1,001 Novels A Library of America Collected: Mississippi

 1,001 Novels A Library of America 

Collected:

 Mississippi

   I am genuinely passionate about consolidating this blog into 200 posts, with 10 chapters of 20 posts each, with some chapters being chronological and others being thematic, combining autofiction and criticism.   I'd imagine that this project would be one of the ten chapters.  The 1,001 Novels to Read Before You Die would be one of the ten chapters.  Writing about World History would be a chapter. Aesthetics would be a chapter.   And then 2008- 2010 would be a chapter, 2011-2013 would be a chapter, 2013-2019, 2020-2023, 2024-2030. That's eight chapters right there. 

  Mississippi is a dark spot on the map of American literature. Faulkner and Welty are both more-or-less canonical authors in the canon of 20th century American Literature.  Beyond that you've got contemporary writers like Jesmyn Ward and Robert Jones Jr.- prize winner types writing about African American experiences.  Honestly, I got more from the non-fiction I was reading about this same area- specifically the cotton plantation economy and its relationship to slavery and capitalism.  That was eye opening. 

Published 9/17/25

Light in August (1932)

by William Faulkner

Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi

Mississippi: 1/18

  Faulkner might be considered the apotheosis (a word he uses at least three times in Light in August) of high modernism in America, in that he won the Nobel Prize in Literature.  Faulkner won in 1949, Hemingway in 1954, Steinbeck in 1962.  Only Faulkner is comprable to the high modernism/experimentalist prose of the early 20th century, both Hemingway and Steinbeck are the opposite of the flowery, ornate prose and complicated plot structures of Faulkner.   Faulkner has also maintained a legacy through the writers he influenced- Cormac McCarthy, to name one. At the same time, it's hard not to think Faulkner's time has past- a dead white male, an alcoholic and a frequent user of the n word, there are plenty of textual and non-textual reasons that a contemporary student of literature could through an MFA program without reading more than a short story here or there.

   At the same time- and I'm saying this as someone who is 250 books into the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America, there is no denying the Faulkner simply is one of the top five American novelists of the 20th century.  It is simply undeniable, even if you don't like modernist prose, the south or writers who use the n word. If you think about it in terms of the south as a literary place, consider that Margaret Mitchell published Gone With the Wind, one of the great prose narratives of the South, in 1936.  The movie came out in 1939. Faulkner wins the Nobel a decade later. 

  I listened to the Audiobook because I've read plenty of Faulkner novels, and I've always felt like they would be good Audiobooks.  This version was only recorded 10 years ago.  I think it a fair observation that the American literary establishment itself didn't appreciate the brilliance of Faulkner at the time he was writing- I went and looked at the New York Times and saw a plea from Malcolm Lowery- published in the 40's, that said Faulkner was out of print. 

Published 12/2/25

Yonder Stands Your Orphan (2001)

by Barry Hannah

Clinton, Mississippi

Mississippi: 2/18

  Both Mississippi and Alabama scored eighteen titles in the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project.  That ties them for last place in this specific chapter, behind Florida, Louisiana and Georgia.  18 titles does put them both above the single digit states of the mid-Atlantic.  I've also moved away from the original 13 colonies of the Atlantic seaboard and into the first of the hinterlands that were settled (excepting those that lay within the original 13 colonies).  Here, the dynamic was first, the clearing out/removal of the Native tribes- most of whom were property holding and "civilized" within the usage of that term at the time.  Second, it was the cotton revolution which opened up huge swaths of Alabama and especially Mississippi for enormous, slave driven cotton plantations.   The need for slaves, exhaustion of the soil in the upper south from Tobacco farming and the ban on the importation of slaves from abroad drove a huge, forced population movement, as the slave holders of the Virginias and Carolinas sold their slaves "down the river" to work on the plantations of the newer south.

   Not that Yonder Stands Your Orphan, by moderately well-known southern author Barry Hannah, addresses any of that.   Instead, Orphan is a loosely assembled collection of eccentric and violent characters living around a lake.  It's not a great book- it was the author's last novel- but it, at least, interesting, and neither a work of chick-lit or a YA title.  I will say I've never read a book where so many people were sliced open by knives.

