I didn’t look at an Alabama map when I selected books set there for my Andrea Reads America project, so I didn’t realize until I started reading that two of my three picks took place on the coast. Boy did they make me miss home. All that talk about herons, and shrimp, and the salt marshes took me right back to the coast of Georgia. Only, and I never knew this until I read these books, in Alabama they don’t call it the marsh, they call it the bayou. Even though Georgia and Alabama share a border, even though geographically they are neighbors, I never once heard anyone call our marsh the bayou growing up in Georgia. I guess it’s because we were on the Atlantic, colonized by the English. We don’t have the French history of those Gulf coast states. I always associated bayou strictly with Louisiana, but the Cajun and Creole sensibilities must stretch along the marshy shoreline of the Gulf of Mexico.
I was pleased that all three picks for the inaugural state of this tour – To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Forrest Gump by Winston Groom, and Train Whistle Guitar by Albert Murray – evoked Alabama landscapes, mannerisms, dialects, and the racial frictions inherent in all Southern states. Now, as I move forward into the unknown, the exotic, the slightly terrifying state of Alaska in winter, I’m glad I started someplace familiar.
Novel: To Kill a Mockingbird
Author: Harper (Nelle) Lee, born 1926 in Monroeville, AL
Setting: 1930s Maycomb, Alabama, northeast of Mobile
Categories: Literary fiction, Pulitzer Prize winner, Southern Gothic
Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird takes place in 1930s Alabama, in the small town of Maycomb (based on Lee’s home town of Monroeville). In addition to being a wise work of fiction in its own right, with iconic characters, racial struggles, and a funny, refreshing childlike point of view to gently show us, as adults, to be alert to our hypocricies, To Kill a Mockingbird does a fine job of setting us smack in the middle of the small town South. Lee accomplishes this not just through a story of racial tension and prejudice, but through dialogue, scene descriptions, and my favorite device of all, which she writes masterfully, dialect. Since I’ve written about To Kill a Mockingbird several times on my blog, I’ll change it up this time and leave you with some my favorite quotes for making you feel like you’re in Alabama:
“North Alabama was full of Liquor Interests, Big Mules, steel companies, Republicans, professors, and other persons of no background.”
“The class was wriggling like a bucketful of catawba worms.”
“That boy’s yo’ comp’ny and if he wants to eat up the table cloth you let him you hear?”
“The usual crew had flunked the first grade again, and were helpful in keeping order.”
“If I had my ‘druthers I’d take a shotgun.”
“In Maycomb, grown men stood outside in the front yard for only two reasons: death and politics. I wondered who had died.”
Novel: Forrest Gump
Author: Winston Groom, born 1943 in Washington, DC, and raised in Mobile, AL
Setting: 1960s-1980s Mobile, AL, the world, and outer space
Categories: Humor, Southern fiction
Before I say anything else, I have to say this: Forrest Gump made me laugh so hard I cried. Written by Winston Groom, Forrest Gump paints a portrait of contemporary Alabama from the point of view of an idiot savant. I grappled with whether to include this as part of my project because technically, Forrest Gump does not take place wholly in Alabama. In fact, most of the time Forrest isn’t in Alabama at all. He fights in Vietnam, where as he tells us, “Somewhere in all this, I got myself shot, an, as luck would have it, I was hit in the ass.” He travels to Washington, DC, an island in the South Pacific, Indiana, China, Hollywood. But even though he travels the world (and outer space) in the novel, I’m keeping Forrest Gump as an Alabama read because Forrest, through his dialect, his harmonica, and his Southern manners, carries Alabama everywhere he goes.
Whether he’s rasslin’ in Indiana or playing ping pong in China, Forrest is a walking representation of his Alabama roots. In every country, and even in space, Forrest recollects his aim to get a “srimp boat,” and every time he does, we’re back on the bayou. When his spaceship crash lands on an island of cannibals, and savages are banging on their hatch but Major Fitch wants to pretend nobody is home, Forrest displays classic Southern hospitality by saying, “It ain’t polite not to answer the door.”
