On Being Southern: W. J. Cash and The Mind Of The South
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"There exists among us a profound conviction that the South is another land, sharply differentiated from the rest of the American nation, and exhibiting within itself a remarkable homogeneity. As to what its singularity may consist in, there is much conflict of opinion."
Time and the frontier filtered out the hardworking and successful from the less hardworking and less successful, and that despite the differences between the 'ruling class' and the 'common man', it was a difference of degree, and linking of family ties across the region gave kinship of the poorest relations with the occupants of the 'big house' - that in defense of a region and a way of life, it was 'family business' to unite against unwanted influences from outside the region. He also looks at the Scotch-Irish and Celtic mystic 'wild man' and the appeal of rhetoric and politics, and religion in daily life.
The South is different, and to explore the character of the South through Cash's eyes, even 60 years after his book was first published, gives startling insight into the formation of our Southern culture.
