Though, due to a lack of interest, these attempts at publishing proved unsuccessful for Williams. Williams originally intended for his manuscript, along with the corresponding photographs taken by his most frequent road warriors Roger Manley and Guy Mendes, to be published at the time he wrote the aforementioned note. Image courtesy of the artist and Institute 193. Roger Manley, Lonnie Holley, Birmingham, AL, 1987. Through poems, photographs, and prose, Williams’ travelogues described and showcased the talents of a region not dissimilar from the one we know today-a place and identity built on contradiction and societal complexities hospitable and unwelcoming, sacred and profane. Names on this list include Thornton Dial, Lonnie Holley, Howard Finster, Martha Nelson, Sister Gertrude Morgan, and Little Enis, among others. In 1992, Jonathan Williams wrote the Editor’s Note of his proposed book Walks to the Paradise Garden, writing, “We’re talking about a South that is both celestial and chthonian.” 1 Williams-an American poet, founder of the Jargon Society, and Black Mountain College member-wrote this statement to preface his uniquely personal documentation of over eighty artists and eccentrics from the American South. A Lowdown Southern Odyssey // A Reexamination of Self-Taught Artists in the American South
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