Comments on: The Reluctant Southerner: Reflections on Home and History

By: John Willson

John Willson — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 01:41:13 +0000

Ted,
This is a haunting, brilliant essay. I cannot grasp much of Conkin’s “double dilemma,” but I’ll leave his tragedy to him and try to do the best I can with my own life. I would offer this: One cannot be a mixture of cosmopolitan and provincial without shedding constant tears; and one cannot be truly cosmopolitan and be happy–at least I have never known one who is. If Berry’s curse is the sin of sentimentality (and I would argue that it is not) then perhaps Conkin’s curse is not so much his history but the sin of analysis. You really struck a chord in me with your description of him as “dangerously” honest. Another way to describe this is “imprudent,” or even “cruel.” At least, maybe lacking pietas.
My wife and I used to sit outside the inner circle of her mother’s generation at family reunions hearing them tell each other stories of the farm. All of them had left, and were more prosperous, worked less, and were not as happy. But they weren’t sentimental, either. They had to get on with their lives.
As usual, you have given me much to chew on.

By: The Cosmopolitan Provincial, or Why You Can’t Go Home Again « Olde Frothingblog

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 17:47:30 +0000

[...] 4, 2009 · Leave a Comment Essays like this one on historian Paul Conkin and his ruminations on “home” are why I read Front Porch [...]

By: David

David — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 23:04:37 +0000

This part sticks in my mind: “Clearly he is frustrated by Berry’s idealization and therefore inaccurate presentation of a way of life. There is a sin in this—it is not the problem of the ignorant who speak of that which they know not. It is the problem of the well-informed who purposely misrepresent facts as part of a cultural crusade.”

I need to spend some time thinking about this more seriously. I feel like this is at the heart of the difference between being “conservative” and being “sentimental”. Particularly now when I often feel like I’m putting old bananas in the fridge, culturally speaking. What real profit is this, trying to drag out the decay of what’s past? Yet, I am committed to drawing out and preserving as I can. If this is all the tool I have then I have to accept that.

I have changed Christian traditions from Protestant to Orthodox. This was a very “progressive” thing for me to do (that I might abandon my mother for another). But I had to chose, the counter top or the fridge. Choosing meant some sort of violence to my past, but not choosing was a refusal to address my circumstance as I lived it.

When I learned of Barry’s work I was enthused. But then my falsely found excitment vanished out of the same fustration Conkin must have.

I get that same feeling on FRP or when I talk to others trying to work out their cultural salvation with a bit of fear and trembling. That Barry’s (or other’s) ideal of conservation is just another sentimental fantasy.

Thanks Ted for a great essay.

By: Should I take allergy shots for 4 years? | Eye Care Glasses

Should I take allergy shots for 4 years? | Eye Care Glasses — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 13:30:07 +0000

[...] Front Porch Republic » Blog Archive » The Reluctant American … [...]

By: Bob Cheeks

Bob Cheeks — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 15:51:36 +0000

Ted, much enjoyed this piece.
I think in the yearning and questing for ‘home’ we are, as finite, created beings, imputing a ground to an object of experience. And, if our life is experienced as a tension between the immanent and transcendent then we can say that ‘everything’ comes to us out of this recognized and experienced transcendent ground; e.g. in spiritual symbolization the Creator-God, and in the philosophical sense, the concept of ‘Nous.’ In this sense a recapturing of at least elements of the experience of ‘home’ is not only possible but a mode of existence. Living outside this tensional existence negates the possibility of ‘going home’ and defines us as creatures living in an existence of self-alienation (allotriosis) an estrangement from the reality of human existence.
Wendell catches this in some literary way in his novels of the Port William membership, though I wish he would explore this phenomenon in a greater, anamnetic depth.

By: Ted V. McAllister

Ted V. McAllister — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 14:44:00 +0000

Arthur, you’ve captured very well a dilemma–or double dilemma–that I find particularly fascinating in Conkin’s work. We can become strange to the old folk of our town and yet remain an outsider in the new worlds we enter. I wonder, also, how this changes as we age and as memory becomes more important to us–as we live more in the past that is not recoverable.

By: Arthur MacInness

Arthur MacInness — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 14:33:08 +0000

Thanks, Ted, for making me aware of Conklin’s work, which sounds as if it might be of interest to me. What I find particularly interesting is what seems to be Conklin’s sense of the double-dilemma of the Cosmopolitan Provincial who is also the Provincial Cosmopolitan — in other words, the double-dilemma of the person who is too “Cosmopolitan” to be at home in the “Provinces,” but also too “Provincial” to be at home in the “Cosmopolis.” This double-dilemma is one faced by many a Southerner, and many a small-town kid, Southern or not. Something about what Wendell Berry calls the strip-mining or the clear-cutting of the “Provinces” by the “Cosmopolis” makes the “Provinces” ever less open to the outside world, which it has some legitimate reasons to feel threatened by, and which makes the “Cosmopolis” likewise ever less open to “Provincials” on any but very restrictive and parochial terms, on terms that require repudiation of any “Provincial” allegiance, be it it to any particular places, sets of persons, or fixed sets of moral beliefs. What Conklin calls “reluctance” is the rather bitter fruit of all this — reluctant “Provinciality,” reluctant “Cosmopolitanism,” for anyone wise or foolish enough to think twice.

By: Mark Shiffman

Mark Shiffman — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 13:54:22 +0000

Ted,

Thanks for this piece. As always, your own thoughtful honesty is bracing and challenging. And as a displaced East Tennessean, I’m glad to learn about Conkin’s work. Maybe someday it will help me come to terms with my own relationship to that marvelous stretch of country.