# Greater number of authors in the American South per capita? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 8, 2014, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greater-number-of-authors-in-the-american-south-per-capita/692658 "2014-07-08T18:25:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2014, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greater-number-of-authors-in-the-american-south-per-capita/692658/21 "2014-07-11T13:21:01Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > No matter how you slice it, for any given year for most of the 20th century, there were more writers, more famous writers, and more great writers living in New York City than in the rest of the country combined. It’s probably true today as well, since Brooklyn is the epicenter of hip authordom. > > Whether it should be true or not, it becomes true by sheer dint of self-promotion by New York media of New York artists. No other media counts, and if writers want to be great then they should live in New York like the rest of the great world. But actually irrelevant to the thread–we’ll go straight to that instead of asking you to substantiate what would prove to be an impossible to substantiate opinion. The point (one I find flawed to start with), is about the author’s origins, not where they live while writing. Several of the famous Southern writers were living in New York City when they were published. NYC attracts people from all over the country (as do a few other large cities like San Francisco, Chicago, Houston in the last 20 years etc), but it says little about what this thread is talking about. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2014, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greater-number-of-authors-in-the-american-south-per-capita/692658/22 "2014-07-11T15:01:42Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > Several of the famous Southern writers were living in New York City when they were published. The aforementioned Carson McCullers and William Styron lived and worked for a long time in Brooklyn. Their work was no less “Southern” for all that. For that matter, several great Irish writers spent much/most of their lives abroad. Samuel Beckett lived and worked mostly in France, James Joyce mostly in Switzerland, Frank O’COnnor mostly in New York. Would anyone argue they weren’t Irish writers even so? ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2014, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greater-number-of-authors-in-the-american-south-per-capita/692658/23 "2014-07-11T15:29:19Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > But actually irrelevant to the thread–we’ll go straight to that instead of asking you to substantiate what would prove to be an impossible to substantiate opinion. The point (one I find flawed to start with), is about the author’s origins, not where they live while writing. Several of the famous Southern writers were living in New York City when they were published. > > NYC attracts people from all over the country (as do a few other large cities like San Francisco, Chicago, Houston in the last 20 years etc), but it says little about what this thread is talking about. Yes and no. I hope it’s obvious I was being sarcastic about NY’s self-image, but its literary history is entirely unrivaled overall in this country. Other cities or regions may have pronounced a small but noticeable cadre at times but even at their peaks they could not top NY for numbers. The quote the OP gave was “the American South was the place to look for the highest concentration of outstanding authors.” That is nonsense. astorian’s fairly comprehensive list is a century’s worth of Southern writers, meaning that at any given time the concentration was minimal. New York encouraged a concentration of writers the way Los Angeles today encourages a concentration of actors. It had the vast majority of the top publications, a near monopoly of the top publishing houses, and a plethora of lower-end jobs for people to work at while they wrote their masterpiece. You went to NY because others who were like you were already there. Being among like minds is important, and who you know is as essential in writing as in every other field. Once established you might very well move out of the city but a constant stream of fresh talent was already moving in to take your place. Authors do tend to write about what they know, and their local or ethnic upbringings are powerfully represented in their future fiction. Even so I’m not an enthusiast of the school that attributes everything to origin; too many exceptions appear too consistently for it to be more than cherrypicking and special pleading. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2014, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greater-number-of-authors-in-the-american-south-per-capita/692658/24 "2014-07-11T21:19:53Z")
Right, and that’s mostly irrelevant to the discussion, though. Yeats would be considered an Irish author regardless of if he moved abroad after his formative years, same for someone like William Faulkner. I don’t actually think there’s any evidence particular localities and their homogeneity produce more authors or high quality writing. But I don’t think the fact that thousands of mostly forgotten authors from all over the country moved to work in New York means New York itself produces authors at a rate disproportionate to its size in relative to the rest of the country. Not anymore than New York produces more stock brokers and financial guys (it doesn’t, it just employs more of them, being the point.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greater-number-of-authors-in-the-american-south-per-capita/692658.md?page=1)