Tell about the South: The Southern Rage to Explain is the title of Fred Hobson's latest book (published in 1983 by Louisiana). A good part of telling and explaining in the centuries since Jamestown has involved the Southern impulse toward violence and vainglory, prejudice and persecution, religious fundamentalism and fundamental racism. Today, however, as Hobson points out in his VQR essay, Southern benightedness is regarded "largely as a historical phenomenon." The Bible Belt has become the Sun Belt, the Savage South the Superior South. In an America where image making is a national pastime, the transformation from benighted to beautiful in just a few years' time has to rank among the supreme examples of the art. Mr. Hobson is well qualified to examine "the origins, endurance, and presumed demise" of a savage and benighted Dixie. A native North Carolinian and graduate of Chapel Hill, he is now a professor of English at the University of Alabama. In addition to Tell about the South, winner of the 1983 Jules F.Landry Award, Mr. Hobson's other books include Serpent in Eden: H.L. Mencken and the South and South-Watching: Selected Essays of Gerald W.Johnson. When he is not studying the South, Mr. Hobson follows another great Southern passion—basketball.

"Every age has its curious and sometimes inhuman games and sports," observes Harold Fromm. One of the favorite pastimes of our age, he contends, is the recycling of lives, a notable case being the lives of Virginia and Leonard Woolf. Mr. Fromm cites three examples where he believes the Woolfs have been portrayed as "sitting ducks," and his lively essay seems certain to stimulate more discussion about the English couple. A member of the English faculty at Indiana University North-west, Mr. Fromm has written widely about the works of Virginia Woolf. In addition, in recent years his essays have concerned literary theory, professionalism in the arts, and air pollution. They have appeared in such journals as English Miscellany, Criticism, and the Yale and Georgia reviews, as well as VQR.