Published 1/9/26

Where the Line Bleeds (2008)

by Jesmyn Ward

DeLisle, Mississippi

Mississippi: 3/18

   Two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward would have to be at the very top of any serious list of American authors of literary fiction in the 21st century.  Her presence amidst the detritus of YA and chick-lit titles stands out like a beacon from a proverbial light house of literary fiction.  I checked out the Audiobook because I was wondering if I could seriously tell the difference between an Author with such widely regarded literary merit and the run of the mill titles, I've been suffering through for the past couple years.  Where the Line Bleeds was her first novel, and then she dropped Salvage the Bones four years later- that book won the National Book Award.  She won again in 2017 with Sing, Unburied, Sing, which I read during a period where I was reading all the National Book Award finalists.  It's a good book, obviously, but it didn't spur me to go back and read her other titles.

   I could tell the difference between Ward's prose and the run of the mill stuff on a couple of levels.  First, she was able to turn an otherwise prosaic landscape (the unheralded Mississippi coastline) with real grandeur.  She did this in a couple different ways.  First, she was a close observer of the physical landscape- her descriptions of crack houses and swamp parties sparkle with life.  Second, her ability to depict all five senses marks her out from the pack.   Great writers of literary fiction imbue the reader with a feeling that there is depth beneath the surface of the human activity being depicted, but they also provide a many-splendored surface, pairing stylistic flourishes with economy.   She does all these things in Where the Line Bleeds, which is sure to be my top title from Mississippi and a likely top five for the entire chapter.

Published 1/12/26

The Gone Dead (2019)

by Chanelle Benz

Money Road, Greenwood Mississippi 

Mississippi: 4/18

  It isn't often that the titles on the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America raise questions about the role of authenticity in fiction, but such was the case for The Gone Dead, by British American author Chanelle Benz. The plot concerns the interracial daughter of a dead-before-his-time African American poet (her father) and what can only be described as her severely misguided attempt to "get to the bottom" of the "mysterious" circumstances surrounding the death of her father.

  Clearly, the protagonist has not read the same books I have about this part of the country because it is just about 100 percent clear that any "mysterious" death of an African American man in the deep South is caused by white racists who are then protected by the local law enforcement and political establishment. I could have told this lady that in a five-minute conversation over a cup of coffee. Fair to say that I didn't linger on The Gone Dead, because reader I knew where this was headed. It was either the cops, friends of the cops or the cops when they were off duty that killed your daddy and you don't need 283 pages to tell the story.

Published 1/19/26

Mudbound (2008)

by Hilary Jordan

Mississippi Delta, Mississippi

Mississippi: 5/18

  Mudbound is a classic Susan Straight 1,001 Novels: A Library of America pick, a book that won some award that Barbara Kingsolver made up for unpublished books- it then got published and sold a bunch of copies.  The version I checked out from the library was the Ebook version of the Netflix cover version of the book from the Netflix version I'd didn't know about.  It's about a well-off but "spinster adjacent" white woman from the upper south who marries a youngish widower- she meets him because he is an engineer travelling around for Government projects during the Great Depression (I think).  Little does she know that it is his lifelong dream to go back home (the Mississippi Delta) and become a farmer.  It's "little does she know" because he does not bother to tell her during their courtship. 

 Nevertheless, Laura McAllan (her married name) is cognizant of her incipient spinsterhood and loves the old lug besides, so she agrees to the thing.  The title of the book is her somewhat whimsical name for the farm that Henry (the husband) takes over.   Henry has a damaged (by service in World War I) younger brother who is a manic pixie dream boy circa the 1940's.  The farm has several sharecropping families, some white and some black, and Jamie (the younger brother) befriends the oldest son of one of the black families, Ronsel, also a veteran, and a tank operator to boot (Jamie being a pilot). 

  If you've been reading this blog, you know how this is going to end up, not well for the African American World War II veteran.  And reader, it does not. 

Published 3/23/26

The Past is Never (2018)

by Tiffany Quay Tyson

Forest, Mississippi

Mississippi: 6/18

   I know when the book jacket copy references Flannery O'Connor and "Southern Gothic" that the book in question will be interesting.  The Past is Never is set in the Delta, but the story stretches to the Florida everglades, making this title a bit of a 1,001 Novels: A Library of America Mississippi/Florida cross-over. Like many of the books from this part of the United States, The Past is Never features three young siblings who are being raised in benevolent neglect in a rural part of the country.  Here, the relevant landscape feature is a forbidden abandoned quarry where the children like to swim during the hot summer.  This being a novel, tragedy strikes when the two older siblings who are the protagonists, misplace their younger sister.  Somewhat suspiciously, their money counterfeiting father disappears around the same time.

