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In the twenty-fourth volume of this distinguished anthology, Madison Smartt Bell chooses twenty-one distinctive pieces of short fiction to tell the story of the South as it is now. This is a South that is still recognizable but no longer predictable. As he says, "to the traditional black and white recipe (ever a tricky and volatile mixture) have been added new shades and strains from Asia and Central and South America and just about everywhere else on the shrinking globe." Just as Katrina brought out into the open all the voices of New Orleans, so the South is now many things, both a distinctive region and a place of rootlessness. It's these contradictions that Madison Smartt Bell has captured in this provocative and moving collection of stories.

Here you'll find the well-known—Wendell Berry, Elizabeth Spencer, Jill McCorkle—alongside those writers just making their debuts, in stories that show the South we always thought we knew, making itself over, and over.



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Customer Reviews (3)

Excellent bookI gave this
I gave this as a Christmas present for my son.He said it was great.

New Stories From The New South
Madison Smart Bell, the editor of the 2009 edition of this series, opines, as do many, that "The white Old South, haunted by the Confederacy and the KKK, has pretty well gone up in smokeby this time." Certainly post-Katrina (several of the stories included here have something to do with that event) Louisiana elected an Indian American for its governor-- and a Republican at that-- and I would certainly agree with Mr. Bell's thesis. On the other hand, when an African American woman told us a few years ago that "the wind done gone," she ran into a mud slide from the caretakers of Margaret Mitchell's legacy that would make you think women were still wearing hoop skirts. Obviously-- sad to say-- pockets of the fossilized Old South remain.

In keeping with his statement, Bell includes practically as many women writers as men, many of whom are African American. Add to that mix a Native American and an Indian American (born in West Virginia). Three of the writers are veterans: Jill McCorkle, Wendell Berry and Elizabeth Spencer. Many of the others are newcomers and at least one writer, Clinton J. Stewart, has a first published story. They hail from East Tennessee, West Tennessee, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Carolina, Illinois (transplated to New Orleans), Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Kansas (transplanted to Florida), Oklahoma (college in North Carolina), and Virginia.

The subject matter is as varied as the writers. A woman learns to weld ("Muscle Memory"), a youngster learns to hunt ("Bird Dog") and a father is reunited with a daughter he lost in a divorce ("Sightings"). Many of the stories entertain-- is there a better reason to read fiction?-- or make a statement about what it means to be human and often say something profound that turns a light on for the reader. The narrator in "Coast" wants to see Agnes, his lover, take in the details of a place that he knows well [a beautiful thought]. She [Agnes] comments that it is difficult to judge someone else's life.

Some of my favorite stories-- although the choice is difficult-- in no particular order: Wendell Berry's "Fly Away." In this beautifully crafted and profoundly insightful story Andy Catlett's grandmother, who lived through the Civil War is a woman "who lived and worked so long before she began to die that she was the only one alive who still knew what she had known." In my favorite story "Banger Finds Out" the author Kelly Cherry brilliantly defines a twelve-year-old boy: "A boy of twelve lives intensely, every bone in his body desirious of movement, every nerve lit, every brain cell on high alert. He wants to know as many things as he can. Every fact he encounters is absorbed directly into his skin. How to fix a motor, how to tie knots, how to kick a field goal, how to ask out a girl, whether there really lis a God or if He's just a story parents tell children, like Santa Claus. He wants to know when his voice will deepen, when his body will get taller, when he'll be able to shave." In "Quarantine" Rahul Mehta surely breaks new ground. An Indian American brings his boy friend home to West Virginia to visit his parents and grandfather in a story so close to his own life that the author does not want his parents to ever read it. Mr. Mehta deftly shows the conflict between cultures, generations and--for lack of a better word-- lifestyles. I do not believe we are in Twelve Oaks any longer, Scarlett. Finally Tayari Jones' "Something Blue" is quite simply a work of genius. Her task was to write a story that could be read in three mninutes on the theme of "Lost and Found. In this tour de force the narrator in a page and a half brilliantly invites the reader into a world where, to please a mother once dying but now miraculously recovered, she is marrying a safe podiatrist and giving up her woman lover. This little gem alone is worth the price of this collection.

A really fine selection of stories.

