A New Life: Stories and Photographs from the Suburban South (The Lyndhurst Series on the South) [Hardcover]

Alex Harris (Editor), Alice Rose George (Contributor)

Book Description

Series: The Lyndhurst Series on the South | Publication Date: October 17, 1996

Our notion of the South, shaped by the likes of Faulkner, Welty, and O'Connor, is turned on its head in this new and startling collection of stories and photographs.

"How do you write about third generation Snopeses who have moved to Memphis and joined an encounter group?" asked Walter Percy in his book Signposts in a Strange Land. A New Life answers this question, combining the stories of eleven of the best new writers of southern fiction with contemporary work from extraordinary southern photographers.

These short stories and surprising images portray the South not as we might imagine or remember it, but as it is lived--in condos and malls, on golf courses and interstates, in family rooms and bedrooms, and in the hearts and minds of southern people.

This volume brings together recent southern stories by Richard Barusch, Bobbie Ann Mason, Lee Smith, Robert Olen Butler, and Mary Ward Brown, among others, coupled with photographic essays. These revealing pictures and stories cover a broad geographical and emotional territory and give us a revealing portrait of the new look and feel of the contemporary South. 100 color photographs and duotones

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Perhaps no region of America has contributed as much to 20th-century literature as the South. But as the years progress, the South canonized by Faulkner, O'Connor and Welty is harder and harder to find. Tight-knit, small-town America has slowly given way to acres of sprawling suburbs and anonymous mini-malls. Harris and George have gathered stories and photographs that chronicle this new South. Several are excerpted from previously published books, such as Julius Lester's And All Our Wounds Forgiven, Richard Bausch's Rare and Endangered Species and Robert Olen Butler's A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain. If these stories lack O'Connor's distinct flair for religion and the absurd or Faulkner's grasp of the weight of the past, that's the idea. In these 10 stories, the Civil War isn't history, it's all but forgotten in favor of the day-to-day histories of its residents. But the truth is that in depicting the quotidian, the stories don't work as well as several of the photograph series. Mark Steinmetz's stark black-and-white photos, culled from his collection "At the Edge of the City," capture teenagers and young adults whose hard stares and awkward glances betray their youth and leisure. Daring to be approached, as if their secrets are too awful to share, this generation of Southerners isn't so different from its peers in the rest of the country.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The ghosts of Faulkner and O'Connor have haunted succeeding generations of writers with their mythopoetic fictions of the steamy, violent South of small towns mired in segregation and characterized by a feudal division of wealth and women recoiling from serpentine men with incest and/or miscegenation on their minds. This current anthology, published under the auspices of Doubletake (one of LJ's ten best new magazines of 1995) takes aim at the past, attempting to "give the reader and viewer a better sense of life in the contemporary South" through the eyes of ten writers and 11 photographers. Photo essays follow each story, not illustrating it per se but elaborating on it and enriching the reader's vision of the region. For example, Robert Olen Butler's "The Trip Back," set against an expatriate Vietnamese community in Louisiana, is followed by selections from Mitch Epstein's "Vietnam in Versailles," shot in Versailles, Louisiana. The interplay of words and pictures?truth and fiction?is at once comic, revealing, and vibrant, recording a determined effort to reimagine the South. Recommended.?Adam Mazmanian, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 249 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (October 17, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393040305
• ISBN-13: 978-0393040302
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,931,555 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent concept, February 22, 2000

By 

Immortal Soul "Immortal Soul" (Jonesboro, AR United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A New Life: Stories and Photographs from the Suburban South (The Lyndhurst Series on the South) (Hardcover)

This book is a collection of short-stories accompanied by photograps of the suburban south. It is a very enjoyable read and explores issues such as what is it like to live in the south in the modern era. It was refreshing to read a book that had the viewpoint of many modern southern writers. The accompanying photographs help bring the stories to life. I highly reccomend this book to anyone who wants to gain insight as to what life is presently like in the suberban south.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Reading, December 3, 1999

By 

laura cullen (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A New Life: Stories and Photographs from the Suburban South (The Lyndhurst Series on the South) (Hardcover)

I picked up this book while traveling in Atlanta Georgia and finished it in a couple of days. I couldn't put it down; the stories were so engaging.

I don't often read short stories; they don't give me enough time to get to know the author's style. These short stories are are different. They pulled me in and I couldn't get enough. I highly recommend this one!