"What is the South?" they always ask. It's a question never answered, not
completely, but invariably asked. Usually by some Northerner with a taste
for literature. Or by sociology students in search of a thesis. Or by a
college roommate at Harvard. (See Faulkner's "Absalom, Absalom.") I was
first asked the question by a fellow graduate student at Columbia. ("What's
it like, growing up in the South?") He asked it in the same tone one might
inquire, "What was it like, living on Mars?" Southerners remain a
fascination to others - almost as great a fascination as we are to
ourselves.
These days, as we lose our distinctiveness, the question of Southern
identity seems to be raised most by Southerners, who return to it like the
tongue to an uneven tooth. As if we wanted assurance that we still exist. We
know there's no sure answer to the question; we just delight in asking it -
for the comfort and fellowship and pure pleasure of thinking about the
South.
On this Lee's Birthday, the South seems only a lingering shadow of the great
civilization-and-barbarism she once was, but that ended when? April 9,
1865, at Appomattox Courthouse? With the last great Southern novel, and
which was it? When cotton was dethroned? When industry overtook agriculture,
when the city took over from the country? Did the South end with the coming
of air conditioning or of the two-party system? Or when the race issue
ceased to be The Issue, and became just another Northern-style ethnic
competition and/or collaboration?
The answer to that question always seems to come down to this: The South
ended with the previous generation - which fits in well with the common
perception that each generation becomes a little less Southern, a little
more Americanized. It's like Zeno's Paradox about the hare who always halves
the distance between himself and the tortoise, yet never catches up:
Southernness is always fading yet never disappears. Our children will
doubtless say it ended with us even as it continues in them.
Just as there are many Souths, so there are many Southernesses. And entirely
too many simulacra. The Br'er Rabbit stories of Joel Chandler Harris become
the cartoon characters of Walt Disney. The culture that was, or perhaps
never was except in retrospect, leaves behind its faux ruins and living
fossils. Phony artifacts litter the landscape: minstrel shows, accents you
could lay on with a trowel, and all the other Gone-With-the-Wind routines
for the tourist trade. A picturesque past replaces any usable one.