Best Edition in Years
As a tremendous fan of New Stories from the South (and an owner of every edition) I'd just like to say that if you have been underwhelmed by what we've seen the last few years since Shannon Ravenel retired as editor, give the anthology another try and pick up this edition. This is like the juicy editions of old, where nearly every story was something to sink your teeth into. Several stories have something to do with Hurricane Katrina. A couple were suspenseful. All but one or two commanded my attention. Read it! ... Read more

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Special Thomas Pynchon issue. Includes review of Vollmann's "Europe Central". ... Read more

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BOMB 73, Fall 2000, featuring: Interviews with Vik Muniz by Mark Magill, Shiin Neshat by Arthur C. Danto, Madison Smartt Bell by Jack Stephens, Javier Marias by Paul Ingendaay, Misia by Eugene Hutz, Michael Frayn by Marcy Kahan, Karyn Kusama by Bette Gordon, and Michael Roth by David Carrier. Essays on Alan Turner by Carroll Dunham, Michael Zwack by Betsy Sussler, and Pipilotti Rist by Abby Goldstein. Fiction and poetry by Melanie Rae Thon, Ross Martin, Warren Leight, Mohammed Naseehu Ali, James McCorkle, Carole Maso, and Timothy Liu. ... Read more

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Journal includes:Fiction by Madison Smartt Bell, an interview with Tim Winton, Ted Prescott on Popular Images of Jesus, Poetry by Elizabeth Spires & Fred Cappell, The music of John Tavener and Lynda Sexson east a salt cake. ... Read more

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Available exclusive to the Kindle, the protagonist of Bell’s Prey trained dogs to protect their keepers, and Maggie, a mixed breed, was stocky, strong, and fiercely loyal. But then he met the woman who bought the dog. Cécile Fontenot, a study in black and silver, wearing thigh-high boots that left a couple of inches of expensive skin on view below the hem of her skirt. Her jacket resembled a riding coat, and she actually held a black malacca swagger stick in one of her ethereal hands. Her hair was so pale it was almost white, and in truth, she was so beautiful that she didn’t look ridiculous. And she thought of Maggie as an expensive prop in a life of tradition and leisure. He thought she needed a lesson in humility, an awareness of her fragile place in the cosmos.  

Madison Smartt Bell is the author of twelve novels, including The Washington Square Ensemble (1983), Waiting for the End of the World (1985), Straight Cut (1986), The Year of Silence (1987), Doctor Sleep (1991), Save Me, Joe Louis (1993), Ten Indians (1997) and Soldier's Joy, which received the Lillian Smith Award in 1989.- Bell has also published two collections of short stories: Zero db (1987) and Barking Man (1990).- In 2002, the novel Doctor Sleep was adapted as a film, Close Your Eyes.- Forty Words For Fear, an album of songs co-written by Bell and-Wyn Cooper and inspired by the novel Anything Goes, was released by Gaff Music in 2003.-Bell's eighth novel, All Soul's Rising, was a finalist for the 1995 National Book Award and the 1996 PEN/Faulkner Award and winner of the 1996 Anisfield-Wolf award for the best book of the year dealing with matters of race. All Souls Rising, along with the second and third novels of his Haitian Revolutionary trilogy, Master of the Crossroads and The Stone That The Builder Refused, is available in a uniform edition from Vintage Contemporaries.-Toussaint Louverture: A Biography, appeared in 2007.- Devil's Dream, a novel based on the career of Nathan Bedford Forrest, was published by Pantheon in 2009. Born and raised in Tennessee, he has lived in New York and in London and now lives in Baltimore, Maryland. A graduate of Princeton University (A.B 1979) and Hollins College (M.A. 1981), he has taught in various creative writing programs, including the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars. Since 1984 he has taught at Goucher College, along with his wife, the poet Elizabeth Spires. He has been a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers since 2003.

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Customer Reviews (1)

unsatisfying
Sure, it's nice prose.The characters are interesting and developed, up to a point.But this so-called story goes nowhere and ends there.It's a rip-off. ... Read more

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One of the most prolific and gifted writers at work today presents an epic novel of astonishing depth and range about the black uprising in Haiti 200 years ago. A remarkable retelling of an episode of racial hatred at its most visceral and most unimaginably destructive, All Souls' Rising is Bell's most ambitious, most deeply satisfying novel to date. ... Read more