40 Quotes by John Shelton Reed

The South: What is this place? What's different about it? Is it different anymore? Good questions. Old ones, too. People have been asking them for decades. Some of us even make our living by asking them, but we still don't agree about the answers.

Southerners are also like ethnic groups in that they have a sense of group identity.

Southern barbecue is the closest thing we have in the U.S. to Europe's wines or cheeses; drive a hundred miles and the barbecue changes.

As long as there are Japanese tourists, there will be a market for the Old South.

Country music historically has been sort of middle-aged people's music.

I don't think massification and globalization and all those other 'izations' are necessarily hostile to regionalism.

The nature of the South is changing faster than the stereotypes are. Much of the South now looks like San Jose. Is it still southern?

Southerners smile more than other Americans.

But I still do believe that there are useful things to say about Elvis Presley, including what his own ordinariness as a poor Southerner says about 20th-century hero-making.