Review by Allen Mendenhall John Hollway and Ronald M. Gauthier have written a thriller. Unlike other thrillers, Killing Time: An 18-Year Odyssey from Death Row to Freedom (Skyhorse Publishing, 2010) is not fiction. It is, in the authors’ words, “a true story” told in “narrative style.” There’s an old saying: reality is stranger than fiction. Here’s […]
Forensic Fictions: The Lawyer Figure in Faulkner, by Jay Watson
March 29, 2010 by
Review by Allen Mendenhall Kudos to the University of Georgia Press for this recent reprint of Jay Watson’s Forensic Fictions, which has become something of a classic among law-and-literature scholars. A pioneering project, Forensic Fictions stands as the first critical work to interrogate the lawyer figure in Faulkner’s oeuvre. The tanker truck accident lawyer […]
Oxford American: The Southern Magazine of Good Writing, 11th Annual Southern Music Issue
March 2, 2010 by
Review by Allen Mendenhall Well, butter my buns and call me a biscuit because the folks at the Oxford American have done it again! Each year this literary quarterly, proudly published by the University of Central Arkansas, releases a Southern music issue. This year the editors have introduced a new theme—The Southern State […]
Southern Lit Conference in NOLA
February 25, 2010 by 1 Comment
If you have a more scholarly interest in southern literature, or maybe just a hankering for etouffee, head down to New Orleans from April 8 to 11 for the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Southern Literature. The program features a reading by Cristina Garcia, author of The Aguero Sisters.
Faulkner Studies in Japan, edited by Thomas L. McHaney; compiled by Kenzaburo Ohashi and Kiyoyuki Ono
June 2, 2009 by
Review by Allen Mendenhall It was with great interest—and, perhaps, skepticism, for I myself taught English in Japan—that I read Faulkner Studies in Japan, an assemblage of critical essays written and translated by Japanese academics and edited by American Thomas L. McHaney, professor of literature at Georgia State University. Whisking eagerly through the […]
Junior Ray by John Pritchard
May 21, 2009 by
Review by Allen Mendenhall Reading John Pritchard’s Junior Ray is like sitting in a rocking chair, on the front porch, a beer in your hand, listening to some trash-talking, sheep-screwing redneck—Mr. Junior Ray Loveblood—ramble on about, well, whatever comes to mind. Junior Ray is the racist, rascally protagonist of this explosive little novel, which, […]