Proposal

Lewis Nordan
Credit: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/17/
books/lewis-nordan-writer-who-spun-
lyrical-tales-dies-at-72.html?_r=1

More so than any other work we have read this semester, I found Lewis Nordan's Wolf Whistle to be the most strangely affecting novel I have experienced in some time. At an intersection of multiple, equally strange realities, where school teachers break into fits of cliches and the murder of a little boy results in no legal consequences, lies Nordan's account of Money, Mississippi. Nordan writes characters that possess surprising humanity amidst a world completely foreign to our own.

He invites the reader to engage with the South in a way that no other author we have read manages to capture.
Nordan's version of the South is a wholly unique combination of the tradition of the Southern Grotesque (the domain of Faulkner and O'Connor) with an increasingly surreal air of Magical Realism. In an effort to better understand the kind of peculiar history that informs Nordan's worldview and writing, I will travel to his hometown of Itta Bena, Mississippi. Along the way, my focus will be on finding places that represent the inherent historical and cultural strangeness exclusively exhibited in the South.

Wolf Whistle
Credit: http://www.bookfever.com/book_photos/35796.jpg

From the faded historical glory of small Texas communities like Kilgore to the unexpected seat of popular independent music in Ruston, Louisiana, the bizarre smattering of culture and history on display in the South seems surprisingly compatible with Nordan's unbelievable fiction. My journey will serve to better inform my understanding of both Southern culture and the author's unique method of understanding Southern culture.

Nordan's obsession with the grotesque and larger-than-life events of the South are conveyed through his original style of heightened realism that draws attention to the South's tradition of extraordinary history. Similar to how Nordan's distinct style and humor helps give readers an unexpected and delightful way to understand the tragic reality of the Emmett Till murder, the trip will perhaps communicate a new way for me to engage with the South and its utterly original culture.

When Only Memories Remain, the blog's background image
Credit: www.mentholmountains.blogspot.com