SOUTH

by Duffie Taylor

South is a book that defies description. It is not a book of fiction. It is not a book of history or mythology. It is not a book of poetic prose. If W.J.’s Cash’s book The Mind of the South were to marry Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D Major, South would not have a replica but a kinsman in its ambition to imaginatively investigate the region’s place within America’s collective consciousness. But even that descriptor falls shy of the mark because, for the book, America is not a place but an ideal that dwells deep in the human soul and psyche, irrespective of geographical coordinates. As does the South, for in every human collective there exists a place, a backwards, errant, boiling netherworld, where fallen Gods linger like devils, and dark estranged desires wrestle and betray each other for want of hope. But it is hope that makes this world, infusing its every prodigal aspect with heart and hilarity, pretty lies and the fundamental redemptive truth that union with God and another exists as much here as in any home, any elsewhere we find ourselves.

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Duffie Taylor