Southern Writer

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2010-04-02T16:27:00.001-07:00

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Population and its Problems

2009-11-17T07:56:00.000-08:00

But first, before concerning himself with economic affairs, the Regulator opted to address the most pressing of national issues, a population catastrophe in which the average American acre was expected to provide habitation for 29.32 citizens, as opposed to the 1.09 of more healthy times. The earth groaned under the weight. “Never,” said he, (said the Regulator) “has so much ignorance and so many vile appetites been compressed into such tight quarters, save only perhaps in Europe, Asia, and Latin America.” He went on: “Every man his hundred acres! And let no domiciles come within three hundred yards of each other, certainly not. Every man his library, incunabula mostly and all of them leather bound!” (Wild cheering.)

“And how, Sir, may we bring the population down?” (This was actually asked by one of the bystanders.)

“Why, by giving them six months to get out of town!”

“’Them?’”

“Bet your sweet ass ‘them!’”

(Wild cheering.)

“And then we cancel all constitutional rights for those as lag behind. Want to take their houses and rape their wives? Have at it!”

“Actually it’s their daughters, Sir. Not their wives.”

And so thus Lee, who gave the order that same day. Not content with that, he next wheedled some 17 million youths off to Key West with promises of beer, video games and sex. It needed just two score of patriotic Americans to sever the single highway to that island and push it out to sea. Amazing, how quickly the quality of life on the mainland began to return to the “gold standard” of 1940-58. Next, he fobbed off almost 72 million liberals to a certain well-known large city in the Northeast which the Executor (as he was sometimes called) immediately quarantined with a laser-defended wall varying from thirty to thirty-five feet in height.

Had he died that moment, The Regulator would surely have gone down as perhaps the greatest benefactor in the whole history of the West. But still his work was not done, not even after he had purged the nation of those some seventeen million afflicted with the “cathode ray tube sickness,” a mortal condition characterized by atrophy of the brain.

[Next week: Europe]

Bookmark Interview

2009-11-14T09:53:00.000-08:00

My interview on Don Noble's Bookmark program will be rebroadcast on November 22 at 11am on Alabama Public Television.

Inauguration of the Regulator

2009-11-13T07:21:00.000-08:00

Blustery day, that when Lee “Leland” Pefley, age 77, composed and committed himself before a crowd of more than thirty souls to the “Great Oath,” properly so-called, that marked his assumption of total power in the political, economic, military, and cultural realms. His right hand on a copy of the first edition of the novel named after himself, he pledged all sorts of things. (Thirty souls! A select group, to be sure, chosen by lot from unpublished writers and long-term prisoners furloughed for the purpose.)
“I do pledge,” it is said he said, “do pledge to do what is most aesthetically pleasing, and to hell with practical results. Anyway, I’m sick of results and people of that sort. What is the quality of American poetry, yes? And how many of us, really, can speak both Aeolic and Attic Greek? These are the questions my cabinet shall address next Monday at our annual fry.
(Some of those prisoners are still at large, the neighbors claim.)
“And what will be my policy you ask?” (He pointed to the one who had asked it, a roseate and gimlet-eyed rubicund man with a beetling brow handcuffed most cruelly in barbed wire.) “We don’t need no stinking policy! All we need is…” But here his voice was overwhelmed by the National Orchestra’s rendition of the second movement of Mahler’s eighth, a performance commanded by him at 3:15 that same afternoon upon awakening for the brand new day.

