What is a Southern Knickerbocker?
You’d be forgiven if you thought of knickerbockers as some weird word for pants or perhaps a misspelling of a New York basketball team. These are not how I am using the word though. I’m more interested in how the term took on life in the writings of Washington Irving. “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” was my first introduction to the word, and Irving’s portrayal of the Dutch rural gentleman anchored deep in my imagination. Add to that the whole notion of an invented tradition that stems from a work of fiction and you get a fascinating insight into cultural history. This mutual influence is what interests me most: lived experiences shaping the memory, one’s memory taking hold of the imagination, that imagination informing the written word, and the written word in turn shaping the lived experiences of others.
I have no doubt that all cultures have this kind of interplay (at least the ones that have the written word). And while it was Irving’s portrayal of 18th century New England that got all this going in my mind, the elements which have shaped me the most are those of a Southern nature. The American South is my home, even when I’ve lived in other parts of the U. S., thus making my cultural interests of a Southern temperament. If Irving’s satirical-yet-affectionate interest in the past gave life to Diedrich Knickerbocker, then maybe my own interests can bring the Southern man of letters to life in similar fashion. A Southern Knickerbocker, if you will.
I’ve explored this in my classroom and in my writing off and on for the last decade. So, what I hope to do here is bring some of the insights I’ve gleaned in those venues to a semi-regular newsletter.
What will readers find here?
This is a fair question, and one I haven’t totally worked out in my head yet. I’ll be posting some book reviews periodically, some of them old and some of them new. A few of my academic musings will make their way to this substack as well, again some new, some old. And I might post my thoughts on current culture periodically, though I am generally more interested in the past than the present. The odd poem or work of fiction is most surely to appear. In the end, I hope this will come to resemble a digital version of The Sketchbook, ranging in genres and topics and concerns.
When I started, I tried posting twice a week. At this kind of steady clip, I realized I’d be exhausting myself pretty quickly since my day job requires a fair amount of writing (to be published elsewhere). So currently, a single post each week is released on Wednesday mornings. There may come a time when I amp that back up, but for now it’ll have to do.
