This essay discusses notes sent by “patriotic Georgians” in response to an article about the state’s “arrested cultural development,” including one boasting that Coca-Cola is from Georgia. For 10 points each:
[10m] Name this essay in which H. L. Mencken accuses the South of being just as “sterile, artistically, intellectually, culturally” as the titular desert.
ANSWER: “The Sahara of the Bozart”
[10h] Mencken names this Virginian as the only “Southern prose writer who can actually write.” The fictional land of Poictesme appears in his cycle Biography of the Life of Manuel, which includes a fantasy novel about a pawnbroker.
ANSWER: James Branch Cabell (The fantasy novel is Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice.)
[10e] In response to Mencken, the Southern Agrarians published the essay collection I’ll Take My Stand. Among the authors was this man, who based his character Willie Stark on Louisiana governor Huey Long.
ANSWER: Robert Penn Warren (Stark appears in All the King’s Men.)
<American Literature>