The Oxford American Celebrates the Southern Novel

The fantastic southern literary magazine Oxford American just released its 66th issue, this one dedicated to southern lit. As part of the issue, the OA conducted a poll amongst 134 judges to determine the best southern novel of all time. The winner? William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! (Robert Penn Warren’s All The King’s Men was a relatively distant second.) You can read about the survey’s top ten books here.

Now, it is always great to be reminded of the classics you haven’t read or need to reread. However, most of the books in the OA‘s top ten are fairly obvious. (You feel a bit bad for Flannery O’Connor, certainly one of our greatest writers, whose novels don’t quite hold up to her incomparable short stories—though she does manage 9th place with Wise Blood.) More interesting, perhaps, is the full list of vote getters that the OA just released on its website. Here you get everyone from great writers who aren’t sufficiently appreciated like my man Barry Hannah (17 votes between Ray and Geronimo Rex) and Edward P. Jones (The Known World) to writers that you maybe didn’t know were southern like Richard Ford (The  Sportswriter). It is a fascinating list to look through to remind yourself of the southern lit you should be reading instead of whatever yankee foolishness is on your bedside table right now.