Slipping into Character

Reading through the library’s copy of Modern Baptists, the first-novel commedy of manners and errors by Louisiana Book Festival 2011 Louisiana Writer Award winner James Wilcox, and suddenly I stumble across these pursed lip, tsk-tsk-tsk marginal notes that read as if they were out of a copy from the parish library in Ozone, another upstanding citizen of Tula into whom Bobby Pickens and his merry band have blundered like a red ant mound in the tall grass, could perhaps be a part of the original text (but publishers rarely did things so clever back in rather than 1983.

Wilcox has penned eight books since but this is the only one I read before and I thought I would go back to it and found this highly praised classic of Southern commedry was not on the shelf of a single local bookstore. In fact, not one of the Big Three indie bookstores carries a single Wilcox title on their shelves, according to their onlines, which is how I landed with the library copy.

See you in Baton Rouge this weekend, where I’ll be there as correspondent for NolaVie. Look for some telegraphic phone posts from the Druid, and a Big Write Up over the weekend. I’ll try to get something up after the author’s party Friday night, which between open bar and any good after parties may vary in slight but significant ways from what I’ll file with NolaVie. in either case it will be “a classic affirmation of everything right and true and decent in the national character.”

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