Pre-Owned 3 By 3: Masterworks of the Southern Gothic (Beasts of the Southern Wild, McAfee County: A Chronicle, and The Black Prince) (Paperback) 0931948843 9780931948848

The Southern Gothic in American Literature occassionally has been defined as the way the South is, not just the way it appears in fiction. Such a definition implies a complete catalogue of the bizarre and the horrible, everything from rape and incest, murder and suicide, lynching, castration, miscegenation, idiocy and insanity. The writers presented here (Doris Betts, Mark Steadman, Shirley Ann Grau) have followed the lead of great Southern Gothic storytellers before them (Faulkner, Penn Warren, Welty, O'Connor) by including all these ingredients and more. But just as in the Gothic style of architecture where gargoyles were no more freaks than the stone angels that graced medieval cathedrals, these three master writers present bizarre characters as if they were no more freaks than the saints whom also populate their rural Southland. Underneath each writer's grotesque surfaces there exist humor, passion and a steady quest for redemption. These three powerful and haunting works were critical and commercial successes when published separately. Gathered here for the first time, they are a literary landmark. Betts (Beasts of the Southern Wild and Other Stories):, The Ugliest Pilgram, Hitchhiker, The Mother-in-Law, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Burning the Bed, Still Life with Fruit, The Glory of His Nostrils, The Spider Gardens of Madagascar, Benson Watts Is Dead and in Virginia. Steadman (McAfee County, A Chronicle), Mr. McAllister's Cigarette Holder, Lee-Jay's Chinese-box Mystery, The Dreamer, John Fletcher's Night of Love, Daddy's Girl, Smoaks, Deering, Maggie Poat and the Shark, After John Henry, Annie's Love Child, John Henry's Promise, Dorcus and the Fat Lady, Anse Starkey at Rest, A Worker of Miracles, Some Notes on McAfee County. Shirley Ann Gau (The Black Prince and Other Stories), White Girl, Fine Girl, The Black Prince, Miss Yellow Eyes, The Girl With the Flaxen Hair, The Bright Day, Fever Flower, The Way of a Man, One Summer, Joshua.