But more than anything, in addition to the fact that it contains genius commentary on the way we view “idiots” and how stupid the rest of us really are, I wanted to keep Forrest Gump in my version of the Alabama canon because of some of the final passages. A lot of non-Southerners might not get the South, might find it charming but backwards, like Forrest appears to be when really he’s quite deep. But Winston Groom gets it. In our rare glimpses of life on the marsh, he captures the lowland perfectly:
“They was a nice breeze blowin off the bayou an you coud hear frawgs an crickets an even the soun of a fish jumpin ever once in a wile.”
In that sentence, and in the final pages, Groom captures what it’s all about, what Alabama, and the whole of the Southeast coast, are all about. Why those who visit are enchanted by it, and why we who know it crave it, and are ever questing to get home to it.
Novel: Train Whistle Guitar
Author: Albert Murray, born 1916 in Nokomis, Alabama
Setting: 1920s Gasoline Point, Alabama, just north of Mobile
Categories: African American fiction, Southern fiction
Set in 1920s Gasoline Point, Alabama, a fictitious town based on author Albert Murray’s hometown of Magazine Point, Train Whistle Guitar is a coming of age story of Scooter, a young black boy who with his friend Little Buddy, learns about life by hopping a train, wandering the woods, listening to grownups at garden fences and fireside circles, hiding underfoot at the barbershop, or perching in trees at night to watch dancing in the jook joint. In each of these settings, Murray not only captures the feel of African American kinship within a small town in the South, but what to this white woman is the foreign experience of children who are raised not just by their parents, but by an entire community. Regardless of blood relationships, all of Scooter’s elders in Gasoline Point play the role of Auntee or Uncle, as when their train-hopping guitar idol, Luzana Cholly, sat Scooter and Little Buddy down for a talk when he found them trying to jump a train:
“That was when we found out what we found out directly from Luzana Cholly himself about hitting the road, which he (like every fireside knee-pony uncle and shade tree uncle and toolshed uncle and barbershop uncle since Uncle Remus himself) said was was a whole lot more than just a notion.”
This was perhaps my favorite element of Train Whistle Guitar, this entrée into a childhood unlike my own, where a people shared a common history, a common struggle, that brought them together into a community that was so tight-knit the barbershop men made decisions about when young boys were old enough to hear man talk. This sense of community-as-family made me think of one of the most memorable pieces of parenting advice I’ve heard: it’s important that children have adults in their lives they can turn to and trust for perspectives beyond Mom’s and Dad’s.
While Train Whistle Guitar certainly has moments and undercurrents of racial tension, the book was gentle and showed love instead of hate, eagerness instead of anger. And while Murray is skillful in evoking the Alabama bayou and the thickets that skirt it, my favorite passages are from the jook joints, places I’ve only come across in African American fiction:
“Stagolee moved over to where the piano was and put his fruit jar [of whiskey] on top of it and stood clapping his hands and snapping his fingers with the women around him doing the shimmieshewooble and the messaround.”
Murray’s language is alive with rhythm and swing, and he was able to show me an Alabama I would never have access to without him.
Books I’ve read and recommend: Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake-Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia by Dennis Covington (nonfiction)
Books that have been recommended to me but I have not yet read: Boy’s Life by Robert R. McCammon Crazy in Alabama by Mark Childress All Over But the Shoutin’ by Rick Bragg (nonfiction)
I am reading America: 3 books from each state in the US with the following authorships represented – women, men, and non-Caucasian writers. To follow along, please visit me at andreareadsamerica.com.
Most Famous Book Set in Every State (credit: Business Insider)
I was halfway through To Kill a Mockingbird, the pages of my yellow “Andrea Reads America” composition book scribbled with book titles set in specific states, when this map from Business Insider began making its way around the bookternet. Most of the discussion around it involved methodology – it does not depict the best selling books set in each state, or the most popular, or the most beloved, but the most famous, and how on earth did they determine which book was most famous from each state? I would have thought Prince of Tides was more famous than Secret Life of Bees for South Carolina, but who knows how to measure fame. The authors of the map certainly don’t tell us.
