A Word on Words; 0874; Estell Curtis Pennington

the programme delving into the world of books and their authors tonight still talks about look away your house mr johnson i'm taller publisher of the tennessean and editorial director of usa today once again welcome toward own works the book gone look away look away look away and always said once a month tidal of two welcome to word on words as i stand here this is a what we hear my call a southern book it's a book that there should be on me a coffee table in every southern person i says well what i would say let me first of all say it's a beautiful bowl and it's a book that i enjoyed first looking at anime you say that there is

a longing for whatever is a indigenous in a culture of somewhere in the book you said that and then i think that's true i hadn't really sullivan before but is one born raised in the south and part of it the sea change that continues to change since the may hit them but there is song pride in court the way we are there's something in my mind unique about us adding you think the same thing now what is it that creates that longing not only for our culture but for but for all cultures and i think the sellers and as americans in a larger sense we are almost a

hundred people in that there's this great sense of transience this great sense of change this great mobility creates within us are a sort of sense of rootlessness in our over our culture which we do not experience in the south because we know so clearly where we came from in the south when our what our origins are on i think that longing in the southern so is of a deeply subliminal historical long we are so aware of our history is great complex losing great ambiguities but then i think pops that longing that wong and two to look away but the title cores taken from the the minstrel song which has been both our glory an arcane throughout our history look away look away an ironic title in our own time because and many people ask me why do you name your book that has been suggested to me that on the book table there is the suggestive look in the other well i'm a little ear good answer for his ability to

realize that mr clean why do you name your book look away and i said i know it's a real problem under such an amended here what that you're in and i know i don't think you need to buy for a four color is attractive i think the title as magnetic and i really i really enjoyed the book southern art is something that has not done perhaps taken its rightful place in our culture it seems to excel in writing certainly sell music certainly sell art tomorrow a mother know youre not all wrong we we are unaware of dickerson in painting we're quite aware of that but there are some parallels to ally to draw keep in mind that as recently as nineteen twenty five a jamaican could refer to the south is a sahara verbose arts

on when talking about our southern literature and that are great affection for southern literature is is very much a development of the last fifty years i'm the first chapter talked to some extent about how there's this sort of time lag between the literary development south in the artistic development south it's not unlike what are in his presence which are right out well be there's a lag clearly there is there an end and as you point out can be a can be marquee are you suggesting that we're just catching up with with the with artists are just catching up with our historical artists i think we were down there other exciting archaeological process of digging them out of closets in the basements of museums and finding them in junk shops just this morning a national assault marvelous an early nineteenth century tennessee portray them and i shot out on one of your anti christ as an example of how things can still be found i also think the contemporary art world in the south was very very exciting that were both discovering our historical past at the same time witnessing the same

kind of renaissance in southern painting that we saw in southern writing in the thirties and forties wait wait where did you order right away oh i wrote look away that first summer i got my house at home i've recently returned home to live in bergen county kentucky after being on twenty years ago i had a challenge from a publisher to start writing and most of the things were so in my apartment in new orleans so i had a big empty early nineteenth century house with one kitchen table at a typewriter and so in a very romantic way i started banging out look away and in that setting wrestling with a lot of thoughts a lot of ideas i've had for a long time all am only a couple weeks ago i had an author steven waldman who have written a book and rewritten and rewritten and rewritten before was published in a lot

i said come on i have had as dorothy are written driver it once and found that the un involve stifling and that their artistic talent moves still suppressed by day a life stalin climate and a very real way in a culture that was not conducive to the creative flow into creative juices well you would disagree that day i would necessarily disagree i found living in the quarter on the top floor that from a very practical standpoint than the noise drove me crazy and just to easily be distracted it was just too easy go out and look at architecture walk around the streets or be with people what i could do new orleans i i did keep a constant ongoing journal a

