Off The Wall
THE GOOD OLD BOYS by Paul Hemphill (Simon and Schuster):: This one runs the Southern gamut: Lester Maddox, moonshine, stock car racing, Cajun festivities, cotton, evangelism, poor whites and blacks in conflict, Dixieland, country music stars, and a story about the author and his truck-driving father called “Growing Up Redneck.”
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Off The Wall
THE GOOD OLD BOYS by Paul Hemphill (Simon and Schuster):: This one runs the Southern gamut: Lester Maddox, moonshine, stock car racing, Cajun festivities, cotton, evangelism, poor whites and blacks in conflict, Dixieland, country music stars, and a story about the author and his truck-driving father called “Growing Up Redneck.” Hemphill is regarded as one of the South’s leading writers, but this collection of newspaper and magazine articles is so formulaic that it starts bogging down about halfway through; you get the feeling that the piece you’re reading right now about a washed-up farm league baseball player is the same one you read an hour ago. Highlight is an on-the-road series of short, concise newspaper pieces about the vanishing South, circa 1969.
John Morthland
SOUTHERN EXPOSURE: AMERICA’S BEST MUSIC by the Institute for Southern Studies (88 Walton St. NW, Atlanta, Ga. 30303):: Southern Exposure, a quarterly journal, is not nearly as academic as the institute’s name makes it sound, and the Spring/Summer 1974 Issue focuses on Southern music. Steve Cummings has an evocative piece about the Allmans and the struggling Southern bands they’ve spawned, but the best stuff is Sue Thrasher’s Nashville survey and her interviews with country music stars and writers. Also: folk music, and muckraking on Appalachian development, migrant workers in Florida, and community organizing in Arkansas.
John Morthland