While the map caused a sensation on book podcasts around the nation because it mystifies us as to how the authors picked these titles, the methodology of this map doesn’t matter for my purposes. What matters is that it came along right when my creative juices were really flowing around a project I’d been contemplating for months, and had finally committed myself to taking on.
I am going to tour the United States through literature.
My husband and I have moved a lot: from Georgia to Maryland, to Florida and Maine, to Minnesota, and finally, to Virginia. Each time we’ve moved, I have researched our new home not in welcome bureaus or newcomer guides, but through fiction. Each well-set novel has taught me about the land and its people, its culture, its history, and its idiosyncracies.
Through those reading projects, and through the past year and a half of self-discovery on this blog, I have found recurring themes in my life: I love a strong sense of place, and I love immersing myself in a place via fiction. I am passionate about reading, and when I read I often go for setting. While I kind of already knew that, what I didn’t realize about myself is that most of my favorite books are set in America: the prairies of My Ántonia, the plains of Lonesome Dove, the red clay of Gone With the Wind, the marshes of Prince of Tides. Now that we’ve settled down and we won’t have the opportunity to travel our country in real life for a while, I’ve got a wanderlust that can only realistically be sated through reading.
I plan to read 3 books set in each of the 50 states in the US, plus the District of Columbia with the following authorships represented:
a woman author
a man author
a non-Caucasian author
I want to see each state from different points of view. Whenever possible, I would like to read authors who are native to or are longtime residents of the state they set their fiction in, for whom the land is a part of their psyche. Beyond authorship, after reading the Science paper linking literary fiction and empathy, I plan to read a lot of literary award winners, but I also want to throw in fun and funny titles as well. I’m not sure how New Jersey natives will feel about this, but when I think of New Jersey, I think of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum. And she makes me happy, so I’ll be reading her when I get to Jersey.
So that map up above? I already see several titles I can’t wait to read, and several I’m sure I will bypass. The map is a starting point, but I plan to dig up other resources as well, including your recommendations. So if you can confirm (or one-up) a title on that map, or if you have a favorite book set in a particular state, in which the sense of place is so memorable it becomes another character in the narrative, please feed me your titles in the comments here, or head over to my new site, Andrea Reads America and suggest a title. Thank you, and I look forward to sharing my adventures with you!
“Understanding others’ mental states is a crucial skill that enables the complex social relationships that characterize human societies.” – David Comer Kidd and Emanuele Castano, “Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind,” Science
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” – Atticus Finch in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird
I wrote a piece recently arguing that because of the way the brain processes language, creative writing can simulate real-life experiences and ultimately teach us empathy. So when the hosts on the Book Riot podcast mentioned a recent research paper published in Science, one of the most prestigious peer reviewed scientific journals in the world, about how literary fiction engages the reader in empathetic behavior, I was very interested.
Briefly, the study by David Comer Kidd and Emanuele Castano found through a series of experiments that reading literary fiction resulted in a greater capacity for priming empathy than reading nonfiction, popular fiction, or not reading at all (the control group). They examined this by assigning short texts (or no text) to their participants, then analyzing the participants’ accuracy in interpreting emotions using the “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” Test, in which participants were shown photographs of eyes and were asked to decipher the subject’s mental state. Kidd and Castano chose literary fiction by selecting excerpts from award-winning novels and short stories (National Book Award, PEN/O. Henry Award) or “canonical writers,” and they pulled popular fiction titles that were best sellers on Amazon or published in a popular fiction anthology.† Subjects who read literary fiction performed better on the test than any other group.
When they spoke about the paper on the podcast, Rebecca and Jeff mentioned that the scientists weren’t interested necessarily in creative writing as I had written about, but in determining whether literary fiction is more conducive to improving empathetic behavior when compared to other types of reading material, such as popular fiction or nonfiction. Researchers Kidd and Castano speculated that fiction “forces us to engage in mind-reading and character construction,” but that not all fiction is created equal when it comes to activating empathy. They argue, and their data support, “It is literary fiction that forces the reader to engage in ToM [empathy] practices.”
Now, there are several exciting elements to this paper. First of all, holy cow, there are scientists who study literature. In fact, as I discovered in the citations, there is an entire journal, Scientific Study of Literature, dedicated to pursuit of this research. Science intersecting with literature! Research that supports the importance of the arts! Peer reviewed science that reveals the impacts of reading on our lives!
