The Wilmington morning star., 1947-10-05
Mr.. Spearman's
Literary
| Lantern
BY WALTER SPEARMAN

There must be millions q,
Americans who wonder what tn.
South is really like. For those
millions the editors of Look
magazine and Author David T,
Cohn have collaborated on
thoroughly interesting volume
called "Look at America: The
South" which is one of a serie,
of regional handbooks in pic.
lures, maps and text 'for the
vacationist, the traveller and the
stay-at-home." (Houghton Milf
lin Company, Boston. 393 pp)
First of all, this is a picturS
book - and the pictures ask
magnificent. Some of them az
in soft colors Lake Lure in TIA
North Carolina mountains ]
Seminole Indian in Florida, an
old mill in Virginia, a river boat
in Mississippi. Then there are
hundreds of typical scenes
throughout the South oranqe
groves in Florida. a steel mill
in Birmingham, the Charleston
gardens, ante-bellum homes in
Natchez and Biloxi, a farm IN
the Ozarks, tobacco fields in
North Carolina and cotton gins
in South Carolina, Antoine s res
taurant in New Orleans and
coon hunt in Kentucky, Caiuns
in Louisiana and Rusts
mechanical cotton picker at
work in the fields, the shipysrds
at Newport News and the SER
pentine wall at the University
Of Virginia.
Local Carolina pride may be
miffed at finding Sc pages on
Florida but only a scant % on
this state. However, the pictures
of Duke university, "The Lost
Colony" play at Manteo and the
old Slave market at Fayetteville
round out the Carolina pages
and pictures on the culture Of
tobacco and the sport of trout
fishing in the Great Smokes.
And Durham will be interested
in the sentence Durham is a
city where people live, breathe
and think tobacco"
Mr.. Cohn, who contributes a
pertinent and often pungent in
PRODUCTION on the South to this
book of pictures, is himself
native of Greenville, Miss, and
an alumnus Of the University of
Virginia. When he writes that
the word "South" is rich in sug-
gestibility. he knows whereof he
speaks. To him it suggest fried
chicken, spoon bread, breakfast
grits, Virginia ham, barbecues,
magnolias, mockingbirds, honey
suckes, catfish, revivals, baptiz-
ings in the creek, snuff, ora
tory and indeed what else
does it suggest to you?
Speaking very seriously, Mr..
Cohn points out the Southerner
obsession with politics, his hos
pitality, his high homicide rate
coupled with high church at
tendance, his ancestry of Eng
lish stock, his racial problems.
The South, he finds, is a land
of extremes. "There the travel
er will find some of the best
and some of the worst archi-
lecture in this country; har-
moniously lovely houses and
wretched novels; cultured peo-
pie and those in the last stages
of physical and mental degen-
Grafton; superb cookery and re-
voting messes; singing rivers
and sinking swamps; the beau
ty of mountains and plains and
soul-deadening monotony of flat
areas; towns that please the eye
and others that shock the sight"
Readers, look at the South!
POUNDS OF CIVIL. WAR
Now that the tremendously
popular motion picture made
from "Gone With the Wind" is
being successfully revived
throughout the country and now
that what must surely be the
longest novel ever written about
the Civil war is off the press
and in the hands of multitudes
of readers, we are indeed ready
to become Civil war conscious
again. The novel is "House Di-
vided" by Ben Ames Williams
(Houghton Mifflin Company,
Boston. 1914 PIP. $50.
This is the story of the Cur
rains, of their great homes in
the Carolinas and Virginia, of
their victories, defeats and VII
cissitudes during the Civil war,
of their sisters and their cousins
and their aunts and all their
other relatives who made up the
tragic "house divided" of the
Southern Confederacy. This is
also the story of what happened
to the Currains when they dis
covered that their father was
also the grandfather of that no
torious Abraham Lincoln, who
would not recognize the sover-
eign rights of the South and vino
wanted to free the slaves.