
          A Turn for the Worse.  A Turn in the South by
V.S. Naipaul. (Alfred A. Knopf, 1989. 307 pages. $18.95.).
Library Service in Black & White; Some Personal Recollections,
1921-1980 by Annie L. McPheeters. (The Scarecrow Press
Metuchen, N.J., 1988. xvi. 152 pages. $22.50.)
          By Dunbar, LeslieLeslie Dunbar
          Vol. 11, No. 3, 1989, pp. 13-14
          
          A Turn in the South is, the author says, a travel
book-- "travel on a theme"--, which is, I suppose, his way of saying
that it is an interpretation of the present-day South gained from
visiting some of its parts. What he finds is a South "of order and
faith, and music and melancholy"; or, as he writes in a full-blown
passage, which testifies to a sort of epiphany: "Music and
community, and tears and faith; I felt that I had been taken, through
country_music, to an understanding of a whole distinctive culture,
something I had never imagined existing in the United_States."
          In the wondrous process by which our cultural clergy,  the New_York City and New England cloisters, certify
works of art and literature as agreeable and acceptable to it, this
book has been granted "importance." It has none in itself. It has a
lot, in the evidence it pressed on us regarding the standards of our
cultural tastemakers. The New_Yorker magazine ran three
lengthy portions; once upon a time, the New_Yorker had
Calvin Trillin roving now and then the South, as good a stylist, to
say the least, as Naipaul and one who, besides, knew what to look for
and what and whom to believe.
          But it was the New_York Review of Books which sealed
the book's "meaning," by choosing the pages which describe "rednecks"
for its December 22, 1988 issue. The review which the NYRB
subsequently gave the whole book was captioned "The Reddening of
America"; the reviewer called the "redneck" piece "a miniature
masterpiece." Naipaul praised it himself, calling it "full and
beautiful and lyrical." "Rednecks" in this treatment are practically
synonymous with all low-income Southern whites--and with the yearnings
of many who are better off as well; they are depicted as something
above junkyard dogs, but not far above. No other discrete minority (as
in Naipaul's understanding they are one) would be so dishonored and
lampooned in the pages of the NYRB, nor, for that matter, in a book
published by Alfred A. Knopf. It is always interesting to observe what
racism and overt prejudice are admissible in polite society. These
days, the white Southern working class is fair game.
          And country_music, most particularly including Elvis Presley, is
capstone and key to the South's "distinctive culture."
          The "redneck" story is told, of course, by an interviewee, but
throughout the book Naipaul carefully lets his readers know which
persons interviewed he likes and which he doesn't. The few I can
recall whom he likes but little are black. Sometimes he is frank
enough, as with Atlanta's Marvin Arrington, to let his disapproval
show dearly, and as arising from temperamental differences. And a few
blacks he did like; Atlanta's Hosea Williams was one. But there are
far fewer blacks than whites in this interpretation of today's South,
and the whites are predominantly from that stratum known as
"moderates."
          Mississippi is an outstanding example. By my count, he reports on
an outdoor prayer meeting of blacks, as well as fourteen individual
interviews, exactly two of which are with blacks, and one of those not
consummated. Even more amazing was his selection of those two, both
rather nondescript men, in a state as rich as is Mississippi in strong
black leadership, both women and men.
          Naipaul can insist upon the exclusivity of his theme, but 

this
book, with all its hype, will be taken as a study of the contemporary
South. It is a distorted one. A few of his interviews are insightful:
I think particularly of those with Robert Waymer of the Atlanta School
Board and Judges Alex Sanders and R.P. Sugg of South_Carolina and
Mississippi, respectively. Some of his own apperceptions are on
target, though by now fairly commonplace; such are his statements that
blacks have had by various stratagems to cope with the "irrationality"
of the South, or that blacks have won political positions that do not
insure actual social power, or that the old South was violent and
lawless. The interpretations of the South which dominate this book
come, however, from tradition-hallowing or politically conservative
whites; nor does he ever challenge or balance a single one of their
several disparaging remarks about blacks.
          If Naipaul has read any of the classic white interpreters of the
white South--Cash, Lillian_Smith, Myrdal, Dabbs, Woodward, Leroy
Percy, others--, there is no evidence of it. He has read Up
From Slavery several times and admires it, as he does Booker
T. Washington  author. He has nothing good to say
of W.E.B. DuBois, nor of his The Souls of Black Folks,
which has "too pretty ways with words," a strange criticism from this
particular writer. Some of Naipaul's prose is wild, his description of
kudzu, for one example: a long incomplete sentence, broken by a
parenthetical clause set off by dashes, and a like one inside that,
topped off with a complete sentence within parentheses, being as
entangling as the vine itself.
          There are mistakes of fact scattered throughout the book; most are
small and come in the interviews. Neither an informed writer or editor
would, however, have indulged them. The publisher has done, on the
other hand, an exceptionally handsome job of bookmaking and
printing.
          "TELL ABOUT THE SOUTH. What's it like there." Is anyone
really interested anymore? If so, Naipaul is not a guide to follow,
not if one cares to find the reality of it. Better to read, among
other things, Annie L. McPheeters, Library Service in Black &
White; some personal recollections, 1921-1980. No fancy
foot-work here. Only clear, syntactical sentences (and clear
photographs), that  truths about the
South. Mrs. McPheeters served the Atlanta Public Libraries for over
thirty years, half of them as head librarian of the West Hunter
Branch, the principal facility for blacks; after retiring in 1966, she
became the first black faculty member of Georgia State University.
          At one place in the book, she sets down a chronology of library
services for black Atlantans between 1902 and 1959. The first item
records that W.E.B. DuBois and a committee of black citizens
petitioned the Carnegie Trustees for a library. It was denied, though
in 1903 some funds were provided to Atlanta University, for citizen
use. The last item, May 24, 1959, records that Mayor Hartsfield
announced the desegregation of the public library system, and that
Whitney Young, for the Atlanta Council on Human Relation, "reported
that the Council was pleased that race was no longer a barrier to use
of the library." What a march of events, of struggle and striving,
lay between those two dates! Mrs. McPheeters chronicles it, and in her
doing so we learn of the white and black_people who confronted each
other, and revealed some truths about themselves to each other, and to
us.
          This is an honest book. The final chapters are autobiographical,
and enrich the earlier pages; the chapter on "early life and
education" is a bright gem: indeed, Mr. Naipaul, "lyrical."
          
            Leslie Dunbar is the new book editor of Southern
Changes. His earlier affiliation with the Southern Regional
Council began in 1958. He was Director of Research during 1959 and
1960, and Executive Director 1961-1965. He lives now in Durham, North
Carolina.
          
        