   The first half of the book features the brother/sister duo struggling with the repercussions of their sister's abrupt and final disappearance, and then the second half has them off the Florida everglades in search of their father, who "dies" under extremely suspicious circumstances in a Florida motel room after a decade of non-contact.  Everything is fecund and you can practically hear the mosquitos buzzing throughout.  Personally, I didn't find much that was Faulknerian other than the locale, let alone any themes or stylistic writing motifs that reminded me of Flannery O'Connor- it just seems like those are the two reference points for any white southern author with any literary ambition. 

Published 3/24/26

Can't Quit You, Baby (1988)

by Ellen Douglas

Jackson, Mississippi

Mississippi: 7/18

  Ellen Douglas was a writer of southern domestic fiction (and the pen name for Josephine Haxton).  According to her 2012 New York Time obituary, her wheelhouse was domestic fiction with post-modern influences (she cited Milan Kundera as a primary influence).  In books like Can't Quit You, Baby, much of the action took place inside the home, with the characters telling each other tales from their past.   In this book, domestic servant Tweet and lady-of-the-house Cornelia, spend the entire time prepping a meal in the kitchen.  Within this framework, they both reminisce, with much of the spoke banter between the two revolving around the fact that Cornelia is both literally and figuratively deaf to Tweet's experience. 

  As the book goes on, the reader learns that Cornelia, too, has had her struggles, including escaping her mother's home to marry her Irish American beau during World War II and a son who marries a somewhat questionable mother-of-two against her wishes.  Tweet's struggles are center stage, particularly her experience with her dying guardian-Grandfather and her dissolute father, who returns only to steal her inheritance. 

Published 3/26/26

Waveland (2009)

by Frederick Barthelme

Waveland, Mississippi

Mississippi: 8/18

  Frederick Barthelme is the younger brother of noted American postmodernist author Donald Barthelme- who showed up in the 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die list a couple times- enough for me to get the drift that he is a difficult writer to actually enjoy, and to be confused by his prose, which is kinda the point with his brand of postmodernism.  Frederick is a different kind of author, call him a minimalist or maybe a pointillist, in that he specializes in the minutiae of everyday life, often written from the perspective who are going through it.

   His protagonist here is a semi-retired, semi-divorced architect doing a whole lot of nothing in coastal Louisiana. Waveland's characters stood out to me because the protagonist, at least, seemed more like a familiar "coastal elite" of literary fiction than a southerner, let alone a Cajun. His ex-wife and the other characters are more southern specific.  Barthelme does a good job evoking the landscape, a combination of the acuity of his protagonist, the fact that he has plenty of time to sit around and look at stuff and the distinctiveness of the landscape itself.  For example, you know when there is a house on stilts that plays into the plot, you know you can only be in a certain region of the country.

 Unlike most of the books from this part of the country there are no horrific, traumatizing incidents involving race, gender, sexuality or some combination of the three.  Low stakes fiction, but a pleasure to read. Maybe I identified a bit too closely with his protagonist. 

Published 3/31/26

Biloxi (2019)

by Mary Miller

Willow Avenue and Volunteer Park, Biloxi, Mississippi

Mississippi: 9/18

   Louis MacDonald is a recently divorced 63-year-old man, someone who has retired early from an unspecified job/career in anticipation of a substantial inheritance from his deceased father.  As the book opens, MacDonald is at what you would call "loose ends": He adopts a dog under mysterious circumstances from a quasi-neighbor and spends time drinking full sugar Coca-Cola and ignoring warnings from his doctor about his incipient diabetes.  MacDonald is one of those adult American men who doesn't know how to care for himself- he is seemingly unable to cook for himself and mostly relies for sustenance on leftovers his sad-dad apartment compels neighbor brings home from his job cooking at a chain restaurant (are there any other kinds, here in Biloxi, Mississippi.) 