The Coming of the Regulator

2009-11-10T09:31:00.000-08:00

How strange, that the young people of today have no apparent collective familiarity with the seminal events of 2017-22, that “social earthquake,” so-denominated, that established the foundations of our current happiness. Indeed, a recent poll carried out by the J. W. Booth Institute suggests that as much as 14% of the youthful population could not immediately identify the official oil painting of Regulator Leland (“Lee”) Pefley on display in our nation’s capitol in Richmond. It might seem therefore that the time has come to review the signal achievements of this epoch-making individual who, if it is not too much to claim, restored our republic to the condition that in the normal course of events it could (and should) have assumed some seventy or eighty years earlier.
But first, recollect how this person ascended to the newly formed emergency position of Regulator, a last ditch measure to shore up our national boundaries and restore some, at least, of the features of the by-then forgotten American Constitution, (to employ the nomenclature of the nostalgists of that day). Prior to having dissolved itself in the autumn of 2015, you will remember how the Senate in its final action had set up this new position, granting wide executive powers agreed to endure for five years. Remember, too, that the quality of our higher officers had already begun to improve somewhat, owing to the new method of selection by lottery. Even so, (you must also recall) our society remained in the most parlous condition, the “War Without Pity” still raging in full flood between The Junta, The Bloods, and The Caucasoid Rump.

A Hole in the Hole

2009-11-06T06:17:00.000-08:00

To elude the modern world, it’s not always enough to have a secret place, a “sanctuary,” so to speak, or even a deep round hole in the cold hard ground. Nor is it always enough to have access to an abandoned well or disused missile silo in order to ward away the sounds of rock and rap, of chainsaws and midday blonde newscasters.

No, very often a person will want even greater secrecy, a “hole in the hole,” as we should call it, a carpeted area about eight feet square where a fellow can squirrel away a package of non-filtered cigarettes along with candles and a literary novel or two. Here, lost in ecstasy, that fellow might dredge up a few old ethnic jokes, indulge in negative thoughts, and allow his facial expression to do as it wants.

(We mention this here as just one of the possible compensations of the examined life.)

A Hole in the Wall

2009-11-05T12:59:00.000-08:00

But first, before taking up residence in the countryside, it is absolutely crucial to avoid those things that could abort, or even reverse, any effort to live a more essential and more spiritual life, namely the good likelihood that a person of our sort will end up offending one or more of our guardians and/or law officers. Crucial, too, to remember that it is impossible to go on breathing in times of late decadence without at the same time being in violation of at least two or three laws or fashion imperatives.

Where really, can a person go if he wishes to have a cigarette? Or tell and ethnic joke? What if he finds himself having negative thoughts about some specific race or gender or handicapped person, some man/boy pederast or cocaine merchant? How if he prefers old movies to new, yea, and romantic ballads as well? How about it if he habitually averts his face when Madonna comes on stage? And how about that Brad person and his wives!

You remember how during the religious troubles in Britain, certain unreformed Catholic aristocrats used to create secret cubicles in their homes where outlawed priests could hide from the authorities? Well there’s our answer I do believe – have a hidden place, about eight feet square, where one could smoke or speak out loud, consume high caloric foods and fail to exercise. There, in perfect darkness, a man might curse the modern age, the obsolescence of mules and the coming of baggy pants. An then, after an hour or so, fall into the best-quality sleep still available to those charged with supporting with blood and treasure the world’s last (as of today) superpower.

In times of decadence...

2009-11-04T18:36:00.000-08:00

Moving right along, we need now to consider the ways in which a decent person might be able to weather the next few impending years. Already we’ve agreed that anyone living in a city needs immediately to abandon the place, taking as many of his or her private possessions as can be fitted into the trunk of an automobile. (We’ve not yet come to the point where racial profiling has made travel impossible for white people, nor have CCTV cameras as yet been programmed to narrow in on people understood to be historically guilty. Accordingly, a scrupulous driver ought to be able to put a fair number of jurisdictions between himself and the city he is fleeing before his local IRS agent and other creditors have been twittered as to the fact.) And this, that although city dwellers aren’t permitted to expose actual rifles in the rear window of their vehicles, yet decals are easily available, and cheap.
Having (we assume) escaped the downtown city and (a much less difficult operation), having bribed the toll taker and gatekeepers, our delinquent instinctively points his and her nose to the South, last place on earth where a person can still be left alone. Here, settled amongst poor people who still understand how to grow food, our person can sleep till noon, tend hogs, listen to good music and read four or five books a week.
(Our next installment will undertake to cite which books and hogs are most availing for an individual of our kind.)

And more on decadence...

