approved agenda is “an intellectualninterventionist,” or worse. Kirby’s oddndigression on John Powell leads to annobtuse dismissal of the VanderbiltnAgrarians as “eccentric reactionariesnwho condemned the city and factorynand ignorantly celebrated an idyllicnrural tradition.”nAnyone anticipating an account ofn”rural worids lost” will be disappointednby Kirby’s rendering of women —nthose repressed, suppressed, oppressednvictims obviously had everything tongain from birth control, abortion, divorce,nand employment in factories.nFreedom and familism and identity—nshabby stuff—were “mercifully executed”nin an exodus out ofnGemeinschaft into Gesellschaft; andnthe “adaptation” or migration to thencash nexus is a “preeminent ‘solution”‘nto the social problem thatnwas the South. The progressive ProfessornKirby’s book — which shouldnhave been titled Urban LifestylesnGained—will play well in centers ofncontemporary consciousness.nJack Temple Kirby’s Media-MadenDixie: The South in the AmericannImagination doesn’t quite square withnhis Rural Worlds Lost, because in hisnstudy of popular culture, first publishednin 1978, he forgot to bash thenAgrarians. In recognizing the merit ofnFrank Owsley’s Plain Folk of the OldnSouth, he calls Owsley’s decriers, notnOwsley, “romantic.”nWhat Media-Made Dixie could usenis less confusion and more imagination.nKirby fumbles the easy onesntoo often. For example, the RobertnMitchum movie Thunder Road isncited in terms of stockcar racing, butnthat film’s dramatization of rural versusnurban values and systems, its subtext ofnconflict and war, its celebration of thenculture of moonshine, and its immensenand recycled popularity in the South,nwhere Ted Turner still reruns it, arennot analyzed.nThe treatment of “Dizzy” Dean asna “mellow” sportscaster is botched by ansignificant omission. Kirby remembersnthat “Old Diz” was attacked by schoolteachersnin 1946 for his grammar andnpronunciation but neglects to tell thenstory of how Dean was attacked inn1964 by the Congress for RacialnEquality because he had a way ofnpraising the “good people down innMississippi.” Heaven forbid! A yearnlater, Dizzy Dean, the cotton-pickin’npersonification of the Southerners as annice guy, was off the air for good. ButnMedia-Made Dixie has nothing to saynabout this episode of Dixie being unmadenby the media.nEven in expatiating on The Waltons,nKirby can’t get things straight.nEarl Hamner Jr.’s remarks, cited bynKirby as showing “unmistakable conservativenmilitance,” are in effect thenanswer to Rural Worlds Lost:nI learned that we had beenn”economically deprived”; thatnwe lived in a “depressed area”nand that we suffered from andisease called “familism.”nFamilism is “a type of socialnorganization in which thenfamily is considered morenimportant than other socialngroups or the individual.”nUnaware of the affliction, wenthought we loved each other.nEven today, with a highfalutinnsociological name for it, I stillnprefer to call it love.nThe problem of discrimination, ofnjudgment, fatally compromises Media-nMade Dixie, which discusses Birth of anNation, Gone With the Wind, andnRoofs without any reference to thenstrongest statement ever made on thentangled sequence — Leslie Fiedler’snThe Inadvertent Epic (1979). Kirbyneven has trouble with the movie WalkingnTall: “It had most of the ugly,nmajoritarian sentiments of RichardnNixon’s ‘law and order’ reelectionncampaign that same year.”nKirby ends with a celebration of thentenuous talents of Alice Walker, attributingnto her a “skill with free verse”nwhich we would be hard pressed tonjustify — unless, of course, her “Song”nindeed were an apotheosis of Parnassianninspiration. I mean, should we saynthat the poet’s lips are touched withnfire?nThe world is full of colorednpeoplenPeople of ColornTra-la-lanThe world is full of colorednpeoplenTra-la-la-la-la . . .nIf Alice Walker’s “Song” isn”skilled,” then The Color Purple isneven yet more ineffably and boda-nnnciously skilled, you bet. In Media-nMade Dixie, Jack Temple Kirby citesnJack Temple Kirby’s Rural WorldsnLost as a justification of Alice Walker’snprofound insights:nWalker is old enough herself tonknow some sad truths aboutnrelations between the sexes asnwell as between the races. Andnmy own research on the homenlives of thousands of southernnrural folks, black and white,nduring the first half of thentwentieth century, bears hernout. Women were enslaved bynfamily and drudgery in homesnand fields. Men, evennsharecroppers, were relativelynfree to go about, to hunt andnsocialize, to carouse, to leave.nSome men were loyal, kind,nloving. Most were not, but overnthe generations showed morenconsideration to mules andndogs than to their women.nHow do you spell relief? ThoughnMr. Kirby’s books make me long tonabandon reading and take off for Tuscaloosa,nI’m glad I tarried for JohnnShelton Reed’s Southern Folk, Plain &nFancy. Professor Reed’s relaxed littlenbook may have gained some of itsngrace from its origin as a series ofnlectures. In any case, Reed’s observationsnand speculations are braced notnonly by his erudition but also by ansense of humor, a lack of contempt,nand a gift of style.nExpanding on the theory of socialntypes known from Orrin Klapp’s Heroes,nVillains, and Fools (1962), andnprojecting from Daniel R. Hundley’snSocial Relations in Our SouthernnStates (1860), Reed essays a taxonomynof Southern social types, examples ofnwhich stretch from Ashley Wilkes tonBoss Hogg. Professor Reed’s politenskepticism allows him to juggle deftly anparade of “problems”: BackwoodsnHussy, Ernest T. Bass, Burt Reynolds,nBilly Carter, and so on.nJohn Shelton Reed has, here asnelsewhere, implied a future for thenSouth, for Southern social types, fornthe survival of sectionalism even in thenGlobal Village. I wonder if he’s right;nand I hope he is. But I recently heard anseasoned observer of the Southernnscene speculate about the future of then”good old boys.” He said, “They havenMARCH 1988 / 33n