   I've hit a mini streak of his pathetic protagonists inside the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America. The southeastern Louisiana coast doesn't have a monopoly on the character type, but there is no denying the affinity between the bleak landscape and the bleak lives.  You could put this novel and Frederick Barthelme's Waveland back-to-back and maybe not notice the switch from one book to the next.   The third 1,001 Novels selection from this stretch of coastline is the similarly bleak Where the Line Bleeds by Jesmyn Ward, which at least had the benefit of solidly depicting the landscape in a way that the protagonists in Biloxi and Waveland seem incapable of doing.  

  

Published 4/3/26

Pariah and Other Stories (1983)

by Joan Williams

Arkabutla, Mississippi

Mississippi: 10/18

   I read this slim volume of short stories sitting in court in a single afternoon, waiting for my matter to be called.   Pariah is geographically distinct because it is the northwestern location within the entire chapter spanning Florida to Louisiana.  Louisiana is further west but the northern border of Louisiana is miles south of the northern border that runs through Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi.  Thus, Arkabutla is closer to Memphis than any large population center in Mississippi. 

  Williams is best known as a protege of William Faulkner- her bare bones Wikipedia page is almost comical in its lack of biographical detail- surely Joan Williams is a candidate for a literary revival?  Perhaps though it's the perspective- like Flannery O'Connor her characters are losers and weirdos- the collection of short stories beginning with three interconnected stories about a mentally challenged person.  There is frequent and unkind use of the n-word- many of these characters can be described as poorer whites who fear and resent the incipient Civil Rights movement, a frequent subject of discussion among the characters.  

 I can see how folks might shy away from reviving stories like these, but I found the obtuseness refreshing, as well as the literary ambition.

Published 4/16/26

The Oxygen Man (1999)

by Steven Yarbrough

Indianola, Mississippi

Mississippi: 11/18

   Indianola is in northwest Mississippi, what I imagine to be "catfish country," where cotton farmers converted their plantations to aquaculture in an attempt to adapt to changing times.  Within the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America, The Oxygen Man is interesting because it is a debut novel on a small press- besides academic imprints there are very few non-major press books in the 1,001 Novels project, which seems like a lost opportunity.  Yarbrough writes in modernist style with the narrative skipping between time periods, for the benefit of the audience the years are added in between segments.  The main protagonists are a brother-sister duo of what can only be described as a white-trash family- Dad is an itinerant commercial painter, Mom is the town whore.   As a pair they have penchant for big fights followed by lusty make-up sex, and they are not afraid to do either in public, to the chagrin of their minor children.

  Unsurprisingly, this behavior impacts the children's lives and attitudes, with the fulcrum of the story hinging on a semi-public sexual encounter between the sister, witnessed by the brother and his friend.

Published 4/17/26

The Prophets (2021)

 by Robert Jones Jr

1833 Haining Road, Vicksburg Mississippi

Mississippi: 12/18

Author Robert Jones Jr.

Published 2/22/21

The Prophets (2021)

by Robert Jones Jr.

  An early front runner for the National Book Award longlist, The Prophets is the debut novel by American author Robert Jones Jr., about a forbidden love affair between two slaves on a Mississippi plantation in the early 19th century.   And although the hook should be enough to pique the interest of most fans of American literary fiction, this book is by no means "just" a LGBT love story set in the antebellum south.  Jones ably blends different voices- the white children of the plantation owner, women slaves on the same plantation as well as voices from Africa- which expand the standard parameters of the American slave narrative across the ocean in time and space.

  Like Marlon James, Jones Jrs' take on the African American LGBT experience is physical and intense.  His two protagonists, Isaiah and Samuel, are nuanced figures, even as their actions become increasingly direct.  Jones deserves plaudits for his frank and direct depiction of the trauma inflicted on the enslaved by their so-called masters, reserving special spite for the "progressive" white children of the planation over class. 

   Although I shouldn't have to say this in 2021, The Prophets is not "just" for people interested in LGBT issues in literary fiction.  It is a broadly appealing work, and it packs a narrative punch that will make you glad you picked it up.

