Deep South

Paul Theroux

• Publisher: Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9780544323537
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies

The acclaimed author of The Great Railway Bazaar takes a revealing journey through the Southern US in a " vivid contemporary portrait of rural life " ( Atlanta Journal-Constitution).
 
Paul Theroux has spent decades roaming the globe and writing of his experiences with remote people and far-flung places. Now, for the first time, he turns his attention to a corner of America—the Deep South. On a winding road trip through Mississippi, South Carolina, and elsewhere below the Mason-Dixon, Theroux discovers architectural and artistic wonders, incomparable music, mouth-watering cuisine—and also some of the worst schools, medical care, housing, and unemployment rates in the nation.
 
Most fascinating of all are Theroux's many encounters with the people who make the South what it is—from preachers and mayors to quarry workers and gun show enthusiasts. With his astute ear and penetrating mind, Theroux once again demonstrates his "remarkable gift for getting strangers to reveal themselves" in this eye-opening excursion into his own country ( The New York Times Book Review).
 
"Paul Theroux's latest travel memoir had me at hello…Theroux pulls no punches in his quest to understand this overlooked margin of American life." — Boston Globe

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Copyright
• Frontispiece
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Fall: “You Gotta Be Going There to Get There”
• Be Blessed: “Ain’t No Strangers Here”
• Wendell Turley
• Road Candy: Traveling in America
• The Mock Ordeal
• Becoming a Traveler Again
• Going South
• The Submerged Twentieth
• Dot Indians
• Big Stone Gap
• Gun Store
• Asheville: “This We Call the Block”
• “Who Am Ah?”
• “Nu Man, Yanna Weep-Dee We Dan-Ya”
• Route 301: “No One Ever Goes There”
• Allendale County Alive
• Orangeburg and the Massacre
• Charleston: Gun Show
• Reverend Johnson’s Story
• Atomic Road
• Believers on Bikes
• Tuscaloosa: Football Matters
• Sister Cynthia
• The Cornerstone Full Gospel Baptist Church
• The Black Belt
• “Ah Mo Buy Me Some Popcorn, Set Me Down, and Watch the Show”
• “White Privilege”
• Mary Hodge: The Burning
• Gathering Pecans
• Greensboro: Mayor Johnnie B. Washington
• Well-Wishers
• The Horseshoe Farm After-School Program Competition Chart
• “Our Own Matlock”
• Reverend Eugene Lyles, Barber
• The Klan in Philadelphia
• Last Days on Gum Street
• Bank Deserts
• Natchez Gun Show
• Mrs. Robin Scott: “To Save My Children”
• The Delta: The Round Table
• Delta Autumn
• “Things Are Worse Than They Look”
• “Jesus Is Lord—We Buy and Sell Guns”
• The Taboo Word
• Winter: “Ones Born Today Don’t Know How It Was”
• Ten Degrees of Frost
• Lumberton
• Back Roads
• Sunday Morning in Sycamore
• “We Love You—Ain’t Nothing You Can Do About It!”
• Lucky
• “The Future Is a Faded Song”
• The Inevitable Mr. Patel
• Off the Grid
• The Rosenwald Gift
• Miss Cotton Blossom
• “Ones Born Today Don’t Know How It Was”
• “Our Randall Curb”
• Hero of Greensboro
• “Reason for Visit”
• “Black Day”
• Delta Winter
• The Ghostliest Structure in the South
• “People Are Buying Guns That Never Wanted No Guns”
• Rowan Oak
• Tupelo Blues
• Bluegrass
• The Paradoxes of Faulkner
• Spring: Redbud in Bloom
• Mud Season
• Steeplechase in Aiken
• The Secret Life of a Segregationist
• The Bomb Factory: Mutant Spiders
• A Glimpse of Wrens
• Deep Trouble at the House of Love: “Accused Means Guilty”
• Sermon with a Subtext: “What Would I Do Without My Storm?”
• Cresent Motel
• Saying Grace
• Razor Road
• Flowers Lane
• The Fall
• Vernell Micey
• Pawnshop
• “Bleeding Like a Hog”
• Paralyzing Despair
• “Limbic Resonance Is What You Need”
• The Fantastications of Southern Fiction
• Summer: The Odor of Sun-Heated Roads
• Chasing Summer
• Tunneling South
• “They Took Mah Teeth”
• Last Days
• Massoud: “I Make Curbstones”
• Jesse: “Everyone Knows That Tingly Feeling Goes Away”
• Buddy Case: “You Couldn’t Say Nothing”
• Alabama Traditions: The Segregated Sororities
• Sandra Fair: “It’s Getting Worse”
• Randall Curb: “My Wings Are Clipped”
• Brookhaven—A Homeseeker’s Paradise
• “Life Is a Highway”
• Delta Summer
• The Blues in Hollandale
• Doe’s Eat Place
• Sunday Morning in Monticello: Church, Catfish, Football
• Hot Springs—Pleasures and Miseries
• Road Candy at the Dixie Café
• “There’s Some People Who Never Hit a Lick at a Snake and They Expect Help”
• The Cabin on Quickerstill Lane
• The Back Road to God’s Country
• Deep-Fried Chocolate Pie
• A Serious Row to Hoe
• Working Poor
• Roadkill
• Jack-Jawin’: “Little Bitty Ole Meth Lab”
• Old Testament Weather: “Baseball-Sized Hail”
• The Arkansas Literary Festival
• Buddy: “Be Careful”
• Old Folks
• Farmers on a Rainy Day
• “Food Deserts”
• “Sundown Town”
• Buffalo River
• “I’m In Too Deep to Quit”
• “You Need a Tough Skin”
• “If You Can Tell a White Farm from a Black Farm, You in Trouble”
• An Agitator at Cypress Corner
• Harvest
• Lunch Under the Pecan Tree
• “The Whole World Is a Family”
• Chain Gang
• The Valiant Woman in Palestine
• Old Man
• Deep South: Photographs by Steve McCurry
• Acknowledgments
• Coming Soon from Paul Theroux
• Read More from Paul Theroux
• About the Author
• Connect with HMH
• Footnotes