The Artificial Southerner
Equivocations and Love Songs

Philip Martin

What does it mean to claim a Southern identity in an America gridded by the Internet and spotted with shopping malls and Stepford suburbs?

The Artificial Southerner tracks the manifestations and ramifications of "Southern identity"—the relationship among a self-conscious, invented regionalism, the real distinctiveness of Southern culture, and the influence of the South in America. In these essays columnist Philip Martin explores the region and those who have both fled and embraced it. He offers lyric portraits of Southerners real, imagined, and absentee: musicians (James Brown, the Rolling Stones, Johnny Cash), writers (Richard Ford, Eudora Welty), politicians (Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter). (more …)

"These essays are gems! When I agree with them, I'm delighted to see my views so well expressed. When I disagree (not often), they make me think hard about why. . . . I'm glad to have spent some time [with Phil Martin]."

—John Shelton Reed, University of North Carolina
author of 1001 Things Everyone Should Know about the South

2001, 208 pages
$19.95 paper, 1-55728-716-3

Myth, Media, and the Southern Mind

Stephen A. Smith

". . . an excellent introduction to all sorts of things Southern. . . . Highly recommended for anyone interested in that American enigma: the South."

—Journal of American Culture

1985, 217 pages
$24.95 paper (s)
978-0-938626-41-1 | 0-938626-41-8