Published 4/21/26

The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty (1980)
Jackson. Mississippi

Mississippi: 13/18

  Looking at a Google Ngram that compares the popularity of Faulkner, O'Connor and Welty, Welty comes in third place.  All three authors have experienced precipitous declines in frequency since the turn of the millennium, with only O'Connor showing some resilience.   Having read the three authors, the simplest explanation is that at some point it became untenable to teach students with materials that use the "n-word," in any way, shape or form.  Welty's short stories are chock full of it, although since her stories cover such a wide swath of time, it is possible to observe some characters holding back from the term as time progresses into the Civil Rights era.  My understanding is that saying the n word in any context in a classroom is enough to get a teacher fired.

  I think Welty also suffers because she never got comfortable with the novel as a format- even her Pulitzer Prize winning "novel" The Optimist's Daughter, clocked in at 208 pages.  Short stories do well in literature courses but aren't as great for the buying public or critics. As I've brought up many times, trying to write a review of a book of short stories is straight up not a good time because you are either summarizing a bunch of plots, or trying to draw connections with little or no insight into the authorial mindset. 

 This was my first time reading her work- my major observation is that she sure did seem like a practitioner of "Southern Gothic" but did not like the term.   Perhaps the development of the entire literary genre was a reflection of the tastes of the audience for literary magazines based in the north- the New Yorker, for example.  It's not hard to imagine that editors at the New Yorkers thought that their audiences were interested in the freakishness of the south, and that they picked stories that reflected that, and that writers like Welty got the message.   Conversely, it is hard to imagine whatever literary culture that existed in the south being happy with the freaks in Faulkner, O'Connor and Welty.   Perhaps though it was preferable to literature which frankly addressed racial practices in the south in the mid 20th century.

Published 4/27/26

Joe (1991)

by Larry Brown

Oxford, Mississippi

Mississippi: 14/19

   I chuckled when I read the jacket copy, which compares author Larry Brown to Faulkner, Welty and O'Connor in the same sentence.  What you mean he writes like three of the five non-African-American authors that matter in the deep south?  If you look up the author online you will soon see that he is associated with a genre called "grit-lit."  The Good Reads page is a mess and lists titles from Faulkner to O'Connor and everything in between.  To me, it sounds like an attempt to rebrand Southern Gothic for the "modern" (aka 1990s) period.   The prevalence of freaks, and freak like behavior in literature from the deep south is unique within American literature, sure every state and region has its dysfunctional families, but the patriarch of the dysfunctional family in this book really takes the cake.  Calling him a knock-down, drag-out alcoholic doesn't begin to do his depravity justice.

Published 4/30/26

The Heaven of Mercury (2002)

by Brad Watson

Mercury, Mississippi

Mississippi: 15/19

     Living in California, it is easy to lose track of the relative size of places like it and New York to places like Alabama and Mississippi.  For example, the largest city in Mississippi is Jackson and it has a population of 146k.  In California, Jackson would be the 40th largest city, between Visalia and Victorville.  The total population of Mississippi, just about 3 million, is smaller than the CITY of Los Angeles, let alone the county or metropolitan statistical area.   Of course, the founding fathers foresaw this, which is why we are saddled with a political system which allows areas like the deep south and rural Midwest to put their candidates into the Presidency at the expense of places like California and New York.

     For places like Mississippi, it's not a question of the city/town/rural distinction of more populated areas, rather it is a question of small towns and rural areas.  Even the books putatively mapped onto urban areas in Mississippi take place in rural settings.   The Heaven of Mercury is a pure example of the small-town novel, nominated for the National Book Award for fiction back in 2002 about a local newspaper editor and his lifetime of unrequited love for a childhood almost-sweetheart.

    I've observed before that the use of a map to plot the titles in the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America presupposes certain kind of plots and narrators.  None of the book in the Mississippi chapter split their temporality between Mississippi and some other place.  Characters who leave Mississippi leave the novel.  This means you have a choice between people coming back from some other place and people who never leave.   Within that category Mississippi is almost unique in that NONE of the novels are about people coming back from some other place and ALL of the books are about people who never leave. 

  At least, with our newspaper editor character in The Heaven of Mercury we have a literate protagonist. 

Finus, the protagonist, is, I think, the most sophisticated of any of the protagonists in the Mississippi titles.

