South Toward Home

May 11, 2015
In this literary tour of the American South, Eby focuses on the places and things central to Southern writers: meditating on Eudora Welty’s garden, peeking into William Faulkner’s liquor cabinet, and spending an afternoon with Flannery O’Connor’s peacocks (or their replacements—O’Connor’s actual peacocks are long gone), among other stops. Eby travels to Oxford, Miss.; Natchez, Miss.; Milledgeville, Ga.; New Orleans; and several other stops on the tourist circuit of preserved homes, mini-museums, and bookish gift shops. Some writers tower over the communities they immortalized, while others are barely recognized or mentioned. Jackson, Miss., for instance, clearly prefers the easy sainthood of Welty to Richard Wright’s more complex legacy. Eby writes thoughtfully about each author’s books—especially John Kennedy Toole’s beloved A Confederacy of Dunces—and, in a section about Harper Lee’s reclusiveness, insightfully reflects on the meaning of and potential downsides to literary fandom. She occasionally falls back on flattering, idyllic tributes to her favorite authors. Nonetheless, these essays form a delightful love letter to the South and serve as an apt reminder that the South is no literary backwater, but a world of letters all its own. Agent: Brandi Bowles, Foundry Literary + Media.