A Density of Souls (2000) by Christopher Rice

 1,001 Novels; A Library of America

A Density of Souls (2000)

by Christopher Rice

Louisiana: 20/28

   This is an utterly ridiculous novel by the son of author Anne Rice.  Three boys and one girl are friends as children.  Upon entering high school, two of the boys become "jocks," the girl becomes the girlfriend of one of the jocks and the fourth, who is clearly the main protagonist, is gay.   The other three all turn on the gay friend for reasons that are entirely unexplained.  Although there are no year specific tells, it seems clear that A Density of Souls, is set in the 90's, in a period where anti-gay bullying was still OK, but the bullied had an idea that their situation was temporary and would improve outside of high school.  The story just gets more ridiculous by the page, with plot points involving incest, insanity, forced institutionalization and lots and lots of gay stuff.   By the end, the mysteries are resolved, but it left this reader scratching his head.  What the hell did I just read, was my thought at the end.  Published by Harvey Weinstein, as well.

The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty (1980)

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

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

Mississippi: 14/18

  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.