Musing on Mail

In my mailbox yesterday I found a copy of a magazine called Garden & Gun. I have no idea what it was doing there, although it did have my name and address on the mailing label. From the way my name appears on the label, I suspect that someone has been selling their mailing list. I certainly didn't subscribe to this title, nor do I have any intention of doing so. I'm not a gardener, and, unlike so many of my fellow Southerners, I do not have a fetish for guns.

Still, there it was in my mailbox. I was tempted to drop it in the recycling bin, but I caught sight of a few words in the top left corner of the cover. Lee Smith on Eudora Welty. Interesting, I thought. I wasn't sure what Lee Smith and Eudora Welty had to to with gardens or guns, but as an admirer of both writers, I had to read the article.

The actual title of the article is "Finding My Way Home" with a subtitle (sort of): How two Southern literary giants led a young Appalachian writer to her own voice. Turns out this is an excerpt from a forthcoming memoir by Lee Smith, namely Dimestore: A Writer's Life (Algonquin Books). Smith grew up in an Appalachian coal-mining town, Grundy, Virginia. She knew from a young age that all she wanted to do was write, but she didn't understand her various teachers' advice: write what you know. Until, that is, Eudora Welty came to speak at Hollins College. When Miss Welty read one of her stories, Lee Smith finally understood what her teachers meant.

I first encountered Lee Smith's work over twenty years ago, when someone recommended her novel Family Linen. I read it and enjoyed it. I also read another book, Fancy Strut, a truly Southern and truly funny novel. Not long after, Lee Smith published Fair and Tender Ladies, an epistolary novel written from the point of view of Ivy Rowe, a poor girl growing up in Appalachia. Ivy has ambitions for herself, but life and circumstance have different plans. It's a beautiful book, and Ivy Rowe is a wonderful creation. Lee Smith, I would say, learned well from Eudora Welty, and from James Still, the Appalachian writer who was her other great influence.

Though I never would have picked up Garden & Gun from the shelf at the bookstore (for one thing, it has a bearded, smarmy-looking Matthew McConaughey on the cover, and he irritates me), I'm glad it arrived in the mail. It brought me a reminder of a writer whose tremendous gifts I appreciate. It also let me know Lee Smith has a new book out, and that's definitely a good thing.

Comments

[Mark]

Isn't it amazing sometimes how things we would normally pass on turn out to have good things in them for us. At times it makes me wonder about other good things I'm missing out on. However, there are only so many hours in the day, and we have to cut out things somewhere.

[Dean James]

Mark, you're right. I never know what good things I've missed, but it's better not to know in that case!

[Sharan Newman]

That is fascinating, but I still want to know what guns and gardens have to do with each other. Is is for people who want to shoot pesky deer and moles that nibble on the lettuce?

[Dean James]

Sharan, I have been pondering the same thing. Apparently this magazine is a big thing right now. Who'd'a thunk it?

[Carolyn Haines]

I agree with you on both writers, and on guns, and on Matthew McConaughey. Another wonderful writer is Doris Betts. And of course the dark, dark humor of Flannery O'Connor. These writers greatly influenced me, too. It was "Wide Net," a Welty short story, where I realized that characters could be like me, country people. When I read "Wide Net" in eighth grade (my English teach caught me reading a Harold Robbins novel in class and traded out that book for a collection of Welty short stories) I knew I wanted to write.

[Dean James]

Carolyn, I haven't read Doris Betts so I need to remedy that. Haven't read O'Connor or Welty in way too long, either.

[catriona]

Fascinating. But yes indeed. If someone had asked me to fill in the blank in a magazine title Garden and ... I'd be guessing a long time before I hit on that.

[Mario R.]

Garden & Gun is about Southern (U.S.) culture (including sporting), life, music, art, food, and travel. Although I've never read the magazine itself, I do own a copy of The Southerner's Handbook: a Guide to Living the Good Life, a collection of essays that have appeared in that magazine, It's full of recipes, lively anecdotes, explanations of southern culture, bits of history, discussions of southern writers and literature, etc. I found it delightful, even though -- like you -- I am neither a gardener nor a gun person.
--Mario R.

[Elaine Viets]

What an amazing find, Dean. Unlikely title for a magazine, but isn't it nice to get a pleasant surprise in the mail?

[Dean (Miranda) James]

Mario, that handbook does sound interesting. I might need to get a copy and brush up on my own southern-ness (sans guns, though).

[Dana]

It's always intriguing what a sold mail list will bring, Dean. In this case, you struck gold.

[Charlaine Harris]

What's next? Desserts and Self-Defense? Though that might not make such a bad combination. I get a magazine for horse lovers, though I haven't sat on a horse in sixty years.