Second, I was thrilled to hear that researchers saw fit to investigate the hunch that most readers have: that literature takes us places, it provokes us, it makes us think, and as Kidd and Castano hypothesized, literature helps us understand our fellow humans better. Even more thrilling than the simple inquiry into our collective hunch was that their data support this hypothesis, that reading literary fiction temporarily enhances Theory of Mind (ToM), or the “capacity to identify and understand others’ subjective states,” allowing us to detect and infer others’ emotions, beliefs, and intentions.
In other words, these empirical, peer-reviewed data support book-lovers’ hunch that reading literature can teach us empathy. Reading fiction can have real life results.
Since we as readers already intuited that reading broadens our horizons and helps us understand people better, that second point was gratifying – confirmation of what I already believe! – but not necessarily what made me most excited about this paper.
The third intoxicating element of the study, what made me most excited about this paper, is that I finally have a better understanding of what literary fiction is. I’ve always wondered (not out loud, until now), what exactly is literary fiction? It seems a very vague term, even though when I read I can sense whether a book is “literary” or not: literary fiction feels deeper, richer, and more elegant than those page turners I love to devour. Unlike pop fiction, which is fun to gobble up but has a one-note flavor and dissolves like cotton candy, literary fiction sounds layers of notes on your palate, has a complex aftertaste, and it sticks to your ribs. Literary fiction makes me feel satiated, invigorated, excited to talk to somebody about it, eager to label it “re-readable,” while pop fiction goes faster, is often more enjoyable (like potato chips!), gets returned to the library and then disappears from my psyche except to say, “Oh yeah, I liked that book – it was a fun read.” (A common feeling which, incidentally, this study also addressed: “Literary texts were enjoyed less than popular texts, but they were seen as better examples of literature.”)
I was glad to see I’m not the only one who cannot define literary fiction, because as Jeff and Rebecca discussed on the Book Riot podcast, and as Kidd and Castano admit, literary fiction is not quantifiable or, frankly, definable. They qualify in the introduction to their study, “In the absence of a clear means of quantifying literariness, the judgments of expert raters (i.e. literary prize jurors) were used” to designate “literary” selections.
Despite the lack of a clear definition, they present elements of “literariness” that are convincing to me, and that resonate with my experiences of reading Pulitzer and Nobel winners, or other works that would be classified as literary fiction:
The way literary fiction is written disarms us – words or sentences or characters are presented in unexpected ways that jar us, that make us pay attention.
Literary fiction disrupts our expectations, is nuanced, makes us read between the lines and fill in the blanks, and invites us to “engage the psychological processes needed to gain access to characters’ subjective experiences.”
Literary fiction encourages the reader to become an active participant in the creative process, puzzling out characters motives, conflicts, wounds, strengths, and inconsistencies by taking clues, but not overt instructions on what to think, from the author. The reader must untangle the intricacies of a character’s relationships, expressions, behaviors, and back story to understand that character better, just as we must do in real life with real people.
Unlike popular fiction, in which characters might be more consistent and predictable, literary fiction tends to break stereotypes, challenging the reader to identify with new perspectives.
Literary fiction forces our minds to engage in the same processes we implement when we interpret real people in our real lives. This is not to say that literary fiction is inherently better than popular fiction – evening wear makes us sit up straight and be on our best behavior, but that doesn’t mean we should live in tuxedos and sequined gowns rather than jeans and PJs – only that literary fiction serves a valuable role in helping us relate to our fellow humans.
Soooo, you might wonder, why do we care? As the quotes that lead this piece suggest, it is our capacity to understand one another that allows us to work together, to be kind, to be civilized. In a recent novel I read for book group, The Razor’s Edge by Somerset Maugham, one of the characters is dedicated to a life of “loafing.” He spends his time reading and learning, and those pursuits are devalued by his peers as frivolous, as laying around, doing nothing, much the same way the arts might be seen in public schools. As Kidd and Castano point out in their paper, “A new set of education standards that has been adopted by 46 U.S. states (the Common Core State Standards) controversially calls for less emphasis on fiction in secondary education.” Fiction has been devalued by school curricula, when this research shows it has real worth in honing social skills. For as Kidd and Castano also mention, literature is a valuable tool in social welfare programs that serve doctors to improve bedside manner, and prisoners to build life skills.
