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I finished S-Town last night around 3 a.m. and I cannot stop thinking about it. John B. McLemore is going to haunt me for a long time to come. Oddly enough, I related to him deeply. Emotionally, we're a lot alike. Some of the circumstances in his life were reflected back to me, albeit in a distorted way, and I saw hidden pieces of myself in him. It was both comforting and scary. For me, who grew up right on the Tennessee/Alabama state line, I've known the people in this story my whole life. I went to school with them. I worked with them. They were my neighbors. The accents, those undeniably southern phrases and inflections, sounded like home to me. All the drama, the death and secrecy, I could have watched unfolding from the front porch of my childhood home. Because I grew up in a Shittown, too. John B. McLemore could have easily been a character in a Flannery O'Connor short story. The south has a habit of spitting out eccentrics like that. And I love them all. They are my soul mates, kindred spirits who have managed to find themselves in the "Christ haunted south" as Flannery would say, among endless monotony, where every dirt road leads to either a high school football game or a Klan rally. You find ways to cope. This whole story just broke my heart to pieces. I don't know what else to say.

#s-town #s town #stown #s-town podcast #john mclemore #john b. mclemore #the south

Article from Elmwood Cemetery. Memphis still has streets, parks, buildings named after Overton, Winchester, Jackson & McLemore. We also still have Nathan Bedford Forest on many things too but he wasn't a founder. For all Memphis cares about it's history (and that's not much) you'd never know any of this.

The City of Memphis is usually said to have been founded by John Overton, James Winchester, and Andrew Jackson. But there was a fourth founder whose name sounds like a holiday and whose story is often forgotten.

John Christmas McLemore is considered the fourth founding father of Memphis. He was not named after the holiday. Christmas was his mother’s maiden name, which was unusual but meaningful. McLemore was born in Orange County, North Carolina, on January 1, 1790. At just 16 years old, he moved to Nashville to study land surveying with his uncle, William Christmas, the Surveyor General of the military district. McLemore trained for five years. When his uncle died, McLemore was appointed to take his place.

McLemore married Elizabeth Donelson, who was Andrew Jackson’s niece. He and Jackson became business partners in several land deals. Before Jackson ran for president, he traded his more than 600 acres of Memphis land to McLemore in exchange for land elsewhere. McLemore then moved to Memphis and focused on selling land and building up the new town.

He also bought land south of Memphis where the old Fort Pickering stood and founded a town there called Fort Pickering. McLemore owned land across West Tennessee, which is why towns like Christmasville (I have a friend whose family was from Christmasville) and McLemoresville still carry his name. He believed strongly in transportation and dreamed of a railroad connecting Memphis to LaGrange. He even offered land for a depot. The Memphis and LaGrange Railway was approved in 1834 but ran out of money before it could be finished. (LaGrange still exist - outside of Memphis city limits)

The failed railroad and the Panic of 1837 cost McLemore much of his wealth. In 1849, he went west to California during the Gold Rush, hoping to start over. After the Civil War began, he returned to Memphis. McLemore died at his daughter’s home in 1864 and is buried in the Chapel Hill section of Elmwood Cemetery. A few years later, in 1868, Fort Pickering was officially made part of the City of Memphis. (Fort Pickering was located in what is the South end of downtown Memphis. I think there's a museum of some kind around there)

#memphis #overton park #james winchester #andrew jackson #john mclemore #elmwood cemetery

After I finished listening to the podcast S-town, I had so many questions. One of those questions was whether or not I considered S-town to truly fit into the category of American Gothic Literature. For something to be gothic, it has to have certain characteristics. This is also true in order for something to be characterized as American.

Some of the characteristics that I associate with gothic works are things like isolation, mystery, and a gothic setting. S-town displays all of these elements, just in a more modern way than we’re used to. John is in a town full of people, but he is mentally isolated. He is the only liberally minded person in his town. No one else seems to see all the problems that he sees within his town and in the world. John focuses in on things like climate change and racism both worldwide and within his town in Alabama. He is alone in his concerns and therefore he is isolated. There is also an element of mystery that is present all throughout the telling of this story. The listener is initially intrigued by the possibility of a murder mystery in a small town in Alabama. Although this initial mystery is quickly solved, the mystery surrounding the life and death of John McLemore soon captures the attention of the listeners. The music in this podcast also adds to the aspect of mystery. The music plays at specific points in order to amplify the feeling during a revealing moment. I’ve attached one of my favorite songs from the podcast that I feel perfectly encapsulates the mysterious sense in the story. Another aspect I noticed while listening to this podcast is the setting. John’s home, when described, sounds almost whimsical. He lives on a large piece of land in Alabama. He has created a large hedge maze in his yard that has 64 possible solutions and two void solutions. He also had a set of tunnels under his house with gates, that Tyler described as “dungeons”. These sort of things make John’s property seem like its straight out of a gothic story.

Another important characterization of this story is how American it truly is. S-town is most certainly targeted at a Northern audience. This affects the characterization of S-town as an “American” story. While it focuses entirely on the south, it seems to have a gawking tone in which the actions of these Southern people are merely observed, rather than understood. Brian tells us about the things that occur in S-town, but he often does not explain why. This journalistic attitude greatly supports the case that this podcast is not really intended for these deep southern listeners. I feel like there are many parts of the podcast that southerners and northerners would have very different takes on. However, maybe this deep-rooted disagreement between the two halves of this country is inherently American. The sort of feud between the north and the south has existed for a large part of the lifetime of America itself.

#stown #shittown #brian reed #john mclemore #american gothic literature

Blog Post 1

For the past three weeks, I've been listening to a podcast called "S-town", similar in style to popular podcasts such as "This American Life" and "Serial". One of the questions that came up during our class discussion on Wednesday was whether or not this work is exploitative of the life of John B. McLemore and the other residents of this so-called Shittown. The story delves into the lives of John and the people that surround him.

One of the key points that stood out to me was the issue brought upon by John's suicide. Following John's death, Brian Reed, an outsider, became the chief narrator of the story. He determined the complete layout of the recordings and decided when in the series to release certain bits of information. One of the problems that arises from this situation is the fact that Brian is not a resident of Bibb County. So how are we to trust that he is being completely unbiased in the telling of this story? Brian could simply be another northerner looking to poke fun at the ways of these backwater people. We as listeners are forced to place our trust in Brian and his journalistic integrity. This becomes increasingly more difficult when we find out new information about John after his death. Brian mentions the time that John told him, off camera, that he identified as a 'semi-homosexual'. This revelation shows that Brian is willing to put the story before the privacy of his 'friend'.

Along with this, we begin to question Brian's intention through his telling of this story. It begins with a standard plot of a murder mystery, but this reaches its resolution in the middle of the second episode. Brian continues the story after John's suicide because he thought there was something suspicious in the way that John's estate was being handled. There seems to be no true plot to the rest of the podcast, which makes it easy for the listener to judge the people and the community in Woodstock, Alabama.

Although I understand that Brian set out to tell a story, he failed to realize that he does not have the permission to do so. John got no say in the editing process of all of the recording and he gets no personal interpretation of the chain of events. John was the narrator of the story and usually when your narrator dies, that' the end. This podcast is beautiful and tragic and intriguing, but it is also sinister and deceptive in it's entirety.

#american gothic literature #john mclemore #brian reed #stown #shittown