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Jewish World Review March 2, 2011 / 26 Adar I, 5771 A Sense of Place By Paul Greenberg
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | That most Southern of phrases, "a sense of place," came up at a gathering the other evening. It elicited only a quizzical expression from one of the guests, who seemed to think it referred to her neighborhood. Of course she had a sense of place. Why, she'd lived there for eight years. And before that? A succession of places, all of which she left vague. I was at a loss. I so often am. About so many things. Among them, how do you explain a sense of place to someone so unburdened (and unblessed) by one? It is more than a geographical designation, a sense of place. It has to do with identity, with roots sunk deep not just in the land but in the language and look and feel, and maybe death, of a place. Faulkner may have said it best, as usual, maybe as always, when he said he realized early on that he could write for a lifetime and never exhaust all the possibilities of his "little postage stamp of native soil." Others may be deaf to the music of their place. They may even go from one coast to another and remain unchanged, not ever having acquired a sense of place to change. They mystify those whose sense of place is obdurate, understood, so natural there is no need to mention it. Indeed, to dwell on it would be a kind of bad taste, like spelling out the obvious. Someone with a sense of place will be full of grief and longing if he must leave it, or sometimes even if he must stay, whether he expresses it or not. Faulkner was able to make his fictional, but certainly not false, Yoknapatawpha County a whole world. Because it was a whole world -- to him, or to anyone who knows what a sense of place is. As for those who don't, they inspire a bottomless pity among those who do. The way anyone homeless would, however rich he might be in material things. But you don't want to get into all that, and appear not sympathetic but condescending. Someone with a sense of place, all-informing and always present, like the man of one great book, is someone to be reckoned with -- anchored, secure, steady no matter which way the wind blows. In place. He may move, but he will not be moved. All of which came to mind on pondering the death of Reynolds Price, the Southern novelist. To call him a Southern novelist is not to limit his scope or his appeal or his power, not in the least, but only to describe their source. Which was and is a sense of place. Perhaps that is what, during his recurring bouts with a paralyzing illness, sustained him most. If Faulkner's world was a He would start from a spot on the map ( "Just with his body and from inside like a snake, leaning that black motorcycle side to side, cutting in and out of the slow line of cars to get there first, staring due-north through goggles towards Wow. Now that's what a sense of place will do for a writer. Or a reader. Or anyone. An understanding is established right off. It can happen even wordlessly, just with a look, a gesture, perhaps not even that. Just a shared presence. I noticed it in the Reynolds Price.
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