Reviews of New Books
By John Shelton Reed and Brandon Bosworth

The Southern Way of Death

John Shelton Reed

Being Dead Is No Excuse: The Official Southern Ladies Guide to Hosting the Perfect Funeral 

By Gayden Metcalfe and Charlotte Hays

Miramax Books, 243 pages, $19.95

 

 

At least since 1976, when Jimmy Carter came out of nowhere to win the Democratic Presidential nomination, many Southerners have labored in a minor industry producing guides to the kooky South, often to be found for sale at Stuckey’s on the Interstate. Some of these books are explicitly written for non-Southerners, others are ostensibly for Southerners but with a sideways glance at a Yankee audience, but in either case they tend to be relentlessly cute. At worst they would be downright offensive if the group being described were one less easygoing than Southern whites, who seem resigned to being the object of caricature. 

 

So I wasn’t optimistic about one with this title. To my surprise, however, it turned out to be one extended, wry in-joke. Southerners can read it without cringing; non-Southerners should at least find some recipes they can use, even if (as usual) they have trouble figuring out when these Dixielanders are being serious and when they’re spoofing.

 

Proper funerals, the authors point out, are something the dead have been waiting for all their lives. It is only right that they should have them, and this book tells you how to do it correctly, by the non-negotiable standards of Southern ladyhood.

 

The gist of the message is that a genteel Southern funeral is hardly the time or place for innovation. Of course the South, especially the deep South, has a reputation for resisting innovation in general. Whether you’re talking about flower arrangements, hymns, liturgy, or funeral food, the right way to do things is usually pretty much the way it has always been done. 

 

This is not to say that events don’t go wrong. Floral telephones that say “Jesus Called” are at least as common in the South as elsewhere. But even the most uninhibited Southerners can be conservative where it counts. Cremation, for example, is a newfangled way to treat the dead, and, the last time I looked, fewer than 3 percent of Mississippi funerals involved “cremains.” (The figure for Nevada was over two thirds.) 

 

The authors’ aesthetic judgments are unerring. When it comes to flowers, for example, roses are acceptable, flowers from the yard ideal. Carnations are tacky, and carnations with glitter are unspeakable. It goes without saying that the authors share, in a suitably ladylike way, the sentiments of the great Memphis rocker Don Nix when he produced “Don’t Put No Plastic Flowers on My Grave” (“I don’t care how much money you can save”). 

 

As for funeral hymns, the well-bred dead prefer classics like “Mighty Fortress” or “For All the Saints.” But the authors observe that some humbler songs heard over funeral-home sound systems also have their charms. “Sweet Beulah Land,” they argue, is “the musical equivalent of Methodist cooking.” 

 

Much of this book turns out to be about food. That figures, since it’s universally acknowledged that “nobody in the world eats better than the be-reaved Southerner.” Even the grieving know that. “When Nellia Bostwick’s husband Andrew died in California, she said that the worst thing about it was missing all the good cooking—and missing Andy, too, of course.” Obviously a guide to the perfect funeral should provide recipes, and this one does: nearly a hundred. Six for pimiento cheese alone, with three for deviled eggs, all so mouth-watering they make you want to go murder someone, just for the funeral. (Only kidding.)

 

Like nearly everything else in the South, funeral food is linked in complicated ways to religion, and thus to social class—or is it vice versa? Episcopalians, for example, tend to drink after funerals (and often before, as well). The authors tell of their friend Anne Dudley Hunt, who was bravely dyeing eggs one Easter Saturday with horrible bruises on her legs, while wondering aloud: “Did I hurt my knees yesterday afternoon doing the Stations of the Cross? Or did I do it falling down drunk last night?” Methodists are less anchored in the Cavalier tradition. And we will not speak of Baptists.

 

Anyway, the authors distinguish between “haute funeral food, which includes aspics, homemade mayonnaise, and dainty homemade rolls,” and a “second tier” of dishes based on elements of what they call “The Eternal Pantry”—stuff like canned artichoke hearts, canned French-fried onions, and cream of mushroom soup. These sorts of things should always be kept on hand for occasions of sudden death.

