A Place to Come From : The Nashville Agrarians and Robert Penn Warren

Abstract

Richard Gray, ed. Robert Penn Warren: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs. N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1980. 260 pp. James H. Justus. The Achievement of Robert Penn Warren. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981.326 + xiv pp. Neil Nakadate, ed. Robert Penn Warren : Critical Perspectives. Lexington : University Press of Kentucky, 1981.328 pp. Thomas Daniel Young and John J. Hindle, eds. The Republic of Letters in America: The Correspondence of John Peale Bishop and Allen Tate. Lexington; University Press of Kentucky, 1981.232 pp. Thomas Daniel Young. Waking Their Neighbors Up: The Nashville Agrarians Rediscovered. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1982. 90 + xii pp. Historically, Americans have found the South easier to mythologize than to understand. Indeed, what is one to make of a people who are deeply conserva- tive and yet remain proud of having tried to overthrow the United States government by force and violence? Even today, one cannot drive through the South without confronting rebel flags and car horns that play "Dixie" when stopped at red lights. Although the Civil War was easily the gravest political, military and moral crisis ever faced by the United States, the North has long since relegated that crisis to the safe confines of a history text. For the South, however, the past continues to be a living part of the present. Perhaps for this reason, Southerners are a peculiarly literary people. As Garry Wills has noted: "winners erect their own monuments, while losers ache with music."1