kind of slightly mad journal of my thoughts on art on that word would have not been published all by themselves but which i've worked wove into the pattern of local and was glad i had them so that there was this great com i hoped common distance the still point that to sell it speaks about that i i reached at home in kentucky into which i could weave this colorful fiber of art of new orleans and i like that mixing because i think in the south we forget that we have an upper south in the deep south in the south of louisiana and mississippi alabama is different in the south of kentucky and virginia and in the volunteer state law while you were talking just now a friendly peeked over my shoulder at this a painting by every julio of the last meeting of leon jackson and there is a martyr i love that i think it's so why did they could be going

i'm running time autograph on that an outbreak of the last meetings last fall's dooley us playing evokes all that is romantic and end good about annabel i'm southern culture that last meeting of wean jackson because of what's generally represents i think i've continued to believe in tomorrow fortieth year the general lee is one of those figures in history who has not quite fit that he was genuinely a good person can find it with very complex set of circumstances and made her rowing choices based on non expediency but on genuine belief in and genuine commitment to family and to send supplies well i don't know that the that are are a camera can pick up the year before the impact of this picture boats another one that jumped out at me is i will across the pages of the book this one is by thomas so i know the price of blood your moment of a frightening picture of writing it should

be a very unsettling picture because it deals with our most complex in our most terrifying aspect of our life in the south that it deals not only with the whole business of slavery where obviously someone is being sold into slavery but it also deals with the product of an aisle of a relationship between a planner i'm anna black's life so that the planners actually selling his son because the subtitle the painting is a plant or selling his sidekicks actor what's remarkable about that picture if you look at it quite closely you'll see that the sun is is not only very noble looking but posed in the same way that exact aims birds globally this is an end i'm sure i wonder if you have a novel might not have the she gives a little bit and they have prices will just said oh i'd say yes because it on to suggest a great source for their country in those days the days of other backup in prison is there's that

they're flinging paint one there is so remarkably little surrealist art and this book i think where you saw the picture i was kneeling on one of the metaphors that it that's right here's the years one other large number of perpetual saints this is won by willy buck a reason and a pasture out an ad by the ridge and there are a number of other allies i thought you can influence of louisiana new merged pretty successful in his book possibly because you were a failure that museum the pharaoh not exactly for that reason more because having then in washington at the national portrait gallery and having dealt with all my colleagues who are so mad for the hudson river school when i got the deep south and again to explore southern landscape painting in and look at

louisiana landscape are some parallels between the two and began turning up large numbers of these wonderful glowing sunset saints from louisiana and work for a long time to look away in storage a series of essays that i wrote called white in louisiana in which i was exploring the use of live in and raise our landscape painting because that is the single most profound manifestation of the plastic cards in the nineteenth century the south is the retail landscape art know that well speaking of light this is one the fanny pommel the mississippi entire war you can say they're on a mantra that there is a there was like there how horrifying my guess is that that was played from pursell experience but i don't know no

fannie palmer never set foot in the sas partners their life left manhattan i used that work as an illustration of the way northern artist in a very very ironic why in the days of reconstruction appropriate southern subject matter for which there was a much greater audience than there was for northern subject matter because over complex or ridiculous or whatever else within the south we made good material yet and seventy palmer painted that is the companion piece tomorrow's press called the mississippi and time piece was into squealed reason why we take a look at himself a new place to dwell i added that i'm uncommitted the sale was living well but roses on plywood and he's become a prayerful allegorical figure glasses and swallowing a bar which has the aura of a sacred new lighting relic and i kneeled on the rocky path of

life what only that but you also see that like dante yeah a road has diverged in a wood and his mother is on one side actually right and this is well dressed like a zombie an actor and maybe i'm a wooden come back in and then take another thing another peak so his choices are are somewhat fourteen somewhat complex elvis will live forever been alive for centuries there is a doornail even as we speak that he will live in the hearts and minds are centers for a cause he was a genuine funky ready it was this idea i don't know if the year we could focus in on a bed of and they are falling so just behind him a visit that's for saving it we'll just leave it right there with them and move across the page now to glenn right to his star view which is sort of area it's a street scene from memphis and why'd you pick that

