Southern where?

I picked up the latest Oxford American , a magazine that often interests me - especially the free CD issues.

This month's issue held particular interest as it had an article on one my new obsessions, Barry Hannah. I have a hard time explaining what I love about his work, and I really have just started, but he has crazy sentences that jump off the page and grab your throat. The article in the Oxford talks about his syntax, and how he bends, folds and mutilates it - I am sure ninth grade grammar teachers would burst into tears reading his work. "But, you... just... can't do that. Can you? sob, sob, wail, etc."

This issue also lists the top 10 best Southern Novels of all time - lists like this always generate controversy, but I like reading them, both to uncover gems that I've missed over the years, or to remind myself of books I need to get around to reading (Wise Blood).

Between Faulkner, O'Conner and Lee, I realized there was a lot of "Southern Fiction" I liked. It's a bit of a strange, anachronistic term - they slap it onto Hannah's work as well. I am discovering that rather than geographic, it is a sub-genre, lens, vibe, a way of looking at the world. Now, I grew up in SOUTHERN Saskatchewan and I've been to the Virginia's, I love music from the Delta, and Joe R. Lansdale is one of my favorite writers (East Texas).

So maybe I am a southern writer after all.

Y'all come back to the blog you hear.