In 1917 when H. L. Mencken belittled the South as -almost as sterile artistically, intellectually and culturally as the Sahara Desert, - he set off a reaction that is still reverberating today. The first issue of The Double Dealer out of New Orleans in 1921 pronounced it -high time, we believe, for some doughty clear-visioned penmen to emerge from the sodden marshes of Southern literature.- Hundreds did. Supplanting the romantic novelists of the Old South, the new Southern fiction writer displayed an enormous diversity of interest and daring technique. Indeed, Southern fiction...
In 1917 when H. L. Mencken belittled the South as -almost as sterile artistically, intellectually and culturally as the Sahara Desert, - he set of...