because i think that just as to the early twentieth century imagination plantation rulings were the the stuff of nostalgia and wanting so in the contemporary southern imagination it's a drive ins and gas station because that's where all the action took place well i am i really let's go back in time now for a few seconds so that our viewers can look at this by the plantation martial davis met again a favorite of mine and it's all makes a point to it as you just as you've just done below that i think that and that's really a shack which i take it probably was at some point bound by sharecroppers of flair or it was probably a sugar mill uses upon one of my favorite paintings because of this entire basis of

of the lives through which we look at our way in which when target are that is a painting which is very clearly about how salvo can read structure until quite recently a penny like that would've been interviewed by saying oh isn't that quite almost like isn't that you'll country peace it's not acute country peace it's a riveting social document it's about the way the southern landscape looked after four years of devastating war ii an almost ten years of devastating reconstruction and it is a it's an important social document on which to focus as aware come and understand how southern arc can tell something about southern culture not as a simple illustration but as an insightful look into the white people lived and white people were what i had to deal with you worked at the smithsonian and regular time in washington dc and really i never cease to be amazed by the phenomenal number of visitors who fall through there it must have been a great experience

and an empty wine which are now laid pursued this career but also had a feeling of providing huge gave insight and a public service maron about five years a business anywhere the most satisfying wonderful years of my wife because of the the resources of the smithsonian to to study art not only the material to see that the great resources of the archives of american art in the national portrait gallery the national scene of american art the one of a wide prairie the the archival materials the photographs that were available to huge and there was a great atmosphere of business i i think that the smithsonian's quite as carter mission scholarship is tuned make art accessible to make all cultural culture excess or in keeping with their modeled to increase knowledge so that it was very satisfying to a lot of architectural

walking tours in washington neighborhoods as well as lectures on paintings and that was fine to take thirty or forty people into a neighborhood like logan circle where to boldly go were no man had gone the warrant to look at the architecture and and to make that come alive was a very exciting thing and i'm i have nothing but gratitude to the smithsonian for my years they were about to the fall of mosul so a dutch allen away from washington well i always say that the low the sapphires in the heart of every southerner and back to that idea of that echo that call upon and call i really let the smithsonian because i had a chance to jordan is in mississippi that tomorrow's news im laurel mississippi caught up lorne rogers i also knew that meant that i would have a chance to do a lot of original field research but there would be an opportunity to go into houses and see paintings that had not yet been catalogued not yet seen and this idea discovery was very exciting to me because i was a lot of work and i can report which are at that time and i did indeed do

that i produced the volume for the colliery bands of mississippi which was a survey of about four hundred are portraits in houses in mississippi that had not yet been to saying so it's a lot of gaps in our in our larger understanding of river port richer and i can sing about terry what about the sculpture or well there were ceasing sculptors working in non they have on staff joel tender heart in central kentucky and like nineteenth century edward virginia's valentine working in richmond he did that wonderful wonderful monument to recommit leaders in the lead tablet a dublin now but because of the lack of a strong urban center gartner even in the south until recent years are not the kind of studio spice require the kind of long term commitment a sculpture that you've seen are in the northeast chickering philadelphia new york the mission is something i can get this i hope we can you

introduce a different chapters with different our short this is one that i'm different entries is that's actually a cough ruined and remembrance and i saw that on both fascinating and then i won a few pages on and i saw it again in our ten year it's at it's a totally different photograph a totally different painting viewed in that context in that second context well it's about of course your ear felt in san diego carol corps i think is one of the great contemporary southern painters really and it's of a cemetery in mayfield kentucky and what i like about it is that juxtaposition the remaining juxtaposition of the figures of the past those marvelous sculptural forms over the graves with the tender fresh young girl in her yellow dress they're staring at a picture playing on it and you got a subject staring at you you are directly engaged you were directly involved in the in the theater

