Chapter 3 is devoted to the film-related activities of southern literary figures. From nineteenth-century writers including Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe (not a southerner by birth, but, as author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a huge influence on southern literary history) to modern figures like Thomas Dixon, William Faulkner, Lillian Hellman, and the Nashville Agrarians, the southern literary tradition made myriad contributions to film. Faulkner’s screenwriting work provides perhaps the most engaging example. Meanwhile, the efforts of African American writers to make similar contributions were limited by the hard facts of Jim Crow, leaving such important figures as Richard Wright and Langston Hughes, among many others, to generate their own opportunities, often abroad, in a far more uneven fashion. Black film critics like Lester A. Walton also emerged as important literary figures.
Theorising Things, Building Worlds: Why the New Materialisms Deserve Literary Imagination