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You ask a Southern Man, and he won’t tell you, but he models himself on Gary Cooper in High Noon, the Marlboro Man in his stoic doom, or the Terminator, silent (or at least inarticulate), slow-moving (except when there’s trouble), and resilient always. The Rugged Individualist.
I sort of see him as Elisha Cook, Jr, the Worried Man.
The gunsel pawn in Maltese Falcon, the unwily bank clerk in One-Eyed Jacks, the nervous cuckold who spoils the game in The Killing, and the blustery sodbuster in Shane, who must compensate for a lack of stature with bravado. None of his stunts work our very well for Worried Man.
The modern version prefers the Grand Ole Opry to Grand Opera and NASCAR to Carnegie Hall, but there is one area which intersects the blue and red circles. Literacy. While Stonewall denigrates the practice of reading back home (Dohbya repeats the eternal mantra of morons: "Ah read paypul, not books!"), he is reluctant to carry his ignorance onto a national stage. The ignoranti become "voracious readers" when confronted by the effete Eastern Establishment. From Bartleby to the eerie maid in Chabral’s La Cérémonie (a Ruth Rendel novel), everyone fears being thought illiterate.
LBJ liked to chortle about his cabinet meetings, in which a circle of Harvard and Yale was completed by San Marcos State, and guess which one was in charge. But here is a report on his reading from The Best and the Brightest:
Hugh Sidey of Life, who had written of Kennedy’s reading habits, decided to do a similar article on Johnson’s. He started with George Reedy, who told him that yes, Johnson was an avid reader. What books? Sidey asked. All Reedy could think of was Barbara Ward’s The Rich Nations and the Poor Nations, a book on how the rich should help the poor which Johnson liked because it was similar to his own ideas. From there Sidey went to see Moyers. Yes, said Moyers, he was an avid reader. What books? Well, there was Barabara Ward’s book The Rich Nations and the Poor Nations. And from there to Valenti, who said Johnson read more books than almost anyone he knew. What books? Valenti hesitated and thought for a moment, then his face lit up. Barbara Ward’s The Rich Nations and the Poor Nations …
And here we have Simple Sarah, who could not in months come up with a single magazine she reads, stumping for herself as a "voracious reader" in a People interview.
How do you get that knowledge?
SP: I’m a voracious reader, always have been. I appreciate a lot of information. I think that comes from growing up in a family of schoolteachers also where reading and seizing educational opportunities was top on my parents’ agenda. That was instilled in me.
What do you like to read?
SP: Autobiographies, historical pieces – really anything and everything. Besides the kids and sports, reading is my favorite thing to do.What are you reading now?
SP: I’m reading, heh-heh, a lot of briefing papers on a lot of issues that are in front of us in this campaign.What about for fun?
SP: Do we consider The Looming Tower something that was just for fun? That’s what I’ve been reading on the airplane. It’s about 9/11. If I’m going to read something, for the most part, it’s something beneficial.
And of course we have his subaltern trying to sell the Crawford Cretin as a reader. "He reads more books than I do."
Someone who dines three times a day at McDonald’s will show the effect of the habit, as will anyone who spends long hours in a gym. There will be also some result from reading, which is why these Stonewalls are so sensitive about it. But whatever can be the point of self-proclaimed literacy, when those who actually practice the habit will know you’re lying and those who don’t will not care?
4 Comments
Lyndon was an alum of Southwest Texas State Teachers’ College, which had morphed to Southwest Texas State when I attended, and is now known as Texas State University. I hope you do not mean that we of the South are the “ignoranti” (charming term) simply because you dislike some/most/all of us. I think many people would encounter a degree of difficulty when asked to recite a list of books someone else had been reading. But then again, I am but a Southern rube, a member of the “Ignoranti”, for I haven’t read any of Ruth Rendell’s novels, preferring nonfiction.
I suggest you make broad generalizations based exclusively on geography. Certainly you based your conclusions on something other than your own personal prejudices, what data led to such inflammatory conclusions? I would be very interested to learn how men in this Country’s other geographical regions perceive themselves. Alternatively, did your research determine that only in the South are there such cartoonish bufoons deserving of this broad brush derision? Inquiring illiterate minds want to know!
My field study included reading books, magazines, going to movies, listening to Jazz, and spending the first twenty nine years of my life on that lonesome flatland prairie, smalltown Texas. Also, I have communicated with other citizens of my home town, including high school classmates, this millenium. I have also noted a great distinction between those who gladly accept the cracker caricature and those who avidly resent it. The former are the best drinking companions; the latter I mostly see at funerals.
Environment is a predictor of who we are, to a startling degree. That’s from last week’s New Scientist. It is all so dreamy to believe there is absolutely no difference between the citizens of Bonham, TX, and those of Felton, CA, but to remain so requires either a rigid adherence to a bubblewrap mentality or else residence in neither.
Thanks for writing.
Timus
High School Graduate!
Oops, sorry, one more point. I’ve cross-posted this little number to KOS, and here’s the comment thread, in which another citizen of our state thrashing out with me the nomenclature of that little San Marcos school. You might find it interesting. Hope to see your own comments there or here.
I see, since I took umbrage at a paragraph of insults means I am unworthy of being your drinking buddy? That’s fair enough. If you are attempting to be comical, you need to warn us that this is snark. Otherwise, I am compelled to believe that the lines you threw out here were not in jest, but were simply mean spirited. Not everybody here is a Rexall Ranger, riding on the lonesome prairie. As to environment influencing one’s development, I would have never thought of that. A few years in the service made that rather clear.
Nonetheless, you make huge generalizations, labeling all 23,507,783 of us based on assumptions gleaned from:
I am sorry you grew up in Lubbock, I’d hate everybody if I came from there, too!
However, some of us live in Austin, which is a far cry from “that lonesome flatland prairie, small town Texas”. I tend to be displeased by attempts to define me, especially by painting me with a “gladly accept the cracker caricature”. I have a large circle of friends who would not fit your description, either. I admit I know some who would, but they are a minority, they were much more prevalent in the old days-the early sixties, but have mostly died off now, except in the remote small towns which are either dying or succumbing to development.