In other words, reading literature is not frivolous, is not laying around, doing nothing. Reading literature is not just loafing. Kidd and Castano give us empirical data that support literature’s value in building a skill set that allows us to understand our fellow humans better. And as the quotes that lead this piece suggest, it is our capacity to understand one another that allows us to work together, to be kind, to be civilized.
†From the supplementary texts to the Science article, Materials and Methods:
Examples of literary fiction used:
Excerpts of the first few pages from one of three recent National Book Award winning novels: The Round House by Louise Erdrich, The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht, and Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward. Also selections from the 2012 winners of the PEN/O. Henry Award for short literary fiction including Corrie by Alice Munro, Leak by Sam Ruddick, and Nothing Living Lives Alone by Wendell Berry.
Examples of popular fiction used:
Excerpts from one of three recent bestsellers on Amazon: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, The Sins of the Mother by Danielle Steel, and Cross Roads by W. Paul Young. Also excerpts from science fiction, mystery, and romance titles from Gary Hoppenstand’s Popular Fiction: An Anthology.
Thanks to my awesome husband for helping me get my hands on the original Science article (available by subscription only).
“No writer should be without a Very Large dictionary.” – Priscilla Long
On a bitter cold Tuesday afternoon when hat, scarf, gloves, and wool coat were not enough to keep the icy air out of my bones, I popped four quarters in a meter in downtown Blacksburg, bent my head to the needling wind, and strode across the Virginia Tech campus. It was my artist’s day out, and I wanted to spend it in the four-story Newman library.
I volunteered in our son’s classroom that morning, and now I had two hours to myself before I needed to be home to meet the bus. After I picked up the books I had reserved – two novels set in Alabama that are not in our county library collection – I bustled, coat over my arm, scarf around my neck but tangled in the strap of my now heavy tote, over to the reference librarian. As they always do when I sit on the oak stool, he smiled at me, delighted to have a visitor.
I smiled back. I read an author once who gushed about his reference librarian, how skilled she was in digging up materials, how he couldn’t have written his novel without her. I thought that sounded lovely, the author-librarian bond, and thanks to that writer’s story, I overcame my fear that I might be bothering a librarian who has more important things to do than answer questions I could (eventually) solve myself. Well, the novelist’s story, and the fact that I have very limited time these days. If a librarian can find something in five minutes that it might take me five days to find, I’ll ask the librarian.
“I have several questions for you,” I said, and stuffed my wool hat into my purse then bent to collect the books that spilled from my tote when I set it on the floor.
“I’m working on a project and I’m trying to figure out the best way to approach my research for it.” He clasped his hands on the desk between us and waited.
“I want to read my way through the United States, and I’d like to read three works of fiction from each state: one by a man, one by a woman, and one by a non-Caucasian author.” He raised his bushy white eyebrows. “I started in Alabama, and finding male and female authors was no problem, but they were both white, and when I tried to find a minority author, I had a really hard time. I mean, it’s Alabama! The population is 26% African American,” (I checked) “so why is it so hard to find an African American author?”
He swiveled in his chair and started typing into his search engine. “Well, you can certainly search by state in our system – just type in ‘fiction Alabama’ for instance – but,” he traced the author names with his finger. There was no telling what ethnicity they were. “You’re going to have to do the legwork with the authors.” I thought as much. Perhaps if I cross referenced with “fiction Native American” or ” fiction African American.” But that wasn’t my main reason for being there, so I moved on.
“What about literary prizes? Do you know of any resource that might have, say, Pulitzer or National Book Award winners mapped out? A map with ‘pins’ in it reporting where each author is from?”
He shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”
“Hmm. Maybe I need to create that resource.”
