Triumph of the Ape
by Todd Dills
THE2NDHAND, 2013
150 pages / $12 Buy from Amazon or Kickstarter
Rating: 7.5

The Kickstarter campaign for Todd Dills’s new book asks participants to “fund the printing of this book of 14 collected short stories, from literary New South yarn to end-of-days dirge.” This got me thinking about the New South.

My hometown is frequently called “the Gateway to the New South,” but what does that mean? Is it an effort to banish stereotypes of the decidedly racist and agrarian past? The term “New South” brings to my mind a group of self-indulgent, cultured men and women—the type that have subscribed to Oxford American for 15+ years, who have serious opinions about barbecue and shrimp and grits, and who have read every William Gay and Cormac McCarthy novel twice through, but have never given Joy Williams more than a lingering glance. Could this stereotype form the criterion for Southern citizenship as well? If so, even I, a second generation Tennesseean, fail the test. READ MORE >