2009-10-30T10:32:00.000-07:00

What was the behavior of good people, the few that remained, in late Roman Empire days? Or, more urgently, how should decent people behave in 2009 when we have fifty-year-olds still attending rock concerts, nostalgicizing Star Trek, lamenting John Lennon, reading Stephen King – a generation that cannot and never will become authentic adults? Shall we also mention those with three divorces who end up in a blended family comprising three husbands, two wives, the gardener, pets, neighbors, and clones? May we talk about high school graduates who don’t know how to wear a baseball cap, who weigh twice too much, about new style women chasing capital gains, 12-year-olds dreaming of rectal intercourse, tax-sponsored therapy for those as can’t wipe themselves, popular “music” as the most perfect distillate of mass ignorance ever yet devised, of new and ingenious forms of Anglo-demotionism designed to punish the inventors of the West, may we, pray, talk about these matters. No? Of immigration policies calculated to recruit civilization’s most active enemies and bring them here? Can we talk?
Or is it more useful to think about those two or three hundred souls (like mine obviously), who have wasted so much time trying to hold decadence at bay? How, really, should we respond to a dwindling culture that once held the world in envy and imitation? Ought we secede from current affairs, turn off our television sets, retreat into rural areas or tiny towns with small populations, cultivate our own talents and dedicate our last decade(s) - (it is taken for granted here that no one under the age of 50 can possibly know what it is to have lived in a normal society) – and dedicate our final years, as I was saying, to our spouses, our books, good music and dogs?
Yes we should.
(How to go about this project will be detailed in future messages, assuming the extraordinary number of responses hasn’t become too many for me to handle.)

More on Decadence

2009-10-24T08:25:00.000-07:00

We cannot of course predict how long, under conditions of deep decadence, the once-great culture of the West can persist. Some say a full century still remains to us, citing as examples the seemingly interminable cultural stasis of Egypt persisting down to Alexander and beyond, or Byzantium’s thousand-year collapse. Others believe we have less time than that, perhaps only a single generation before the last performance of an opera will have been given, the last piece of literary fiction published, and the last good school sacrificed to diversity and a perverted egalitarianism. For those whose tastes run in that direction, we may by then boast ten thousand rock stars, a million celebrities, and marriage will be understood as any legally valid agreement uniting a list of husbands, wives, pets, and clones.
How then should serious people behave in the short time left to us? I have acquaintances who have chosen to stand up against the current debasement, and who seem in some cases actually to believe that a restoration of social health is still possible. That is not the opinion of this person. Decadence is easy, lots of fun, and is especially attractive to prosperous people who have become averse to struggle and concentration. That is why the facile virtues, the ones that can be practiced while sitting on a couch in a darkened room – compassion, empathy, tolerance – have crowded out the hard ones, which is to say integrity, strength, and achievement.
(We’ll definitely return to this theme in our next contribution where we [just me actually] will try to reply to the question cited in the first sentence of the second paragraph inscribed about four and a half inches above.)

Decadence

2009-10-21T11:01:00.000-07:00

The jury may still be out on Iraq and Iran, on Brittany’s hairstyle and global warming, but by now we have a clear-cut verdict on the issue of western decline. No longer sufficient to admit that the West has lost relative position with regard to the rest of the world in material terms, it’s past time to confess that we are deep into the historically well-attested syndrome sobriqueted [my word] as decadence, a mortal condition, probably irreversible, that is reflected, indeed proved, by the waning quality of the civic and aesthetic arts in evidence today.

Has ever there been a time when merit and success were so inversely related? And really, could anything be more painful than forced to scan the roll call of America’s most famous people? Than the best-seller lists? Than our educational system? Than the conduct of billionaires? Than television?

Imagine the historians of the future trying to understand this, how the cultural contributions of the earth’s richest and most powerful nation can be summed up in terms of basketball, rock and rap, consumerism, new forms of pornography, art galleries full of high priced junk, “vibrant” neighborhoods, pulp journalism, etiolated children glued to computer screens, women soldiers, pullulating cities, special effects cinema, etc., etc., the whole bloody list.

Truth is, in its senescence our civilization has become a cultural failure, a denouement foreseen by Toynbee and others, fostered by comfort and security and a prosperity that has been too far prolonged – the worst of conditions for writers of serious intent.