“Yes, please do,” he smiled, “and then sell it to us.” He reached behind his computer terminal and his hand emerged holding an ecru business card. The card was embossed with a maroon Virginia Tech logo, just like my husband’s card is. “This is our librarian who specializes in literature and the humanities. She may be able to help you figure out a strategy.”
My eyes opened wide, as did my mouth, as I accepted the small card. A literature reference librarian! The resources I was unearthing! I had only recently discovered, thanks to local Twitter friends, that though I am not a student at Virginia Tech, my status as a resident of Virginia grants me access to the University libraries and all of their riches.
I closed my mouth and uncrumpled my list, which had been crushed in the bottom of my tote. “Okay, where might I find literary journals?” I scanned the vast space around me, then moved my eyes to the ceiling, above which I knew there were two more floors of stacks.
“Do you have a specific title you’re looking for?”
“The Georgia Review.”
He tapped his keyboard, told me where to find the current volumes (fourth floor), then turned to me for my final question. The real reason I was there.
“I’m looking for a Very Large dictionary,” I said.
His mouth twitched and his eyes glittered. “Do you want to carry one around,” he swept his arm to indicate the whole of the library, “Or do you want to sit with one?”
I’ve joined a writing group – not a critique group, but a practice group – and our homework this week was to play with words. We are working from Priscilla Long’s The Writer’s Portable Mentor, and the exercise I chose for myself from the first chapter, which covers gathering words, sound-effects, and verbs, was to inscribe a working title on the cover of my new composition book, and before I began sketching ideas, before I began drafting, I was to create a word trap for the piece. I would Find Good Words. I would list 50 to100 juicy nouns and verbs I might want to use in the piece. And I wanted to do that using a Very Large dictionary, which I do not yet possess.
“I just want to spend some time with a big dictionary,” I told him, and rubbed my hand across the cover of my new composition book, on which I had written “Sun on my skin.”
The librarian stood and walked to the shelf behind him. He bent sideways to read titles, then pulled a yellow-bound, 4 inch thick tome. I stood and began slinging bags over my shoulder so that my hands would be free. He held the heavy volume in both hands, and presented it to me like a gift.
“Thank you,” I said, and my arms dipped under its weight.
“You’re welcome,” he said, and smiled again. “Have fun with your dictionary.”
I trudged, laden, to a table barely ten feet away (I didn’t want to waste time hiking all over the library), heaved the huge volume open, then turned the pages in chunks til I got to S. I paged through to sun, read for a few seconds, and began scribbling. From sun I flipped to sun rays, then solar. I read definitions, scanned for succulent words, chicken-scratched into my notebook while my eyes drank the dictionary. Summer, sunshine, sunbaked, sunback. I studied and scrawled and riffled and wrote, lured by the glistening gossamer of word strands. Beach, shore, sand, salt. Grit, splash zone, sandbar, surf. I wrote sunbrowned, ruffled pages to tanned. Became ensnared by the idea of the sun as a tanner. Turned to tawny, hide, leather, skin. Paged to skin and saw epidermis, and – ooh! sebaceous! – then sweat, then swelter, then sizzle, then prickle. Then sunburnt. And blistered. And speckled. And freckled.
I was about to heave back to the beginning of the Very Large dictionary, I was about to leaf to cancer, when my phone vibrated on the table. Wha? Then the telltale sound of crickets.
My phone alarm.
Crap! My meter! I slammed the 4 inch tome shut (taking care to smooth the pages first), dashed it the ten feet to the reference librarian, thanked him again, then tripped over my bags in my rush to re-dress. Hat (yank), scarf (wrap), coat (where’s the damn arm hole?). Shoved spilled books back into tote. Slung bags over shoulder. Jerked my mom’s leather gloves on while my boot heels rapped a staccato on the vinyl tiles.
I clanked open the building’s heavy door and cold air rushed in. I braced myself and launched through the exit. I barely escaped in time.
I found a title set in Alabama by an African American author, Albert Murray, and will soon be moving on to Alaska in my reading adventure. If you know of any great fiction set there, please let me know. I’ve only got one title so far – The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey. Likewise, if you have favorite fiction set in a specific state, please share your titles with me. I’d love your help with suggestions. Thanks!
