Answered Prayers, Indeed

Mark amuses by passing along this wire story about Laura Bush's next literary symposium, which will honor a trio of Southern writers: Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, and... Truman Capote. Yes, yes, I know he was born there, I know about The Grass Harp, but let's ask ourselves, do people really associate Tru with the South? I mean, heck, why not just go with Anne Rice? She's more of a "southern writer" than Capote, by just about any standard. (But seriously, picking Capote for a panel on southern writers over, say, Faulkner, just seems weird. Even if you wanted to raise awareness for underappreciated writers, Charles Portis or Walker Percy are waiting in the wings with full southernness intact...)

Dana Gioia, the chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, is to lead the discussion by a panel of contemporary authors: Tom Wolfe will discuss Capote's writings, Bret Lott will talk about O'Connor, and Elizabeth Spencer will present Welty's work.

Which is only fair, since Welty's been kind enough to blurb Spencer in the past.