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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2009
In late March, 1977, in the midst of mocking jabs at the televised Nixon interviews, the U.S. Postal service, and genetic engineering, Chicago Tribune cartoonist Wayne Stayskal fired off one quick frame on the plight of newly elected President Jimmy Carter's hometown of Plains, Georgia. The cartoon presented a group of typically chunky, grinning Stayskal characters awkwardly bumping along with a pack of hounds before a solitary wooden shanty labeled “PLAINS.” As they jog along, the guide looks back from his straining hounds to drawl, “Hot dang… th'ar on Billy's trail ag'in folks!” Stayskal's cartoon clearly stemmed from a front page article in the Tribune of the previous day. Entitled “Tourists, Fear Rout Billy Out of Plains,” the story explained how fear for his family's safety in the suddenly popular small town had finally forced Billy Carter to move to an even more remote location several miles away. Yet while this was quite obviously the impetus behind this cartoon, the short notice of Billy's intended retreat from Plains was actually just one of many media references to the changing character of the town in the wake of his older brother's victories at the polls. Beginning in the spring of the previous year as Jimmy Carter suddenly emerged to gain the Democratic presidential nomination, Plains had risen just as rapidly to become the most famous small town in America. And at the peak of its early notoriety in 1977, Roger Brown characterized what this really meant for the town in a complex painting entitled Two Couples Viewing the Spectacle of Erosion at Providence Canyon Near Plains, Georgia (figure 1).
1 Stayskal, Wayne, “Hot Dang,…” Chicago Tribune, 31 03 1977, III, 2Google Scholar.
2 “Tourists, Fear Rout Billy Out of Plains,” Chicago Tribune, 30 03 1977, 1Google Scholar.
3 “Imagist” was a term coined by Chicago critic Franz Schulze to refer to a far wider range of post-war Chicago artists. See Schulze, Franz, Fantastic Images: Chicago Art Since 1945 (Chicago: Follett Publishing Company, 1972)Google Scholar. Eventually, the term “Chicago Imagist” became more commonly associated with the specific group emerging in the later sixties. The literature on this group is extensive, but especially useful introductions may be found in the following exhibition catalogs: Made In Chicago (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1974)Google Scholar; Who Chicago? (Sunderland, England: Sunderland Arts Centre, 1980)Google Scholar; Some Recent Art From Chicago (Chapel Hill: Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina, 1980)Google Scholar; and The Chicago Imagist Print: Ten Artists' Works, 1958–1987 (Chicago: The David and Alfred Smart Gallery, University of Chicago, 1987)Google Scholar. Specific information on Brown may be found in catalogs of two major retrospective exhibitions: Kahan, Mitchell Douglas, Roger Brown (Montgomery, Alabama: Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, 1980)Google Scholar; and Lawrence, Sidney, Roger Brown (Washington, D.C.: The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, 1987)Google Scholar. Also very useful are Benezra, Neal, Ed Paschke, exh. cat. (Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1990)Google Scholar; and Bowman, Russell, Jim Nutt, exh. cat. (Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Milwaukee Art Museum, 1994)Google Scholar.
4 Adrian, Dennis, “Disasters and Catastrophes from Brown's Anxious Brush,” Chicago Daily News, (6–7 01 1973), 29Google Scholar.
5 Bowman, Russell, “An Interview with Roger Brown,” Art In America, 66 (01–02, 1978), 107Google Scholar.
6 “Too Much Hoopla in Plains Even for the Carters,” U.S. News & World Report, 82 (11 04 1977), 95Google Scholar; and Williams, John A., “Changing Times in Plains,” Reader's Digest, 111 (07, 1977), 134Google Scholar.
7 Ichniowski, Thomas, “Just Plain Plains, or ‘Born AGain’?” America, 135 (23 10 1976), 251Google Scholar. For good accounts likening Plains to a movie set, see Angelo, Bonnie, “No Longer a Way Station,” Time, 108 (15 11 1976), 26Google Scholar; and Reeves, Richard, “American Journal: There's a Smile on Plains' Face for the Whole Human Race,” New York, 9 (26 07 1976), 80Google Scholar.
8 Blount, Roy Jr, Crackers: This Whole Many-Angled Thing of Jimmy, More Carters, Ominous Little Animals, Sad-Singing Women, My Daddy and Me (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980), 60Google Scholar.
