This shit slaps. What else is an essential read?

Look Homeward Angel is a forgotten classic due for a renaissance. Flannery of course is great and relevant. Any anons know of good lesser-known Southerners? I liked a John Ehle novel but it wasn't really what OP is looking for.

>>24539612 (OP)
Eudora Welty

Child of God
Outer Dark
The Orchard Keeper

Absalom, Absalom!
As I Lay Dying
The Sound and the Fury

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

>>24539612 (OP)

A FEW SOUTHERN GOTHIC BOOKS IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER

— William Faulkner
You already know about this fellow.

— Cormac McCarthy, Outer Dark, Child of God
The Orchard Keeper is SG but it’s his first book and he wasn’t entirely on top of his material. Suttree has some SG elements but not quite the claustrophobic incestuous backwoods vibe we love so dearly.

— Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood, etc
Southern gothic from a (rabidly) Roman Catholic perspective.

— Harry Crews, A Feast Of Snakes
Modern (well, 1970s) SG turned up to eleven. He’s not the best at large-scale structure (like most of his novels, this feels like a padded novella) but you get plenty of juicy local colour. Snake pits, dog fights, sex-on-legs cheerleader sluts, plucky black girls castrating rapist sherrifs, retarded child brides who watch soap operas eighteen hours a day. MMMMMMMMM THAT’S THE GOOD STUFF

— Erskine Caldwell, Tobacco Road
Wacky hijinks of penniless starving sharecroppers, funny but not really. Similar subject-matter to As I Lay Dying, told more plainly.

— Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel
Sort of ‘Portrait of the Artist As A Young Southern Dude’. Worth a look although I think he shoulda killed a few more darlings. (It’s even bigger if you get the recent ‘director's cut’ edition.)

— Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg Ohio
Not exactly southern but some claim this started the genre so we have to give it a mention.

— Carson McCullers, Ballad Of The Sad Cafê
Definitely an SG vibe in there, although every word she wrote is really about being a lesbian and hence an OUTSIDER. Whatever.

— Tennessee Williams, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof
SG slash homosexual.

— Truman Capote, Other Voices, Other Rooms
SG slash sensitive young homosexual coming of age. Whatever.

— William Gay, I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down
If you want short stories he might be your man. Wacky characters, feuds, hijinks, unexpected emotional blind corners.

— Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red; The Death Of Sweet Mister
His most famous is Winter’s Bone because of the film but you already know about that so try one of these.

— Breece D’J Pancake, Trilobites And Other Stories
I wasn’t knocked off my feet by this guy but some people think he’s the warthog’s waistcoat.

— John Berendt, Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil
Better than the film, although that’s not hard. You get a lot more of the tranny, so if that’s what you like, this is what you want.

— Donald Ray Pollock, The Devil All The Time
A bit more recent than I usually like to recommend (2011), but it’s bang square in the middle of the modern SG genre.

James by Percival Everett

Main character is a hard drinking, violent redneck with ongoing feuds with another redneck and the local police.
He’s actually the good guy.
Bad guy is one of the scummiest scumbags in grit lit.

Author was a student of Harry Crews (mentioned above) and a mentor of William Gay (mentioned above) and Tom Franklin (mentioned above)

Southern gothic is suitably incestuous

>>24539612 (OP)
>essential read?
this is a classic