(Future blogs will offer suggestions as to how writers can continue to operate under such conditions while still preserving some measure of human integrity.)

Distracted by Samuel Johnson

2009-10-20T06:48:00.000-07:00

Yes, well perhaps I did promise to read, or anyway to start, David Foster Wallace’s elephantine Infinite Jest and report back my findings. And I sincerely intended to do that too, which is to say until I was tempted, sore tempted, to look into Peter Martin’s mediocre biography of one of Britain’s least mediocre of men - Samuel Johnson, specifically speaking. Already I have passed through this man’s penurious childhood, his rather incongruous marriage, his sojourns in London, and have now begun to read how and why he compiled, with the aid of five sometimes assistants, his famous English language dictionary. Impossible not to sympathize with this man, who endured so many mental and sublunary obstacles, and yet who at the end of the day had produced so much. Learning of his bodily peculiarities I, too, have recently begun to exhibit certain convulsive tics and involuntary movements of all sorts, a real hindrance to getting into my usual reading posture, which entails a 40-watt lamp, a leather covered couch, and about two inches of spirituous liqueur, all which are to be enjoyed between the hours of one and four o’clock a.m.
More shortly.

Infinite Jest by David Wallace

2009-10-07T09:44:00.001-07:00

Having lately invested in a paperback edition of David Wallace’s Infinite Jest, a 1,037-page text in small print (a length, I’ve repeatedly been told, is not publishable), I seek suggestions on how to approach the thing. Dave Eggers has said it required him a month to read it, but at my age I expect it will need much longer. My fear, of course, is that it will turn out to be a pretentious production, a display of cuteness designed to prove how informed the author was, how reckless and sophisticated, and how the possession of genius empowered him to ignore the value of being understandable.
My great hope, on the other hand, is that the book is as wonderful as so many critics have claimed, and that this author’s genius is not merely putative, but real. In any event I will be giving the novel my best attention for as long as I find it useful to bear with it, and will report back at intervals.
I should also say that I am dismayed by the lack of attention that has been given to this writer’s suicide, far less notice indeed than what has been given to Paris Hilton’s hairdo. The decay of the West – I’ll be reporting on that, too.

Writing Fiction

2009-10-03T06:17:00.000-07:00

In at least one way, fiction writing differs pronouncedly from non-fiction, as also from other forms of creation. The best surgeons, for example, are generally the best paid, the best basketball players earn far more than mediocre ones, the best architects, best engineers, etc. etc. In non-fiction, too, the better writers are the most likely to succeed. Not so in fiction, where the best are far less likely than the mediocre ones to be published and acknowledged. Fortunate are those who aim at the sweet spot in the Bell Curve - not too hot and not too cold - and who sell in the millions while lingering for a long time at the top of bestseller lists. Numbers are everything, and the number of not-too-smart readers outnumber discriminating ones by a ratio of about a hundred to one. “Cultural democracy,” it might be called, a foolproof way of ensuring that America will never rank culturally in the same place as its political and economic power might lead one to hope.

Health Care Proposal

2009-09-28T14:22:00.000-07:00

Oh, good. We read that the president’s proposed health care bill will require every American subject to buy health insurance, and never mind whether he or she wants it or needs it, or approves of it, or whether he or she is on death row, or expects to expire within 24 hours, or whether she or he owns a hospital, or whether she or he is the sort of character who deserves such care. This proposal would bring advanced medicine to bear upon behalf of pedophiles, serial murderers, liberals, cocaine dealers, terrorists, and other like-minded sociopaths. I, who prefer to choose those whom I help, don’t want these people to get well, and certainly not at my expense. I want them to die.
But if the gov’mint can now require us to buy certain things, why not require us to buy a General Motors car (they need the money), or buy one of Obama’s books, or buy more broccoli, which is said to be so very good for us. How wonderful that Jefferson and Madison and Washington have not lived to see this day and be made to feel that their life’s work had failed.

