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I had never imagined writing
anything about myself, call it autobiography
or memoir. When pressed to do so, I chose
the latter because so much depended on
memory’s ability to resurrect and re-people
the lost world I was brought up in—
small town and plantation life in Mississippi
in the pre-World War II era. I thought that
many there would recognize my own memories
as similar to their own, and that the many
more who had never experienced that world
would come to a first-hand knowledge of it.
The other and later chapters of the book deal
with the equally unusual experience of a young
woman tremulously entering the world of writing
and writers, first at college, then university,
then New York, and finally Europe, especially
Italy. The people I was lucky to know were
the noted writers of this and other countries.
Many have passed away, but their work continues
to engage us. The title of the book is taken
from the last line of “A Southern Landscape”
where Marilee remarks that she needs a land,
“a sure terrain, a sort of permanent landscape
of the heart.” My editor was much taken
with the phrase, and so we let it name the book.
The book is in print at Louisiana State University Press. |
