THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 18, 1995 TAG: 9506170276
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY JAMES E. PERSON JR.
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
KICKING BACK
Dispatches from the South
JOHN SHELTON REED
University of Missouri Press. 180 pp. $22.50
WHETHER HE'S writing of stock-car racing at Darlington, S.C., a pork barbecue contest in Memphis, the world of academe at the University of North Carolina or African-American Confederates; or debating display of the Confederate battle flag, political correctness at Duke University or the accomplishments of Martin Luther King, John Shelton Reed captures in Kicking Back: Dispatches From the South the high-, middle- and low-brow culture of the land he describes. In the best storytelling tradition, his ``dispatches'' - from the South, as well as other parts of the country - are served up with a curious mix of high-stepping flamboyance and humility, laughter and sorrow, and unsentimental backward glances along with glimmering hope for tomorrow.
Kicking Back is the sort of book you can open at any point and be instantly caught up in the flow. For example, while acknowledging that the Confederate battle flag may not be an appropriate symbol for all Southerners, Reed, a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina, casts about for a suitable replacement. What to choose?
``Personally,'' he writes, ``I'm partial to one of those dancing pigs you see on barbecue signs. No, seriously: a good barbecue joint may be the one place you'll find Southerners of all descriptions - yuppies, hippies, and cowboys, Christians and sinners, black and white together.'' Who can read this and not experience a daffy split-second of belief that maybe Reed is on to something?
Elsewhere, anticipating a flood of visitors from around the world to Atlanta for the 1996 Olympiad, he dismisses the current official mascot - the idiotically conceived ``Whatizit,'' a shapeless, smiling blue blob - and suggests Pogo Possum as an appropriate symbol after discounting several obvious clinkers, including road kill (which is ``not cuddly enough to be commercial'').
While driving from Chapel Hill, N.C., to Darlington, S.C., for the Southern 500 stock-car race, Reed's buddy Fetzer points out such sights along the way as Eunice's Grocery (``Home of Flat Nose, the World's Only Tree Climbing Dog'') and a combination house of prostitution and - well, I'd better not say, but you'd never guess.
In telling of the stranger things he's seen in the South, Reed possesses a rare gift: credibility. He describes not only the light and funny aspects of life, but the inspiring and sobering as well, and he takes pains to help the reader share the viewpoint he's trying to convey.
Writing of the ongoing Confederate battle flag controversy, he says, ``As the Marxist historian Eugene Genovese observed during an exchange on this subject at a recent meeting of the American Studies Association, no one should be required to spit on his ancestors' graves. We should all wish the latter-day Confederates luck in rescuing their symbols from the racist trash who have lately sought to appropriate them.''
Kicking Back has a sense of balance and self-effacement: Reed is able to discern and celebrate the positive aspects of Southern life while honestly acknowledging the negative. And he does both with deep affection for the region.
- MEMO: James E. Person Jr., a native of Virginia who lives in Michigan, is the
editor of ``The Unbought Grace of Life: Essays in Honor of Russell
Kirk.'' by CNB