Chattahoochee Valley Writers' Conference

2009-09-27T14:08:00.000-07:00

One naturally expects the best American fiction to emanate from The South, but it remains an only partially understood truth that the best of the best is very often to be found in the region immediately adjacent to that Chattahoochee River Valley that so arbitrarily subtracts Georgia from Alabama’s realm. Such talent, fortunately, is displayed annually at the Chattahoochee Valley Writers’ Conference convoked each September in the city of Carson McCullers – Columbus, Georgia.
This year’s celebration, held September 24-26, attracted writers and readers and agents from far and near, including keynoter Jill McCorkle who spoke affectingly of the role of memory and family, (surely the two most defining themes in southern writing) in the creation of her own novels and stories. Also present was Stephany Evans representing her New York agency FinePrint Lite rary Management. Always on the lookout for new talent, Stephany has become a regular visitor to this vicinity, famous equally for fine writers and those able to appreciate them.

Chattahoochee Valley Writers' Conference

2009-08-17T12:56:00.000-07:00

Tito Perdue will be The Visiting Author at the 2009 Chattahoochee Valley Writers' Conference in Columbus Georgia. He will present at two sessions on September 26: first at 9:30-10:15 and again at 11:10-11:55 in the Auditorum of the Columbus Public Library.
http://www.chattwriters.org
http://www.writersforum.org/

Tito Perdue on TV!!!

2009-06-29T18:51:00.000-07:00

Mark your calendar. On July 19th at 11am CST, Tito will be interviewed by Don Noble on the renowned Bookmark program on APTV, Channel 10.

WORDMASTER

2009-05-20T12:16:00.000-07:00

Alright, so it’s not as bad as I had thought - suburban realism is not the only sort of writing that our critics and publishers are willing to take seriously. Nor, apparently, is it still necessary to write in a “spare” and “understated” mode, previously the highest flattery an author could wish for. Nor is it required to have a meager vocabulary, or to offer sex scenes every fifteen pages of the kind to make a gynecologist wince. Nor must one have been published in The New Yorker, thank god.
In other words, I’m just now finishing up Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree, the best and most unafraid novel I’ve seen in a very long time. The man writes as he pleases, and doesn’t greatly care whether anyone likes it or not, in my opinion the first pre-requisite of a genuine artist. His tropes are original and often startling, and his dialogue, not to put too fine a point on it, is about as perfect as it gets for the sort of characters he enlists. He must be read slowly and with delectation, and oftentimes it will be advisable for the reader to close his eyes and allow the fumes, as it were, to waft to the aesthetic centers of the mind. And then, too, the man’s vocabulary is larger than Shakespeare’s, comprising vast numbers of six-, seven-, and eight-letter words

soffit
swarf
wapsy
halms
thook
lunule

but almost none that are longer than that. I began to jot down these words as I read and have now accumulated a list of 176 of them that I hope the readers of this blog will, first, look up and, secondly, send the definitions to me.

macled
sleech
sussurous
hob
spall
carinated

He also has a very interesting story to tell.

ARE WE DYING OUT????

2009-05-04T13:10:00.000-07:00

Save in cases of self-sacrifice for a larger cause, suicide is generally frowned upon as a life (no pun intended) choice. How much the worse therefore for an entire culture to knowingly destroy itself, and especially so when that culture happens to be the most creative and affirmative in world history. I ask you to make a list of all the best things that civilization offers – political liberty, classical music, space travel, biotechnology, romantic love, film, medicine, religious tolerance, the writing of history, individualism, etc., etc., and you will quickly admit that at least 85% of these enjoyments have originated in the culture that you presently inhabit. Or would you prefer to live in Saudi Arabia?

I had expected western civilization to chose a quicker and more spectacular mode of suicide than the one that has actually been selected, namely the annual admission of millions of sub-standard folk fleeing the gehennas they have created in the lands they are abandoning. Soon, very soon, we will be witnessing televised animal sacrifice carried out by Rastafarians in our historic venues, the use of English will be outlawed, and our national cuisine will offer naught but tacos and frijole beans. But if you don’t believe me, watch this video.

Alabama Writers Symposium 2009

2009-05-03T08:58:00.000-07:00

We had a great time at this year's Alabama Writers Symposium. It's one of the very best events I've attended. I hope to be able to return in the future. One of my fans (Ashlea Singleton) took this photo of myself with the wife.