 

Even this, however, is ladies’ food. This book does not explore the lower reaches of Southern cuisine where dishes like Freda’s Five-Can Casserole and Tutti’s Fruited Porkettes lurk. In Ernest Matthew Mickler’s classic White Trash Cooking, Tutti’s own granddaughter observes that you can’t get trashier than a Hawaiian recipe with Southern ingredients. (Being Dead’s bing cherry and Jell-O salad with Coca-Cola would seem to verge on trashy, redeemed only by the stipulation that it must be made with bottled Coke.)

 

I should note that the ladies who wrote this book are from the Delta, south of Memphis—what historian Jim Cobb has called “the most Southern place on earth,” a place that offers a double-distilled version of a good many Southern ways—and their book reflects that. Moreover, it’s resolutely Caucasian. When the authors write “Southerners” they really mean white Mississippians like themselves. Nevertheless, well-bred Southerners from other races and other parts of the South will recognize this ethnography as an only slightly exaggerated version of their own ancestral wisdom. 

 

 

John Shelton Reed is a visiting professor of southern studies at the University of South Carolina, Columbia.

 

 

Literant

By Brandon Bosworth

 

Books about Ronald Reagan tend to inspire a Pavlovian reaction among conservative readers. So do books about Winston Churchill. So in writing a book about both Reagan and Churchill, Steven Hayward is guaranteed to make the salivary glands of many on the Right kick into overdrive.

 

Is Greatness: Reagan, Churchill, and the Making of Extraordinary Leaders worth drooling over? A great deal of the book details similarities between the two men, and the parallel courses their lives often took. Much of this is familiar terrain: their early flirtations with liberalism, their optimism and belief in democratic capitalism, their unyielding patriotism, and of course, their strong hatred of communism.

 

But it is in recounting the smaller, more obscure similarities between these two men that Hayward shines. For example, each used carefully prepared speech notes, complete with stage directions. Churchill’s were particularly specific, containing such gems as “pause; grope for word” and “stammer; correct self.” And he wasn’t even the professional actor of the duo.

 

At times, however, the parallels seem a bit strained. Hayward writes that “both men owed their initial political success to prior fame.” Churchill was well known for his heroic exploits during the Boer War, while Reagan had been a Hollywood star. Those are rather dissimilar paths to celebrity, however, and in general the public has quite different views (thankfully) toward war heroes versus actors.

 

Some of the details recorded by Hayward have a kind of “Mysteries of the Unknown” quality. Did you know that both Reagan and Churchill dug “fishponds of nearly identical dimensions” at their homes in the country? Neither did I. But I’m wondering if that information might help me beguile a struggling College Republican into digging a koi pond in my backyard for free.

 

Geekier conservative readers will be happy to know that these two heroes of the Right could be rather geeky themselves. The protagonist in Churchill’s autobiographical novel, Savrola, is deeply interested in astronomy and confesses himself “under the power of the spell” of stargazing. Reagan was a fan of science fiction, and Colin Powell once commented on his “fascination with ‘little green men.’” In a speech given after the 1985 Geneva Summit, Reagan veered into uncharted waters by telling his audience how easily the USA and USSR would come together “if there suddenly was a threat to this world from some other species, from another planet, outside the universe.” Judging whether this was a bold philosophical statement or just goofy depends on how many words of Klingon you understand.

 

Who are the political heirs of Reagan and Churchill? Hayward only lightly touches on this subject. He mentions in passing (and perhaps too optimistically) Rudy Giuliani, and quotes historian Martin Gilbert’s comment that Bush and Blair may someday “join the ranks of Roosevelt and Churchill.” Labor Party leader Blair is an interesting choice, since his domestic policies and his cheerleading for a less overtly English, more multicultural “Cool Britannia” would probably send Churchill into conniptions. As for Bush as an heir to either Reagan or Churchill, conservatives who object to his inability to curb spending or veto anything may need some convincing.

 

Perhaps if efforts to bring democracy to Iraq and the Middle East succeed, then future historians will rightfully make the comparison. Until that time, Ronald Reagan and Winston Churchill can safely remain seated alone on their pedestals. There are no obvious contenders to join them.

 

 

Brandon Bosworth is a TAE associate editor.