The Food of a Younger Land Read Online Free PDF Page A

presenting a signed note from a white friend stating, “Please let this niggar boy have the following books.” Now, as he approached his thirties while working for the FWP, the blossoming of his career seemed an irresistible force. Most of the senior FWP editors were certain of it. He entered four short stories titled Uncle Tom’s Children into a competition and won a $500 prize. With that money he faded from FWP to finish Native Son. With Alsberg’s help he won a Guggenheim grant. In 1940 Native Son was published and made Wright a literary star. But unlike Algren, Cheever, and many of the others, he always acknowledged a debt to the FWP for nurturing him.
    Even Alsberg himself was removed, replaced by John D. Newsom, who, the reverse of his predecessor, had a reputation for getting things done but not for literary judgment.
    Many of the greats and future greats were gone by the time America Eats copy started flowing in 1940. The writers were not eager for new projects. Stetson Kennedy recalled, “Washington kept cooking up these sidelines. America Eats was one of those sidelines.” Nor were all the state directors enthusiastic. The Tennessee state director called Kellock’s proposal “unusually uninspiring.”
    Lyle Saxon of New Orleans was placed in charge of the final editing of the project, something that never took place. Saxon had been considered a great catch for the FWP. As director of the Louisiana Writers’ Project, he was a logical choice to be in charge of America Eats . He had been one of the few directors who had been able to turn in guidebooks clean enough and good enough for a final edit. His New Orleans Guide was considered the model guidebook, a local bestseller that is still read and referred to in New Orleans. In 1926 his short story “Cane River” had won an O. Henry Prize, and he was immediately hailed as the next great voice from the South. In the 1920s, while Saxon was working on the Times-Picayune , he hosted late-night salons with William Faulkner, Sherwood Anderson, and other celebrated literati in his French Quarter home. In 1937 his novel Children of Strangers , about mulattoes in northern Louisiana, was acclaimed by critics as the new great southern novel. He never fulfilled that promise, but he is still remembered in New Orleans for the New Orleans Guide, some of his Louisiana legends that are still in print, and for having been a character in the celebrated French Quarter literary scene. It is his nonfiction for which he is known today in New Orleans, and America Eats probably would have been one of his enduring accomplishments. Although a flagrant anti-Semite—he once wrote “a good massacre would do New York no end of good. It is now the largest Jewish city in the world”—he considered himself a great friend of “the Negro” and worked hard for a black presence in FWP work.
    Saxon was supposed to produce an overall essay on the South and then the other four regional directors were to be given it as a model. In addition, each region was to present a few “detailed descriptions of special eating occasions.” The coverage of each region was to be two thirds the essay and about one third the shorter pieces.
     
     
     
    B y 1941 several publishers, including Houghton Mifflin, which Lyle Saxon preferred, and Harper & Brothers, had expressed interest in publishing America Eats.
    The deadline for all copy was the end of Thanksgiving week 1941. On December 3 a gentle reminder that the deadline had passed was sent out. Four days later the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Suddenly there was a panic to try to complete the project before the FWP was shut down. In the weeks following the December 7, 1941, attack, a flurry of letters went out from Washington to the states urging them to get in their copy before they were overrun by the war and to give progress reports on America Eats in light of “the present emergency.” One such letter to the Massachusetts Project on December 26,