9 King, Larry L., “We Ain't Trash No More,” Esquire, 126 (11 1976), 155Google Scholar. See also Murphy, Reg, “The South as the New America,” Saturday Review, 3 (4 09 1976), 8–11Google Scholar.
10 Keefe, Katharine Lee, “A Conversation,” in Some Recent Art From Chicago, 24Google Scholar.
11 On Brown's visit, see Bourdon, David, “About Town: Three To Picture,” Village Voice (10 10 1977), 76Google Scholar.
12 See Kahan, , Roger Brown, 9Google Scholar.
13 See Corn, Wanda, Grant Wood: The Regionalist Vision, exh. cat. (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press for The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 1983), 83Google Scholar.
14 Dennis, James M., Grand Wood: A Study in American Art and Culture (New York: The Viking Press, 1975), 114–16, 240, n. 13Google Scholar; and Corn, , Grand Wood, 85Google Scholar.
15 Dennis, , Grant Wood, 114Google Scholar.
16 For the most comprehensive account of this rapid commercial expansion — what he terms the “greening of Plains” — see Hyatt, Richard, The Carters of Plains (Huntsville, Alabama: The Strode Publishers, Inc., 1977), 171–85Google Scholar.
17 See, for example, the photos appearing in the early account of “Where Carter Comes From,” Newsweek, 87 (3 05 1976), 18–20Google Scholar.
18 Carter, Jimmy, Why Not the Best? (1975; reprint ed., New York: Bantam Books, 1976), 7Google Scholar.
19 Ibid., 11.
20 Marshall Frady quoted Carter as saying “I've really made an effort to define what it is that happens to me when I go home, because I think it's important to understand that process if I'm going to completely understand myself.” See Frady, Marshall, Southerners: A Journalist's Odyssey (New York: The New American Library, 1980), 351Google Scholar.
21 Robertson, James Oliver, American Myth, America Reality (New York: Hill & Wang, 1980), 223Google Scholar.
22 One source pointed out that this was precisely the solid base sought by virtually all of the candidates in the presidential primaries of 1976. See Sidney, Hugh, “Why Small-Town Boys Make Good,” Time, 107 (24 05 1976), 16Google Scholar.
23 “Where Carter Comes From,” 18.
24 Cummings, Joseph B. Jr, “Plains Tries to Adjust,” Newsweek, 88 (19 07 1976), 32Google Scholar; and Seneker, Harold, “Will Celebrity Spoil Plains, Ga.? It Already Has,” Forbes, 119 (15 01 1977), 29Google Scholar.
25 Seneker, “Will Celebrity Spoil Plains, Ga.?,” 29, On the escalation of these problems, see (in chronological order) Cummings, “Plains Tries to Adjust,” 32; Reeves, “American Journal,” 80; “Boom in Carter's Home Town,” U.S. News & World Report, 81 (2 08 1976), 14Google Scholar; Ichniowski, “ Just Plain Plains, or ‘Born Again’?” 251; Angelo, “No Longer a Way Station,” 26; “When a Sleepy Town Plays Host to Georgia White House,” U.S. News & World Report, 81 (22 11 1976), 25–26Google Scholar; Williams, Dennis A., Cumming, Joseph B. Jr, “The Plague of Plains,” Newsweek, 88 (10 12 1976), 24Google Scholar; “Say Goodbye to Poor Plains,” Time, 109 (4 04 1977), 14–15Google Scholar; “Too Much Hoopla in Plains Even for the Carters,” 84–85; and Boeth, Richard, Clift, Eleanor, and DeFrank, Thomas M., “The Pain in Plains,” Newsweek, 90 (15 08 1977), 16–17Google Scholar.
26 “Plains Tries to Adjust,” 32.
27 “Say Goodbye to Poor Plains,” 14.
28 Ibid., 15; and Seneker, “Will Celebrity Spoil Plains, Ga.?” 30.
29 Glad, Betty, Jimmy Carter: In Search of the Great White House (New York: Norton, 1980), 396Google Scholar.
30 “Say Goodbye to Poor Plains,” 15.
31 “The Plague of Plains,” 24.
32 “Say Goodbye to Poor Plains,” 14.
33 In the early stages of Plains's transformation, Billy's enterprises seemed to flourish from the increased attention. Some estimated his annual income from public appearances alone approached $500,000. Soon, however, his high profile led to problems with Internal Revenue Service audits, special inspections by the Federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and what he claimed was a “ set-up ” charge of violating Georgia State liquor regulations. See “Billy Carter Talks About All the Money He's Making,” U.S. News & World Report, 83 (29 08 1977), 33–35Google Scholar; and Blount, , Crackers, 89–110, 121–132Google Scholar.
