From the standpoint of literary criticism, I struggle with Clemens' proper classification.

He at one point enlisted in the Confederate Army, yet on several occasions refused to self-identify as a southerner. Perhaps he, like Styron nearly a century later, refused to do so because he felt his art debased by being constrained into a "southern" school.

Unlike most southern writers of the period (save, perhaps, George Cable) he actually produced something greater than the superficial re-hashing of truisms that characterized the section's literature until the mid-1920's with Faulkner, Wolfe, et al. & the Southern "renascence."

This post was edited on 6/6/13 at 1:28 am

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Posted by Prof

Member since Jun 2013

42687 posts

Posted on 6/6/13 at 2:03 am to JB14

quote:
From the standpoint of literary criticism, I struggle with Clemens' proper classification. He at one point enlisted in the Confederate Army, yet on several occasions refused to self-identify as a southerner. Perhaps he, like Styron nearly a century later, refused to do so because he felt his art debased by being constrained into a "southern" school. Unlike most southern writers of the period (save, perhaps, George Cable) he actually produced something greater than the superficial re-hashing of truisms that characterized the section's literature until the mid-1920's with Faulkner, Wolfe, et al. & the Southern "renascence."

Well, Clemens/Twain went through a big revolution and actually thought about how white southerners treated black southerners and decided it was wrong. People of color are every bit the southerner white folks are and Clemens saw this and the wealthy white hypocrisy with regards to claiming to be moral while acting very immoral early on. He doesn't praise a high and mighty moral South that never existed but instead criticized the hypocrisy as well as the North in a manner that only a Southerner could effectively do (he knew each region's warts but he also knew that as a collective people we had high ambitions).

I think his life and works have to be read that way. Though you mention Faulkner's truisms he too did the same thing but in a different way in 'Absalom! Absalom!' when the character of Quentin was asked why he hated the South by a Northern roommate who had wanted to Quentin to tell him about the South over the course of the novel. Quentin's reply captures the love-hate relationship many Southerners have with regards to the South. (At least that's my reading of him).

We love our region and are quick to defend it against what we see as hypocritical attacks by outsiders who think they're better but we also see the wrongs. In some ways, the thinking Southerner of all colors is far more aware of our region's faults than those from elsewhere, imo.

I think Styron carried on that tradition as did Harper Lee and so many other southern writers e.g. O'Connor, Eudora Welty, Truman Capote Tennessee Williams, and even the earlier works of Cormac Mccarthy although they all did so in different ways and tackled very different aspects of our society.

Clemens didn't want to be a part of the 'southern' school back then because it was a literary ghetto where he'd rot away and the finger he pointed at society would never be heard, and make no mistake, while he wrote about the South he was simultaneously pointing the finger at others. For Clemens, to be ghettoized to the southern school meant you were now writing mainly for southerners and stuck in a place place where black and white southerners were supposed to tell outsiders what they wanted to hear.

A lot of writers from the Harlem Renaissance, many of whom were also Southern, didn't want to be lumped in as a black writers because that meant they were effectively silenced when it came to mainstream readers.

And btw, JB14 thanks for an excellent convo starter.