More about LSU English, Robert Penn Warren, Cleanth Brooks, and Huey Long from Judy Kahn,
co-editor with Nolde Alexius of Best of LSU Fiction
Ironically, Baton Rouge’s literary heritage begins with Governor Huey Long. I say ironically
because Long (below) was neither literary, nor intellectual, nor well educated. But when he
became governor in 1928, he had a tremendous respect for higher education and began to
amass money and manipulate funds to put that respect into concrete terms. His
accomplishments were quite remarkable.
In 1928, when Long became governor, LSU
was ranked 89th in the nation with 1500
students. However, in 1935, when Long
was assassinated, LSU had 6000 students
and was ranked 13th in the nation. In the
years following (1935-42), LSU established
the Southern Review, an internationally
ranked literary journal; the LSU Press, a
prestigious university publishing house; and
a literary community comprised of some of
the nation’s top intellectuals and writers.
How did these accomplishments come
about? One of the ways, perhaps the most
important, was that Long, knowing very
little about higher education himself, had an
uncanny imagination even about things he knew little about; and he hired people with that
same quality. From Southwestern Louisiana Institute in Lafayette, he hired James Monroe
Smith. When the governor hired Smith as LSU President, Long told his new appointee to
spare no expense when it came to hiring.
Monroe, in turn, hired Charles Pipkin as dean of the graduate school; Pipkin, a top-notch
scholar, had degrees from Vanderbilt, Harvard, and Oxford. Once again, as Smith told Pipkin
“money was to be no object… and to pay [candidates] higher salaries than any other
institution” (Cutrer 31).
Pipkin then hired two outstanding scholars as teachers in the English Department and as
editors of the LSU branch of the Southwest Review,
which was based in Texas. Robert Penn Warren (right),
from Kentucky, had degrees from Vanderbilt, Berkley,
and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. Cleanth Brooks
(left), from Shreveport, Louisiana, also had degrees
from Vanderbilt and Oxford. In other words, hiring the
best became a reality, and applied to all LSU
departments. What happened then began an era at LSU
that eventually led its English department to be
referred to by F. Scott Fitzgerald as “The Athens of the Nation” (Cutrer 52).
How was such a reputation formed in such a short period of time? To begin, when Brooks
and Warren broke off from the Southwest Review over philosophical differences, Smith
asked Warren if he and Brooks would edit an LSU journal. When Warren agreed, the
Southern Review was born, with Warren and Brooks as managing editors and Pipkin as
business manager.
Within the first year, it had achieved international status and was considered one of if not
the best journal in the nation. Allen Tate, Fugitive Poet, influential essayist, and editor of the
Sewanee Review, said it was “the finest literary
magazine in English” (Cutrer 72). T.S . Eliot’s
journal The Criterion called it “the best literary
periodical of all American publications” (Cutrer
73). Published authors included Katherine Anne
Porter, John Cheever, Wallace Stevens, Aldous
Huxley, Peter Taylor (right), W.H. Auden, Randall
Jar rell, John Crowe Ransom, Eudora Welty, Jean
Stafford (middle), and Robert Lowell (left). And
Brooks and Warren were determined to allow new
voices to appear in their journal. Judgments for
publication were made on the basis of quality, not reputation, as in the case of the young
Eudora Welty.
As a result of the Southern Review’s status, a literary community grew in Baton Rouge, the
basis of what Robert Heilman described as “a fusion of minds and personalities in an
intellectual and literary flowering” that impacted the entire nation (10). Writers came here
to immerse themselves in the intellectual milieu of the Southern Review, live in cottages and
apartments in Baton Rouge, roam the Louisiana countryside, and write in the company of
other great writers. Katherine Ann Porter, Robert Lowell, Jean Stafford and Albert Erskine
were just a few.
Second, remember that Pipkin, Brooks, and Warren all attended Vanderbilt, where they
were influenced by the prominent literary critic I.A. Richards, an experience which led them
to revolutionize the way literature was read by critics and taught in university classrooms
for decades.
Aside from being editors, while at LSU Brooks and Warren also taught writing and literature
courses and found that their college students knew nothing about interpreting literature;
nor did they have the language or tools to do so. The predicament led Brooks and Warren to
edit and write the introduction to An Introduction to Literature, based on Richards’ theory,
which came to be known as New Criticism. Basically, New Criticism holds that a literary
work is to be studied independently of all factors except “the work itself.” Evaluation and
interpretation are based on close reading of the text and analysis of the parts of the work,
including structure, imagery, setting, plot, point of view, style, conflict, etc. The author’s
biography was no longer an issue. Later, Brooks and Warren edited Understanding Fiction
and Understanding Poetry; these three books served as the cornerstones of New Criticism,
which created a shift in thinking about literature, which was widely influential for decades
afterwards.
As an English major, then instructor at LSU, who took and taught most of my classes in Allen
Hall, I was ever aware of LSU’s literary heritage, for the offices of the Southern Review were
in the basement of Allen. I walked by those offices daily and later became involved with the
Southern Review through working with one of its editors, renowned American poet Dave
Smith. Later, I worked closely with the creative writing program as assistant director. No
wonder, then, that my co-editor Nolde Alexius and I decided to honor LSU’s historic place in
our nation’s literary tradition. Our book, Best of LSU Fiction, is a tribute to the great men and
women of the past and present who have established LSU, and by extension Baton Rouge, as
one of the nation’s literary capitols.
Sources
Alexius, Nolde, and Judy Kahn, eds. Best of LSU Fiction. Baton Rouge: The Southern Review,
2010. Print.
Brooks, Cleanth, John Thibaut Purser, and Robert Penn Warren. An Approach to Literature.
Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1936. Print.
Cutrer, Thomas W. The Southern Review and the Baton Rouge Literary Community, 19351942. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1984. Print.
Heilman, Robert Bechtold. The Southern Connection. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 1985. Print.