New Issue of Confrontation
Searches for the Real South
"How many Souths are there, after
all?" asks Confrontation magazine editor Martin Tucker in the introduction
to the most recent volume of Long Island University's internationally recognized
publication. Is it a spot on the map, a state of mind, or an image emerging
from the body of American literature produced by a distinct core of writers?
In a 202-page compilation of stories, poetry, memoirs and critical and personal
essays called "Southern Climates of Expression," writers from
many walks of life explore this tantalizing question, through work exploring
racial identity, coming of age in the South in this century, and awakening
the regional character to the broader, national culture.
Many non-Southern readers might presume the South is still the way it was
in the days of novelist Alice Denham's childhood, which she recounts in
a memoir:
"[My grandmother's] elaborate house reflected her Southern plantation
forebears from the gold piano to the tinkling chandeliers to the baroque
pillars of the marble fireplaces. Upstairs, past the Family Tree, which
sprouted circuitously back to the Middle Ages, to her silk-tasseled canopy
bed in the big sunny bedroom with its chaise lounge. The only plain room
was Grandfather's bedroom, much smaller, which reflected his Scot-English
Presbyterian father, with its dark dresser and stark bed, where he prayed
on his knees at bedtime, as Daddy also did."
But, works by other authors illustrate the variety, the energy and the confusion
inherent in defining southern style. "The past and present of the Southern
myth remain elusive and tantalizing," said Dr. Tucker, a professor
emeritus at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University in Brookville,
New York. "As a genre, its samples are concretely rich, but its definition
has not yet become clear."
The literary magazine has been published by the English Department of the
C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University since 1968. Called by The Library
Journal "one of the great literary bargains in American publishing,"
Confrontation features short stories, poetry and reviews by a number of
well-known writers and acts as a showcase for new voices.
The Fall 1996/Winter 1997 volume also features work by established poet
Robert Long, prize-winning short story writers Ann Birstein, Richard Burgin,
Jesse Hill Ford and Jane Mayhall, and the noted novelist Thomas Kennedy,
who reviews a collection of short stories by Gordon Weaver. The new issue
also contains work by student writers, small-press regulars and faculty
from college English departments around the country.
Confrontation is available at $10 per issue at selected newsstands or by
subscription from the English Department, C.W. Post Campus, Brookville,
NY 11548-1300, at $10 per year. For more information, call Professor Martin
Tucker at (516) 299-2391 or 299-2720; fax (516) 299-2735.
For more information call the C.W. Post Public
Relations Office at (516) 299-2333 or e-mail cwpostpr@aurora.liunet.edu
December 1996 |
