Off the Shelf
Reed’s ‘Turtle Derby’ animates Southern culture
By LEE CLARK ZUMPE
Article published on Thursday, Aug. 4, 2005  |
Ever since our wedding in a small North Carolina coastal community, my wife and I have carried on an intermittent debate, arguing over which one of us is more Southern. She was born in Southport, N.C., and has lived in Charleston, S.C., and Athens and St. Mary’s, Ga. I’ve spent my whole life here in Pinellas County.
Reading Julia Reed’s “Queen of the Turtle Derby and Other Southern Phenomena” forced me to reappraise my own Southern attributes, and admittedly I came up short – by Reed’s standards.
Throughout the collected essays which make up “Turtle Derby,” Reed argues that while “the South invites – in fact, almost demands – caricature,” the region is “more complicated and more interesting” than any popular exaggeration and that it is a unique part of the country made up of “a tangle of passions and pastimes and habits of heart and mind that eludes any glib description.” In her introduction, Reed identifies the two most common caricatures which persist: The “Scratchin’ and Spittin’” school, which paints the South as “gun-toting, beer-swilling, Baptist-church-going, pickup-truck-driving, Republican-voting good ole boys and girls;” and the “SUV and Soccer Mom” school, which depicts the South as having been “subsumed by the gods of commerce and big parking lots,” crowded by Home Depots and Blockbusters.
Reading the effective preamble, I prepared myself to learn what really makes the South unique – and hopefully to find a few key points to lend credence to my line of reasoning, giving me an edge over my wife’s claims.
Disappointment followed quickly. The first three essays only bolstered the caricatures Reed set out to dispel as only a part of the Southern experience. These essays define Southerners as unwilling to accept culpability for much of anything, fingering God or the devil as responsible for everything; as being obsessed with food, so much so that “cookbooks in the South outsell everything else but the Bible;” and as resorting to fits of homicidal rage to solve simple problems.
In the essay “Trigger Happiness,” Reed states “I don’t think I know anybody in the South who doesn’t carry, or at least own, a gun.” She lists examples of Southerners using guns to settle political arguments, to respond to an assault on honor, and to protect property.
Some of Reed’s collected essays do provide a glimpse at the insights I had hoped to discover. “Tough Love,” for instance, offers an astute portrayal of the classic Southern woman – full of grit – and details the qualities she seeks in a “sho-nuff man,” one “who’ll step up to the plate” and who is willing to die for what he believes in.
Another essay, “Miss Scarlett,” reinforces Reed’s interpretation of the Southern woman. Using the Southern heroine of Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone with the Wind” as a blueprint, Reed says all Southern women secretly aspire to her virtues, “to be resourceful enough to rustle up a stray pig,” and “to create a useful gown out of our last useless vestiges of grandeur.” The Southern woman possesses both courage and style, according to Reed – qualities I see in my wife, and, in fact, many of the women in her family.
While I did not see a reflection of myself in Reed’s “NASCAR Dad” representation of the Southern man, she does acknowledge that “good ole boys … are not so easily stereotyped anymore; that they could well be driving a German-made car and attending poetry readings.” This observation, found in the closing essay “Color Me Red,” is one of the few places where Reed lives up to her objectives, showing that Southern heritage can endure as a set of attributes and idiosyncrasies that comprise an individual’s character without being dependent on all of the formulaic conventions that lead to caricature.
While Reed’s essays are well-written and entertaining, they ultimately fall short of proving the author’s assertions about the Deep South maintaining its identity. If anything, I think that Reed – a contributing editor at Vogue and Newsweek and a writer for The New York Times – may have been driven by an unconscious, hidden agenda. Having spent 12 years living away from the South, Reed flaunts her own Southern attributes as if declaring: “Look at me! I am Southern!”
Even if it doesn’t live up to its intentions, “Queen of the Turtle Derby and Other Southern Phenomena” is an enjoyable read filled with colorful anecdotes and occasional insights. Though it offered me no new points of contention to help me win the debate with my wife, it didn’t do anything to help her case, either.
One thing is for certain: Geographically, I was born farther south than my wife. She counters this argument with the fact that she lived in the Panama Canal Zone for a few years, just a few degrees above the equator. Eventually, I will concede; but prolonging the dispute is part of what makes me Southern.
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Article published on Thursday, Aug. 4, 2005
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