Read Southern "grit lit">Flannery O’Connor>Cormac McCarthy>Harry Crews>Barry Hannah>Larry Brown>Dorothy Allison>Donald Ray Pollock.
>>25425908McCarthy isn't southern, he just wrote about the south.
>>25425912>McCarthy isn't southern, he just wrote about the south.
>>25425919Yeah that's literally what I look like, what are you going to do about it?
>>25425908Jesus Christ I had such a fucking grit lit phase when I was a teenager. Not going to lie, lots of it holds up>O'ConnorCan't imagine a library without her complete stories>McCarthySuttree alone would make him one of the best writers of the century>CrewsNot as good as I remember him being, but his memoir Childhood's still harrowing and A Feast of Snakes is still fun. Hell of a character. Fucked up guy but would've been fun to know>HannahAirships is the best kept secret of postwar US literature and it's always surprising how few people have read it. I own a copy of Long Last Happy, his selected stories>BrownNot as good as I remember him being. That being said I've still got a soft spot for Big Bad Love and Facing the Music. There's a great documentary on Youtube about him -- never forgot the story his wife tells where he left his bedroom one evening holding a thick stack of papers, muttering "this isn't any good," and burned one of his novels in a metal drum in his backyard. It'd taken him a year or two to write in between shifts at the firehouse, iirc >AllisonShit you not I'm from the town she writes about in Bastard out of Carolina. Great fucking book. She never came close to it again, but what a great fucking book>PollockAfraid I never got the appeal
>>25425908>Read Southern "grit lit"What's this, a gritty form of Southern Gothic?A few authors who might qualify:— Frank Bill‘Crimes In Southern Indiana’ is typical SG territory. Incest, wife-beating, dog-fighting, moonshine selling, drugs, etc.— Daniel Woodrell‘Winter’s Bone’ is his famous one because of the film. Pretty gritty. 16-y-o girl is looking after her two young siblings (her mother is retarded). her father (who makes meth) goes missing. She has to find him or she loses her house (he put it up for his bail). She suspects he has been killed for informing but no-one will talk. You get the feeling he's read Cormac but it's not a pale pastiche.— William Gay‘Twilight’ is an early novel I think. Again there's some Cormac in there. Evil undertaker has been desecrating the corpses, burying people in obscene poses, mutilating them etc. A young couple find out and try to blackmail him & he hires a local psycho to hunt them down and kill them.‘I Hate To See That Evening Sun Go Down’ is short stories. Sort of funny, sometimes. e.g. A man wants to annoy someone who moved into his house whilst he was in jail so he moves in next door and buys a dog and trains it to bark really loudly whenever he says "Quiet!"
>>25426029>Airships is the best kept secret of postwar US literature and it's always surprising how few people have read itI'll have to pick up a copy, that's quite the endorsement
>>25425921I'm gonna tickle you
>>25426689It's excellent, absolutely worth it. I can second the William Gay recommendation >>25426394, his best book is That Evening Sun and the best story in it is "The Paperhanger," but they're all amazing
