Preface

Southern Quarterly, Summer 2003 by Folks, Jeffrey J, Folks, Nancy Summers

RICHARD MARIUS, who died in November 1999, less than six months after his retirement from Harvard, was a passionately committed writer, biographer, and theorist of writing. As the author of The Coming of Rain (novel and play), Bound for the Promised Land, After the War, An Affair of Honor, Thomas More: A Biography, Martin Luther: Christian Between God and Death, A Writer's Companion, and other works, Marius was a significant American writer whose work has not received the scholarly attention it deserves. While one hopes that further publication will be forthcoming from Marius's unpublished papers, the editors believe that now is the proper time to begin an evaluation of his contribution to American letters.

Centered on the town of "Bourbonville," a fictionalized locale based in part on the town of Lenoir City, Tennessee, Marius's novels critique the limitations of the small-town South in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It may be that Richard Marius's fiction can be located within the tradition of American naturalism that includes Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Theodore Dreiser, Willa Gather, and Sherwood Anderson, for a similar examination of rural and small town mores is a central aspect of this tradition. But Marius's particular perspective and style are unique. Like his predecessors, Marius offers a probing analysis of Middle America-of its prejudice and intolerance, its ignorance and superstitiousness, as well as the genuineness and occasional heroism of some of its inhabitants, but his early theological study and reaction against that endeavor, followed by his intellectual development in the field of European cultural history, afforded Marius an especially broad vantage point from which to evaluate the development of American culture.

Richard Marius brought to this task a remarkable range and depth of resources, artistic and philosophical gifts that are eloquently recounted in a number of essays in this collection. Marius's work provides valuable insight into the historical origins and future direction of American society for a nation engaged in momentous debates concerning the global reach of its culture and economy, its evolving multicultural identity, and its commitment to the value of life.

Along with his work as a novelist, Marius produced a substantial body of nonfiction prose, as Carroll Viera's selected bibliography of his writing makes clear. His biographies of Thomas More and Martin Luther, as Glen Bowman shows, are contributions to the genre that, like all biographical writing, are shaped by the assumptions of the times. Marius's nonfiction also includes a thoughtful commentary on the art of writing itself. As Director of Expository Writing at Harvard College, Marius influenced the lives of generations of students, including that of Simon J. Frankel, whose memoir of his friendship with Richard Marius is included in this issue.

The idea of a journal issue devoted to Richard Marius originated with the work of Professor Carroll Viera. The editors would like to acknowledge her pioneering effort as organizer of a South Atlantic Modern Language Association special session on Marius in 1993, as well as her subsequent interest in a journal issue on Marius and her generous assistance to the editors of this issue. We are also grateful for the dedicated work of our contributors, and for the assistance of others interested in Marius's career. Finally, we would like to express appreciation for the interest and encouragement that Professor Noel Polk has shown in this special section.

JEFFREY J. FOLKS is professor of literature at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan. His books include The World Is Our Home (co-edited with Nancy Summers Folks), From Richard Wright to Toni Morrison: Ethics in Modern and Postmodern American Narrative, Remembering James Agee: Second Edition (co-edited with David Madden), Southern Writers at Century's End (co-edited with James Perkins), and Southern Writers and the Machine: Faulkner to Percy.

NANCY SUMMERS FOLKS is a freelance editor with more than thirty years of experience. In addition to literary books and articles, she has edited medical, scientific, and technical publications and other documents that have appeared in books and journals in the United States, Europe, and Japan. She is co-editor (with Jeffrey J. Folks) of The World Is Our Home.