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{"id":1613,"date":"2019-05-19T09:45:50","date_gmt":"2019-05-19T09:45:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/?p=1613"},"modified":"2019-05-19T12:13:08","modified_gmt":"2019-05-19T12:13:08","slug":"lone-star-review-spying-south-tony-horwitz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/?p=1613&lang=ar","title":{"rendered":"Lone Star Review: SPYING ON THE SOUTH by Tony Horwitz"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lone Star Review of Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide <\/em>by Tony Horwitz.<\/p>\n

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Halloween night found Tony Horwitz in a Grafton, West Virginia, bar with a woman costumed as a member of the Butcher Babies, a heavy metal band. She eyes his work boots, plaid shirt, horn-rimmed glasses, and Carhartt jacket with the notebook and pencil in one pocket. \u201cLet me guess,\u201d she said in an exaggerated drawl. \u201cYankee boy, spyin\u2019 on us hillbillies?\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide<\/span><\/a><\/strong> <\/em>is Tony Horwitz\u2019s new release, following the New York Times <\/em>bestselling Confederates in the Attic<\/em>. Horwitz is a former war correspondent for the Wall Street Journal<\/em>, Pulitzer Prize-winning national reporter, former New Yorker <\/em>writer, and author of six previous books of nonfiction. His books are difficult to categorize\u2014part reporting, part travelogue, part history, part sociological study. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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In 1854, Frederick Law Olmsted, writing as \u201cYeoman\u201d on assignment for a brand-new outfit called the New-York Daily Times<\/em>, set out on a journey across the American South, exploring the phenomenon of \u201cG.T.T.\u201d\u2014Gone to Texas\u2014in the pivotal years just before secession and civil war, when anti-immigrant fervor was on the rise and the \u201cnative\u201d Protestants claimed to be besieged. Olmsted\u2019s purpose was to seek \u201creliable understanding of the sentiments and hopes & fears\u201d of the South. He wanted to gather the facts to counter the diatribes and epithets flying from both sides. Sounds familiar: a divided nation, each faction convinced of its righteousness and the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the other. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Horwitz thought it sounded familiar, so he set off in Olmsted\u2019s footsteps. Alternating the narrative between Olmsted\u2019s day and his own, Horwitz traveled by Amtrak, rental Kia, coal barge, steamboat, foot, and mule from Cumberland, Maryland, to Eagle Pass, Texas, to see what he could learn about our current state of affairs. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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One of the most interesting theories Horwitz explores is the feudal region that sported an aristocracy now supports an authoritarian, if not monarchical, president. This goes hand-in-glove with a rejection of expertise and science, which Horwitz had thought \u201can appendix of the American mind: a vestigial organ.\u201d As one Louisiana preacher wrote in a letter to the editor in the early 2000s, \u201cLearning for the sake of learning is egg head, intellectual elitism.\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Horwitz crossed the Sabine on El Camino Real, expressing confusion behind the Pine Curtain, where certain towns which shall remain nameless still refer to \u201cthe Quarters,\u201d that East Texas wasn\u2019t western at all. Something he will learn on his way to the Rio Grande is that there are many Texases. He visits the holy ground of San Jacinto \u201camidst a petrochemical Mordor\u201d and experiences the High Holy Days at the Alamo, D\u00eda de los Muertos in Eagle Pass, and mule trekking around Sisterdale which ended in a concussion.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Horwitz did enjoy the surface manners the South tends to display toward strangers. He was taken with the friendliness of Cajuns whom, when he told them they\u2019d been described to Olmsted as \u201chabitually gay and careless, as well as kind-hearted, hospitable, and dissolute,\u201d agreed that was pretty accurate. Horwitz was energized by the service at Franklin Avenue Baptist in New Orleans where he became \u201ca parody of a white guy in a black church, clapping out of unison and jerking like a headless chicken.\u201d He was viscerally disturbed by the plantation tours and the description of a lecture about the Underground Railroad as \u201cfun and entertaining.\u201d I\u2019ve traveled in places the State Department would rather I not and which inspire my mother to email articles about bombs to me, but the scariest place I\u2019ve ever been is Mississippi. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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If you\u2019ve been paying attention, then you won\u2019t find news in Spying on the South<\/em>. Like Olmsted, Horwitz began this project hoping that Americans could \u201clisten to each other and air their differences in a rational and coolheaded fashion.\u201d He doesn\u2019t say definitively whether that hope survived the journey. Olmsted\u2019s hope did not. Horwitz\u2019s form of interactive and immersive journalism, while mercifully light on judgmental conclusions and personal opinions, holds up a mirror reflecting how our original sins are still with us. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cBottom line?\u201d Dave from Goliad finally blurts, \u201cThe government won\u2019t let us do whatever the hell it is we want to do. That\u2019s it.\u201d Sounds like anarchy to me.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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