BOOKS
IN YOUR STOCKING
Books by North Carolinians or
about North Carolina summarized
by our most devoted reader.
By WALTER SPEARMAN
The decorations on this
раде
arc from
“Flowers of the South,” by WU-
hclmina F. Greene and Hugo L. Blom-
quist, a publication of the University of
North Carolina Press.
When Christmas shopping time
comes around, North Carolina shop¬
pers can easily buy North Carolina
stockings and furniture and dresses.
They can buy North Carolina hand-
carved wooden toys, hand-wrought
silver pins or car-rings, hand-woven
towels or bedspreads or rugs, hand¬
made pottery bowls and pitchers and
ashtrays.
They can also buy native North
Carolina books for their friends and
relatives.
Top spot on anybody's Christmas
list should be Southern Accent by
William T. Polk, Greensboro editor
and short story writer, who has written
a diverting and provocative book about
the Old South, which he calls “the
Surviving South,” and the New South,
which he describes as "the Indus¬
trialized South.” His book is a bril¬
liant answer to his own question:
“When the almost irresistible force of
industrialization meets the not quite
immovable object of the Southern way
of life, what happens?"
In succinct and witty chapters
Mr. Polk discusses Southern cooking.
Southern violence, the race problem,
the political situation, Southern litera¬
ture, Southern dialect and the Southern
tradition.
Two other very new Carolina books
that may increase the blood pressure
of their recipients arc The Kingpin by
Thomas Wicker and The Civil War
by James Street. Mr. Wicker, a for¬
mer Winston-Salem and Raleigh news¬
paperman now serving in Japan with
the Navy, has written boldly and real¬
istically about a political campaign in
a Southern state which bears many
resemblances to the Graham-Smith
Senatorial race of 1950, but the
characters arc definitely not based on
real North Carolina political figures.
Mr. Street, a Chapel Hill author who
has written historical novels about Co¬
lumbus and about the Dabney family-
in Mississippi, as well as sympathetic
novels about a Baptist preacher, now
provides an "unvarnished" account of
the Civil War and gleefully explodes
various "myths" about Robert E. Lee,
Stonewall Jackson, Abraham Lincoln,
the heroism of the South, the right¬
eousness of the North and some fa¬
mous misquoted quotations.
Before naming any other North
Carolina books, let's stop a moment to
call attention to a 47-page pamphlet
entitled Our Christmas Symbols by Ay-
Icnc E. Cooke and Cameron Cooke of
Durham, a mothcr-and-son collabora¬
tion which simply and reverently
explains the meaning and derivation
of such Christmas symbols as ever¬
greens, candles, gifts, the Christmas
tree, the Yulclog, Santa Claus, poin-
settias, carols, firecrackers. It is just
right for family or school or church
groups to read aloud — and is published
by the Graphic Press in Raleigh.
There is a fine round of new Caro¬
lina novels ready for Christmas giving
from Inglis Fletcher's latest. Queen's
Gift, a story of North Carolina's fight
over ratification of the Constitution of
the United States, to Ovid Pierce's
beautiful first novel, The Plantation,
an extremely well-written account of
life on a North Carolina plantation
over a fifty-year period.
Two books arc said to have their
scenes laid in Greensboro, The Sound¬
ing Brass by Edythc Latham and Taw
Jameson by May Davies Martcnct.
Two others arc written by teachers at
THE BTATE. NOVEMBER 28, 1953
