prayers.nIt’s hard to say, though. SomenSouthern expatriates — and Capotenmay have been one — have quite consciouslynset out to trash the Northernnsociety they saw around them. It isnusually pretty tiresome, to be sure,nwhen Southerners go on about hownawful the North is. The impulse hasnproduced some fine country music.n46/CHRONICLESnthough, and when someone with realngifts of observation and expression succumbsnto it, the results can be wonderfullynpungent social criticism. And ansurprisingly large number of talentednSoutherners have had that response tonliving in the North.nConsider the Vanderbilt Agrarians,nfor example, the authors of I’ll TakenMy Stand, a slashing attack onnindustrial — that is, Yankee — society,npublished in 1930.1 believe that all 12nof them had lived outside the Southnbefore they came to write that book,nand a number of them still did as thenbook was being written. For these men,nliving outside the South had inflamedntheir Southernness. Their Southernbredndistaste for Northern ways gaventhem their theme, and their considerablenliterary talent means the book isnstill worth reading.nFunny thing: within a few years,nseveral of the Agrarians had teachingnjobs in the North — pretty good ones,ntoo. Can’t Yankees read?nConsider the similar, more recent,ncase of Tom Wolfe (the New Journalist,nnot the Tar Heel novelist). Here is anstudiedly Southern boy, a graduate ofnWashington and Lee, wearing thencustom-tailored white suits of a realnDixie dandy. This pose, of course,ndisguises a brilliant writer and an acutensocial critic, with both the literary stylenand the criticism rooted in traditionsnthat Southerners, at least, ought tonrecognize as Southern. The writing isnstrikingly innovative — but in annornamented, particularistic way thatnreminds me of James Agee, that prematurenNew Journalist from Knoxville.nThe criticism is profoundly conservative.nLook at what Wolfe does: he savagesnnouveaux riches social climbers, shallownleft-wing trendinistas, fast-tracknyuppies. Third World rip-off artists,nand other denizens of modern NewnYork and California. Who is presentednas admirable? Well, a North Carolinanstock-car racer and a West Virginia testnpilot, for starters — the “last Americannhero” and exemplar of “the rightnstuff”,” respectively.nAnd Wolfe still gets invited to thenright parties. What’s going on here?nCeorge Garrett has written aboutnthis in his contribution to a collectionnof essays called Why the South WillnSurvive (whose list of contributorsnnnlargely recapitulates the masthead ofnChronicles, by the way). The answer,nGarrett suggests, lies in those regionalndifferences in manners I mentionednearlier. Southern critics of the Northnlike Wolfe and the Agrarians and, inntheir own ways, Truman Capote andnJames Dickey, have exploited thosendifferences. The element of real hostilitynin their criticism goes largely unrecognizednoutside the South, becausencriticism is understood differentlynthere.nSoutherners generally regard outsiders’ncriticism as offensive, never mindnwhether it’s fair or not. Unless guestsnmean to be offensive, they don’t criticizentheir hosts. It’s bad manners, andnGarrett observes that for Southernersn”A violation of the code of mannersn[can mean] the same thing as a fist innthe face or a blade between the ribs.”nSo when Southerners outside thenSouth criticize what they see aroundnthem, they are, by their own lights,’nbeing very rude indeed — and on purpose.nAs somebody once observed.nSoutherners will be polite until theynare angry enough to kill you. Thus, asnGarrett puts it, by Southern standards,n”Wolfe’s satirical assault on both thenintellectual hypocrisy and the badnmanners of the New York scene … isnjust about as violent an attack as hencould make, short of tossing around ancase of fragmentation grenades.”nBut Northerners simply don’t seemnto understand that their Southernncritics are shooting to kill. They admirenWolfe’s style. Capote’s wit, thenAgrarians’ vision — and don’t recognizenthat these men don’t like themnvery much. Garrett implies that if then”Northern establishment” ever figuresnthat out, these men will wind up likenpoor, silly Ward McAllister — dischargednservants. (Garrett’s own novel,nPoison Pen, makes the point muchnharder to miss—but he published itnonly after moving back to the Southnfrom Michigan and, whether by designnor not, it is damned hard to get hold ofna copy. Don’t wait for the paperback.)nI’m not sure Garrett is entirely right,nthough. The “Northern establishment”nhe’s talking about is basicallynthe New York literary crowd, and Indon’t think he entirely understandsntheir code of manners. Unlike ours, itnrewards criticism, even grotesquelynunfair criticism, provided it’s suffic-n