that i think that month my journalistic so confident working an eye color photograph without without realizing as eight photographic all about inequality because of the place and of the little girl i think i think a little girl simpson my map that little girl has a certain characteristic answer certain aisles of eudora welty she's like a little girl who goes to visit and delta wedding and she is slightly lost in this larger context of history and family associations in and of course the landscape itself she sings of the last word if you look at the expression of sympathy as a presence she she's happy shoes once again like a little girl and delta wedding shoes she's happy to be theirs has a slightly unsettling bother circumstances do you and let's let's talk about the present state of se arkansas i am

you can make a case that the south is changing so unloved du jiang editor and search phrase then they and geeks of a geisha of america's taken place set the same county americanization of dixie is taking place on college resume lending in merging nashville tennessean and some parts of kentucky and become love the new detroit everybody is asking the japanese to bring them business all cursing the japanese what's really left of this culture a decade as we go into the next century that gave x think it will endure and i say that with a slight slight change of cynicism because i think part of what will endure is because of the the surface

caught in southern culture popular southern culture is is just rooted at this point i mean it's just an impenetrable steel magnolias and all of the window and be the popular element but i also think that this this old sense of belonging among southerners will endure i'm talking about across lines across class lines across race lines will endure odd this great sense of place i say there was some hesitancy because as i was writing it occurred to me that i was not a natural agrarian but i was not robert and warner john programs and i was not at vanderbilt in nineteen twenty five and i do not have the same platform nor the same pier is to say yes we still love the south yes the south will endure but i think it will because i think that that love that bond is so very strong and i think that bond has been strengthened by days in the civil rights movement by the way because i think that a lot of contemporary on african

cannes in the south think of themselves as southerners and love the south and so that that has added an enormous amount of much needed energy into the melting pot of the south but we are now part of that of that other place that place called sunbelt that places our data set what that's what rulers a lot seems to be in in today's pop culture or not a region were defeated mentioned a ha ha ha that's right and the great myth lives the southeast ridge all rise again you know he really believes that you really believe that there is certain laugh about that is unique that even though a great change has taken place that we will be able

to love to rely on family i as family disintegrates will be able to find a place as place disintegrates are at least find it in our own mind oh i think so i think for one thing that the body of southern literature in the body of southern art will help to nurture that affection on there was a momma's article written so many years ago in the sixties called the south as a counterculture and i think that the south continues to be a counterculture because the sound system is obviously the most fascinating all the american cultures europe interested in the south and other americans are listed in the south we certainly keep the television and motion picture industry going on and i think that down but that's in supplies will endure it's a gas of that was some hesitancy because i'm just terrified of what the the larger popular culture my due to too many of us well the popular culture changed me as most nominated today by this

was too on which you that this moment the fear the facts i think amazes so how frequently television producers found themselves caught up in an effort to depict past and present so in life it is almost as if every anniversary everything opens the door another opportunity to talk about mandela period the period of reconstruction and all weights period of racist segregation a brutal rise eyes on the prize is a southern story and everything sense of the word it seems to me you said while i asked the question as a build out the diamond ring which you can

because the tube itself seems is fascinated with the south as we ourselves as a little yes that we need to remember that its fascination it's not just ban in a very shallow popular culture where they're also profound elements there was a quote yesterday in usa today that i love by the war a woman who is director of the caliph so the goal for his religion in which she was speaking about the death of the crisis in california she said quote if this were happening in the south we would and the surprise that an airplane about another group that voice is always a bit of a cell inside but what that romance itself what their quote reminds it sounds that there are a lot of living southerners who are quite profound people in their quite different element isn't that culture still buying are using driving miss daisy touched him as best films i think touched in a very sensitive and gentle and loving life the issues of family and place best to kurdistan and has been our guest and work on words return jobs

program was produced in the studios of the bbc in television