A Review of Surreal South
An Anthology of Short Fiction and Poetry
It's a common lament in the publishing industry that the big-name book publishers aren't striving for excellence; they are going with the guaranteed money makers. Unless a writer is already well established in the marketplace, it can be difficult to introduce a new or avant-garde idea for a book or a collection. Hundreds of small presses across the United States, though, are willing to spend money and take risks on unknown writers and experimental writing.
Small Press Salvation
That's where Surreal South comes in. A small operation called Press 53, based in Winston-Salem, NC, published the first volume in 2007, with another in the works. Husband-and-wife team Pinckney and Laura Benedict co-edit the series, and the first volume pulled in works from sundry authors such as Ann Pancake, Joyce Carol Oates, Lee K. Abbott, Kyle Minor, and Robert Olen Butler, just to name a few of the almost 30 writers included. Together, their stories and poems push the boundaries of reality and contemporary literature, and future volumes in the series are designed specifically for new and emerging writers.
Surreal South: The Writing
The Benedicts provide suggestions for the reader in the introduction: "Put away literary notions. Put away schoolchild considerations of theme and symbol and interpretation. Forget notions of allegory. If there is allegory here, it is the allegory of the self, as we find it in the best work of Poe, for instance: the hidden self of the writer and the unrealized self of the reader."
The stories and poems here collected rum the gamut of surreality from horror to gothic to humor. They begin with Daniel Woodrell's "The Echo of Neighborly Bones," which pulls the reader into the work with the humorous and chilling opening line: "Once Boshell finally killed his neighbor he couldn't seem to quit killing him." Robert Olen Butler's "Help Me Find My Spaceman Lover" is whimsical and charming, and Pinckney Benedict's "Pig Helmet & The Wall of Life" is intensely thrilling.
Due to the assorted nature of anthologies, not every reader is bound to fall in love with every piece in the collection. Some just prefer space aliens to werewolves, or robots to monsters, and that's okay. With a book like Surreal South, a reader can browse through until she finds something she likes, and then continue the journey individually by looking up more of that author's work.
The South
A reader who doesn't care for Tennessee Williams or Walker Percy can still find something to love in Surreal South. The Benedicts defined their scope of "the South" broadly, including writers who are from or associated with or writing about the South. Again, from the introduction, they state, " If the North is tough, harsh reality and bright blazing daylight, then the South is the uneasily slumbering mind of the U.S., a cupboard filled with the country's dark dreams." With a description like that, who could resist just cracking the cover and taking a peek at the dark and perilous dreams of the South?
Surreal South
edited by Pinckney and Laura Benedict
Published October 15, 2007, by Press 53
ISBN: 978-0-9793049-7-2
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