Are we being socially engineered?

2009-04-26T21:10:00.000-07:00

By now you will have noticed, dear reader, the enthusiasm with which TV advertisements these days have joined the Afro-promotionist project. Orders have come down from on high, and it is now barely legal to sponsor an advertisement, whether for toothpaste or penile extenders, without including at least 30% very well-dressed and confident-looking Negros in the mix. But if advertisers truly want to play it safe, it is highly advisable also to expose a strong women in a position of high authority, preferably if she can be shown barking out orders to a toadying white male.
A stranger to this land would assume from television that our society is under the absolute control of 30-something impatient-looking females in cahoots with no-nonsense black people with IQs in the 140-170 range. Social engineering via cathode ray tube? Bet your sweet ass it is.

Our Country is SICK!

2009-04-23T12:14:00.000-07:00

"It’s happened again. Sixteen illegals, represented by the Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund, sued rancher Roger Barnett in federal court for $32 million. In 2004, he collared the border jumpers and held them at gunpoint on his Cross Rail Ranch near Douglas, Arizona, until the Border Patrol arrived. One of them was a previously deported dope dealer. Since 1998, he has detained 12,000 for the Border Patrol. Illegals have trashed his property, killed livestock, stolen trucks, and even broken into his home. Because they kept wrecking an 8,000-gallon water tank, he installed a faucet so they could get something to drink.Still, in February, the jury in the case awarded four of the plaintiffs a total of $78,000: $7,500 apiece for two of them because Barnett inflicted “emotional distress,” $1,400 each for two more because of his “assault,” and $60,000 in punitive damages…” (R. Cort Kirkwood)

So this is what it comes to, a once-great nation caught in the act of suicide. Were we still a healthy society, these interlopers, instead of being granted court damages, would be rendered into rather tiny pieces by high-power ordnance the moment they stepped across the line. Healthy society? In fact our country is sick unto death and will not last the night.

The New York Times Circles the Drain!

2009-04-22T05:50:00.000-07:00

The New York Times! Has ever there existed in this hemisphere an institution more trusting of government than this one? Government is good – that’s just the way it is – but beware the people, many of whom have consented voluntarily to live outside the American Northeast.

I once undertook the task of adding up the projected cost of all the multifarious federal projects this newspaper demanded, but left off with it when the total surpassed the capacity of my admittedly inexpensive calculator. We’re talking real money here, most of which was to be directed to the 97% of the population deemed by the Times to be disadvantaged.

I do so hope The New York Times collapses economically, a denouement that balances and more than balances any sort of recession you care to postulate. New York Times! Failure is not just an option for that paper, but a civilizational requirement.

Benefits of Recession???

2009-04-20T13:17:00.000-07:00

I do agree with those people, both of them, who believe the current recession offers renewed hope for the future of our society. Imagine, if you will, that twenty million illegal immigrants will have been inspired to return to the pullulating cesspools they have established in the lands of their origin, all to the benefit of our domestic morality and degree of civilization. More exciting still, imagine that another twenty million LEGAL immigrants might also opt to deliver us from their presence!

While imagining, imagine that the recession might somehow eventuate in a better form of capitalism more approximate to authentic meritocracy. Imagine if cancer researchers earned more than Madonna, opera singers more than basketball players, brave soldiers more than pornographers. And while we are dreaming, imagine that good people were better rewarded in this country than the current crowd of multi-culturalists and other sub humans who mis- and diseducate our people from their positions at The New York Times, television, and Hollywood.

Real poverty, as Stacy McCain rightly notes, is never to be recommended. Impossible to live a thoughtful and productive life if one is locked into a cycle of unremitting drudgery which would entail the end of literature and music, romance and adventure, and everything good. It isn't poverty I wish, but rather the end of the sort of sumptuousness that dissolves self-discipline and grants giant fortunes to the worst people in our country - lowest common denominator capitalism that aims at the middle of the Bell Curve, and enriches pornographers and rap singers and basketball players but is indifferent to scholars and scientists and brave soldiers.