Whistling Dixie: Dispatches from the South [Paperback]

John Shelton Reed (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 15, 1992

Reed dissects topics both whimsical and important, from university courses for eliminating one's southern accent, to northerners moving south, to the permutations of barbecue, to race....The South is a funny place, he says, now more than ever.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this humorous, perceptive collection, Reed, professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, gathers his essays which have appeared in Southern publications, among them Daily Tar Heel and Georgia Historical Quarterly . The pieces, most of them on pop culture, with side ventures into politics and religion, reveal the author to be an unreconstructed, if enlightened Rebel, a political conservative but not an ideologue, and a cheerleader for the qualities he finds admirable in Southern life today, such as politeness, self-reliance and the desire to eradicate racial injustice. Reed also praises less universally appealing "Southern cooking"--his recipe for Vienna sausage sandwiches will turn every stomach north of Richmond--but otherwise readers will find this collection palatable.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

John Shelton Reed is William Rand Kenan, Jr. Professor Emeritus of sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he was director of the Howard Odum Institute for Research in Social Science for twelve years and helped to found the university's Center for the Study of the American South. He grew up in Kingsport, Tennessee, did his undergraduate work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,and received his Ph.D. from Columbia University before going to Chapel Hill in 1969. The eighteen books he has written or edited include 1001 Things Everyone Should Know About the South and (most recently) Holy Smoke: The Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue, both written with his wife, Dale Volberg Reed. His articles have appeared in professional and popular periodicals ranging from Science to Southern Living, and he was founding co-editor of the quarterly Southern Cultures.

Product Details

• Paperback: 264 pages
• Publisher: Harvest Books (September 15, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156961741
• ISBN-13: 978-0156961745
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,189,944 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

John Shelton Reed is William Rand Kenan, Jr. Professor Emeritus of sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he was director of the Howard Odum Institute for Research in Social Science for twelve years and helped to found the university's Center for the Study of the American South. He has written or edited eighteen books, four of them with his wife, Dale Volberg Reed.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Southern wit and wisdom, August 20, 2001

By 

Julian P Killingley - See all my reviews

This review is from: Whistling Dixie: Dispatches from the South (Paperback)

This book cannot be recommended too highly to anyone with the slightest interest in the South. It is, in every sense, a delight to read and will easily withstand repeated readings.

This is the third of John Shelton Reed's books that I have read and its style sits somewhere between that of "1001 Things Everyone Should Know About the South" and "My Tears Spoiled My Aim". The book comprises a collection of dispatches culled from Reed's contributions to newspapers, journals and magazines between 1979-1990. Most of these are 1,000-1,500 words long. The book begins with observations on two of his favorite themes, Southern identity and the New South, before moving on to Southern culture, food, politics and religion. Reed is a favorably prejudiced but acute observer of Southern manners, quirks, oddities and behaviour.

The dispatches are written to entertain and don't disappoint. I found plenty at which to laugh out loud. However, this is not to say that Reed is not surreptitiously engaged in a secret mission to raise his readers' awareness of the character and virtues of things Southern. There's plenty enough here even to make a Yankee laugh - especially some of his more elliptical humor. I particularly liked his comment on Ted Kennedy: "For my part, I rather like the fellow. He's certainly the closest thing to a good old boy that Massachussetts will ever produce - which isn't to say that he ought to be president, merely that I think he'd make a pretty good drinking buddy as long as somebody else did the driving."

Reed is exceptionally good at capturing the spirit or the essence of something and making it seem familiar to you. I have never visited Bob Jones University but, in just over three pages, Reed made me feel I knew what kind of place it was. He does the same for a number of Southern characters and institutions.

Reed is a gifted cultural interpreter who appraches his topics with respect, affection and good humor. It's tempting to say that Reed is a popularizer but that belies his considerable writing talents. Whilst everything is written in an engaging style, Reed makes few concessions to his readership - he delights in his use of language and deploys an extensive vocabularly that would make some of my students reach for their dictionaries.

All in all this book is an unqualified delight. Go buy it now - you won't be disappointed.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars So Influential, May 23, 2000

By 

John A. Walker III - See all my reviews

This review is from: Whistling Dixie: Dispatches from the South (Paperback)

I'm viscerally saddened that I am the first person to review this book. It is probably the most tender yet forceful books I've ever read about the South. Funny and articulate, Reed gets to the heart of every matter he writes on, a fact which is clear whether you agree with him or not. I'm a Southerner being held captive for four years out here in California, and books like "Whistling Dixie" just make my heart skip a beat every time I read them, just thinking about my homeland. And, Northerners, I really do think y'all would like this book. It's a good-hearted introduction to the South. It's absolutely biased, but who wants to read a textbook about the South?

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars J. S. Reed was my Favorite Professor., July 25, 2001

By 

"gsvgracefularc" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Whistling Dixie: Dispatches from the South (Paperback)

When I took Sociology of the South under Dr. Reed at the University of North Carolina, he immediately won the respect of everyone who heard him speak, by virtue of the mix of humor and humble generosity with which he offered up quite a prodigious wealth of knowledge, and because of his graceful personal style. These qualities are evident in his writing.

Now that I live in gritty Gotham, and am faced daily with a culture amazingly alien to the one in which I was raised below the Mason-Dixon, I think every day of the issues he explored in his class (and in his books). He has done depthy and earnest sociological study of issues which plague the minds of Southerners and people who know them: Why Are Country Lyrics So Sad? Why Are Cheating Husbands More Likely To Get Shot Down South? What Exactly Is A 'Southerner,' and Why Won't They Shut Up About That Old War? (and) What, Exactly, Is The Big Deal With Kudzu? I highly recommend this book, as well as My Tears Spoiled My Aim.