Oxford American # 47, July/August 2003

COLUMNS & DEPARTMENTS

Editor’s Box
by Marc Smirnoff

News from the Front
South Carolina’s forbidden art; hijinks in the Texas Legislature; an artist’s glowing homage to Eudora Welty

Sense of Place:
Sardis, Mississippi
Photographs by Adam Shemper

Local Fare:
Bucking the Trend
by John T. Edge

Meditations:
Dixie Zen
by Sam Anderson

The Moviegoer:
Malady of the Quotidian
by William Bowers

Music Notes
Drive-By Truckers, Prefuse 73, Dwight Yoakam, and more.

Fine Print
Rick Bragg’s idea of a good book; a reissue of a 1909 novel and the Orange Prize winner reviewed; Newt Gingrich rewrites history.

Gone Off Up North:
Peanuts, Mama, and Robert E. Lee
by Roy Blount, Jr.

Dealer’s Choice:
The Three Graces
by Hal Crowther

Southern Scenes:
Sardis, Mississippi
Photograph by Adam Shemper

Features

Andalusia Is Open
Descending on Flannery O’Connor’s farm, where visitors are sometimes welcome.
by Padgett Powell

Unfortunate Con
How deed did Jim Hatfield’s self-deception run? The lonely criminal behind the presidential scandal-that-wasn’t.
by Mark Schone

The Golden Era of Heartbreak
When love fails, you might have to depend upon the cruelty of strangers.
A story by Michael Parker

POETRY

The Latin for Cicada, by C.I.M. Jones

Directly, by R.T. Smith



Cover: Photograph by Debbie Fleming Caffrey.