34 The two figures standing in the fields immediately to the left of the residential area recall the Canadian speculators Billy Carter mentioned when describing to an interviewer how he was forced to change his plans for building next door to his older brother's house: Before Jimmy started running for President three years ago, I bought the land that surrounds his house. I was going to build there, because we had outgrown the house we lived in, and it was 60 years old. But after Jimmy got elected, a bunch of Canadians bought the land that adjoins it and announced they were going to open up an amusement park called “Jimmy's Backyard.” It was going to come within 150 feet of where we were going to build the house. See “Billy Carter Talks About All the Money He's Making,” 34.
35 “Say Goodbye to Poor Plains,” 15.
36 Even in this happy resolution, it should be pointed out, the true depth of the catastrophe for Grandville residents is identified by one man in words very like those of Carter's sister, Gloria, when she likens the disruptions of Plains to those of a broken family. Explaining why he intends to support all efforts to revive the town, the man says quite simply, “I feel as if my own family's breakin' up — and I don't like it.”
37 Walters, quoted in Hyatt, , The Carters of Plains, 182Google Scholar; Carter quoted in “The Plagues of Plains,” 24.
38 Calhoun, Richard J. and Hill, Robert W., James Dickey (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1983), 111Google Scholar.
39 Marin, Daniel B., “James Dickey's Deliverance: Darkness Visible,” in James Dickey: The Expansive Imagination, ed. Calhoun, Richard J. (DeLand, Florida: Everett/Edwards, Inc., 1973), 109Google Scholar.
40 Dickey, James, Deliverance (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970), 121, 139, 150–51Google Scholar. Dickey's novel was adapted for the screen by producer-director John Boorman for Warner Communications Company in 1972 (starring John Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox as the four Atlanta suburbanites). Unfortunately, in the film the river gorge never assumes the power it has in the novel. Although the canoists travel through rough water surrounded by high stone banks, the characters and their responses to the ordeal are the clear focus.
41 Dickey, quoted in Calhoun, and Hill, , James Dickey, 111Google Scholar. For a more elaborate explanation by Dickey, see Arnett, David L., “An Interview with James Dickey,” Contemporary Literature, 16 (Summer, 1975), 286CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
42 See Lawrence, , Roger Brown, 102Google Scholar.
43 Corn, , Grant Wood: The Regionalist Vision, 82Google Scholar. For the most complete analysis of Wood's painting, see Nash, Anedith, “Death on the Ridge Road: Grant Wood and Modernization in the Midwest,” Prospects: The Annual of American Cultural Studies, 8 (1983), 281–301CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Nash also suggests that the very site of the impending crash, on one of the old “ridge roads” of the region, seems an important factor in establishing this as a clash between modern forces and “values from the American rural past” (287).
44 Patton, Phil, Open Road: A Celebration of the American Highway (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986), 66Google Scholar.
45 See Furnas, J. C., “– An Sudden Death,” Reader's Digest, 27 (08 1935), 21–26Google Scholar; and “Crusading Realism,” Time, 26 (30 09 1935), 53Google Scholar.
46 See Nash, , “Death on the Ridge Road,” 285, 289Google Scholar.
47 Kahan, , Roger Brown, 12Google Scholar.
48 See Lawrence, , Roger Brown, 104Google Scholar.
49 Elizabeth Brown quoted in Hugh Wilson, “ About Town: Former Opelikan Big Time Artist,” unidentified newsclipping from box on verso of Autobiography in the Shape of Alabama (Mammy's Door), collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.
50 “Several years ago,” Brown recalled in this autobiographical document, “I tried tracing down a box of glass plates which I remember discovering in my great grandmother's attic — but to no avail. The box had been returned to the attic and disappeared — perhaps destroyed when the house was torn down when Mammy (my great grandmother) died in 1963.” Brown, “Autobiography,” MS from box on verso of Autobiography in the Shape of Alabama (Mammy's Door).
51 Ibid.
52 Quoted in Winter, Douglas E., Stephen King: The Art of Darkness (New York: New American Library, 1984), 183Google Scholar.
53 See “Tourists, Fear Rout Billy Out of Plains,” 1.