Movements of the Southern TidenLarry McMurtry: Cadillac Jack;nSimon & Schuster; New York.nMary Lee Settle: The Billing Ground;nFarrar, Straus & Giroux; New York.nAlice Walker: The Color Purple;nHarcourt Brace Jovanovich; NewnYork.nChris Segura: Marshland Brace;nLouisiana State University Press;nBaton Rouge.nby David A. HallmannSouthern writers must grow tired ofnhearing about the good old days when anrace of giants stalked Dixie, pen in hand,nto record the titanic struggles of history,nrace, and land. After all, it is depressingnto be constantly held up, unfavorably, tona golden age which has acquired a patinanof extra grandeur. And yet the literaturenour writers ofler up today does more thannsuggest that a quantum shift in Southernnsensibility has robbed the Southernnwriter of one of his greatest resources; itndemonstrates the complaint as fact.nWriters must work with the material atnhand, and nobody would dispute thatnthe South today is a far cry from the regionnthat, say, the Vanderbilt Agrariansndescribed some 53 years ago in I’ll TakenMy Stand Some have even argued thatnthe South in 1930 was only distant kin tonthe image created by these poets, novelists,nand academics as an alternative tonthe drift of the century. Certainly thenAgrarian South, to the extent that it evernpossessed a cultural mandate in the ranknand file of the Southern people, has lostnout to the leviathan of technologicalnprogress. John Crowe Ransom began hisnintroduction to the Agrarian manifestonby announcing a kind of intellectualnsecession from the cultural Union; thenDr. Hallman is associate professor ofnEnglish at James Madison University.n99MnChronicles of Culturenessays, he wrote, “all tend to support anSouthern way of life against what may bencalled the American or prevailing way.”nAllen Tate called for the Southerner tonreclaim his tradition from the tyrant “bynviolence.” But this late rebellion wasnquashed much more easily—if less completely—^thannthe South’s first attemptnto assert its independence. In fact, thenAgrarians’ success was only literary.nWhile the South at large clung stubbornlynfor a time to reactionary social and politicalnways, there was not enough heartnand mind in its stand to defeat the Zeitgeist.nThe siren song of the prevailingnAmerican promise proved too temptingnto resist and too incompatible to assimilatenwith impunity to the consequences.nIt remained for the literature that thenAgrarians inspired, or defined, to winnthe moral victory that justifies a LostnCause to posterity; at least that seems tonbe the view of posterity in the 1980’s.nBut if the regional batde against thenconglomerate passions of a New Deal,nprogressive America has been lost, thennwhere can the contemporary “Southern”nwriters plant their feet? One of the traditionalnroles of the artist is to articulate—nand even in extremity to create—^thenmetaphysic or soul of his culture; untilnrelatively recently it was assumed to benamong the first goals of the writer. Itnbears restatement, then, that we understandncultural epochs less by their publicnhistory—i.e., political, social, militarynactivities—^than by the artistic record ofnthose human vanities. If critics and generalnreaders are to approach a writer as anGerman, or Latin American, or American,nor Southern artist, then they mustnhave certain expectations—^if not ofncontent and form, then at least of somenperceptible link to the shared experiencenof that culture. If that ostensiblynshared experience no longer seems availablento our writers, even in the South,nexcept in a strained and narrow sense, itnis worth wondering what impressionsnfiiture readers will draw about post-nnnWorld War II American society fromnour contemporary writers.nVery litde remains of the South thatngave birth to the so-called “SouthernnRenaissance” in letters which sprang upnafter World War I and seems to havensubsided with a whimper sometime betweennWorld War II and Vietnam. Oldnyeoman farmers now live in brick ranchnhouses with every technological conveniencenthe suburban commuter enjoys,nand rural farming communities innthe South, stretched out along the backnroads and highways alike, resemblennothing more than some spreadingnurban suburbias. The “New South” ofnHenry Grady has won on a TKO. Atlantanlong ago set out to become the NewnYork of the South, and other cities havenfollowed suit. Memphis seems more ankind of fallen, sprawling Chicago thannthe river town where Faulkneir’s charactersnfled to have fiin; Birmingham seemsnto evolve in the image of, well, the Birmingham.nThe problem for the Southernnwriters seems clear: how can they providen”Southern” settings for their worksnif the settings no longer make much difference?nThe answer, of course, is thatnthe authors must not only choose theirnsettings but make them significant asnwell.nit is probably wrong, and certainlynunfair, to hold up the specter of WilliamnFaulkner as a standard for today’s Southemnwriters. Wrong because Faulknernwrote in a different era about a differentnSouth, and because Faulkner was an inexplicablengenius, the likes of whichnAmerican fiction had not seen before ornsince. But can we properly appreciatenand understand contemporary Southernnwriters outside the context of their literaryntradition? Especially when one considersnthe great writers of the SouthernnRenaissance—Allen Tate, Katherine AnnenPorter, Robert Perm Warren, ThomasnWolfe, John Crowe Ransom, DonaldnDavidson, Eijdora Welty, Caroline Gor-n