Southern Gothic

What exactly constitutes Southern Gothic? What are the elements a story needs to have for it to be called Southern Gothic? I've often heard the works of Tennessee Williams be referred to as Southern Gothic (A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Suddenly Last Summer). These plays deal with the themes of sexual repression and decay and are rich with references to Southern culture, but you would you place them in this category?

I'm interested in stories that are Gothically tinged, but that are not necessarily horror. Any recommendations for good Southern Gothic tinged books?

I'm afraid that this is an area of Gothic where my reading has barely scratched the surface and I can't make any personal recommendations, or offer any useful definitions.

Patricia Skarda, in a short(-ish) entry for "Southern Gothic" in The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural (1986) defines it as "A term describing the work of modern Southern writers like Truman Capote, Flannery O'Connor, Carson McCullers, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty and others who were or are peroccupied with the private visions and psychological distortions of lonely characters in small loveless communities in the southern United States."..."Horrible violence or terrifying comedy characterize the South, with its Bible-Belt Fundamentalism, delayed industrialisation, racial prejudice, and stasis in a country proud of progress".

A recent piece in the Guardian newspaper takes a kinder, insider's view. The below-the-line reader's comments add further perspectives. Here's the link.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/04/southern-gothic-fiction-harper-lee-...

>2 housefulofpaper: Thanks for that. There's a good list of writers for me to explore. And the Guardian article was very interesting.

I'm another who's barely scratched the surface. I've come upon very little treatment of Southern Gothic in my reading on the Gothic, either. I'm wondering if this is because it's only recently been categorised and theorised about, or because academics don't regard it as quite 'kosher'. More likely it's simply because I haven't read widely enough, yet.

Does it have Bette Davis/somebody who could be played by Bette Davis in it, going mad/behaving madly? It's Southern Gothic.

5

I pissed myself. :D

>2 housefulofpaper: I would include Harry Crews and Barry Hannah in that company.

Hi, I'm new to this group. I like a writer named Michael McDowell. He's probably better known for his work on the screenplays for Beetlejuice and The Nightmare Before Christmas but he also wrote a fair number of horror novels, most of them set in the South (he was from Alabama). I'm particularly fond of The Elementals.

>8 robertajl:

Hello, and welcome to the group.

I haven't read anything by Michael McDowell but recently I've been eyeing up the reprints of his novels, including The Elementals, that Valancourt Books are in the course of publishing.

I'm sure I remember seeing the British paperback editions of his Blackwater series on the shelves in the 1980s. I didn't investigate them...I think I confused McDowell with Michael P. Kube-McDowell who must have just been starting out as a professional writer then. I'd come across a couple of his (Kube-McDowelll's) stories in things like Analog but at that stage he hadn't written anything that would induce me to commit to a 6(?)-book series. Decades later I find it was a case of mistaken identity!

I saw, and loved, Beetlejuice when it was released but I don't recall any of the publicity pointed back to McDowell's literary career. If it had, I might well have investigated.

>10 frahealee:

This thread is starting to feel like a reproach! I still haven't investigated Michael McDowell. I see Valancourt have now reprinted his Blackwater series (they're print-on-demand paperbacks, but the ones I have - I mean Valancourt publications generally - are good quality).

I've got a collection of Flannery O'Connor's short stories from the Folio Society, and I'm only 1/5th of the way into it...

>17 frahealee:, >18 frahealee:

It must be nearer sixty than fifty years since I read it, but I found it so distressing that it's stuck in my mind ever since and I've never tried to read it again. Thinking back, I suppose it could well be categorised as Gothic, though that's never previously occurred to me.

It's irredeemably connected in my mind with Tess of the D'Urbervilles - I think they were the only two instances where the young me came up against a book that I thought was great but had absolutely no wish to read a second time.

Um ... reading that over, they are probably the only two instances for the me of any age.

Who watched or has read Gillian Flynn's "Sharp Objects?" That would most certainly be considered southern gothic.

>19 alaudacorax:

I don't suppose anyone can remember what I was talking about there? I'm racking my brains but I'm damned if I can remember any other book that gut-punched me like Tess of the D'Urbervilles. I'm assuming we were talking about Southern Gothic ... though that's not necessarily so, of course.

>25 alaudacorax:

I suppose I could ... just ... have been talking about To Kill a Mocking Bird, but that's not the way I'm remembering it at this moment. Must reread it some time soon.

Still haven't got round to exploring Southern Gothic, either ...

Could it have been Wise Blood?