Published 5/5/26

Billy (1993)

by Albert French

Banes, Mississippi

Mississippi: 16/19

      Billy is one of the three books from Mississippi that I had to buy from Amazon because they are not available from the Los Angeles Public Library.   It is a work of historical fiction about the events leading to the state of Mississippi executing a 10-year-old for the accidental murder of a white girl during a fight.  Reading the book I surely thought that this was based on a historical case, but it was not.  It is true that American executions of defendants who were juveniles at the time of the murder occurred well into the 20th century, with Supreme Court cases approving the practice as late as 1989 (for 16- and 17-year-olds.)  Billy is yet another novel from this chapter where the use of the n-word is frequent- given the context of the plot (the murder of a white child by an African American child) I suppose it's "understandable" but it doesn't make Billy any easier to read.  Once again, the reader is heavily reminded of the incredible amount of simple hate that white people had and presumably have for the African American population.   As an example from this book, only two characters in the entire book- the defense attorney and the priest at the Mississippi state death house, express ANY reservations about the state executing a 10-year-old for a clearly accidental death.

Published 5/19/26

The Hate U Give (2017)

by Angie Thomas

Carnation Street, Garden Heights, Jackson, Mississippi

Mississippi: 17/19

   This YA novel was adapted into a pretty popular YA movie (with Sabrina Carpenter as the racist white friend from prep school).  It's about a young, African American girl (high school student) who is riding shot gun when her friend from the neighborhood is shot by a white cop.  Readers of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America will not be surprised by the events which follow, though Thomas deserves some credit for evoking the specific time and place (the following/unfollowing of a race-themed Tumblr blog is a minor plot point).  At 400 plus pages, I didn't really linger on the prose, but I think I got the drift of it. As a criminal justice practitioner I didn't find the details of this particular fictional shooting of a young minority man by a white cop in the deep south particularly troubling, as far as those circumstances go.   Here, the cop mistakes a heavy comb being stored in the front driver door for a glock, which is ridiculous, but also something that no African American south would ever do (one, what teenage male owns a heavy duty hair brush let alone keep it in their driver side door while driving around the deep south.

Published 5/27/26

Wolf Whistle (1993)

by Lewis Nordam

Arrow Catcher, Mississippi

Mississippi: 18/19

     The end of each state is a cause for reflection on my part- what I've learned, any avenues I am interested in pursuing further, etc.  Mississippi is a dead end- I think I'll always be interested in Faulkner because of his interesting canonical history, but the more books I read set in Mississippi, the less interesting Faulkner becomes.  Here at the tail end of the chapter, Wolf Whistle has been kicking around my Kindle for six months.  This is an example of the "post-Faulkner" genre of southern lit, where authors with literary ambition are compared to one or all of the handful of authors from here with any literary cache.  Wolf Whistle is a surprisingly "even handed" recounting of the Emmett Till murder, mostly from the point of view of the murderer.     Considering how many of the books in this chapter of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America deal with the murder of an African American male at the hands of local white people, I'm not sure Wolf Whistle was a necessary pick, but no doubt my viewpoint of this book was largely informed by it's second-to-last place in the random reading order.

   

Published 6/8/26

A Time to Kill (1989)

by John Grisham

Mississippi: 19/19

    I'm elated, finishing Louisiana and Mississippi in back-to-back weeks.  Florida is a real (metaphorical) breath of fresh air after reading so much about racial hatred and race-based injustice.  Fitting to end Mississippi with John Grisham, Mississippi best-sellingist author and all-around good guy.  Artistically, it's hard to say much about the man beyond pointing to his status as a perennial best seller.  He doesn't have the literary fictionish touch of Stephen King, and the court room thriller doesn't have the cache of detective fiction or police procedural.  And, with a net worth estimated at 400 million, I doubt he cares, or at least, he doesn't act like someone concerned with his literary legacy.

   A Time to Kill is, of course, his first novel, about a young-ish criminal defense lawyer in small-town Mississippi who is hired to defend an African American accused of gunning down the two white men who raped his ten-year-old daughter.  It's the kind of crime that transcends racial prejudice, a fact which is key to the plot in many different ways.  For me, it was all very "busman's holiday"- reading about my day-to-day concerns of being a criminal defense lawyer.  I think, though, you can tell that Grisham wrote this book without an inkling that he would became a mega seller of popular fiiction.