My Tears Spoiled My Aim: and Other Reflections on Southern Culture

by John Shelton Reed

The Kansas City Star calls John Shelton Reed "an H. L. Mencken of Dixie." "A writer this funny is dangerous," says the Raleigh News and Observer. Here Reed is in peak form as he takes a hard, often humorous look at a region he claims has created its own quasi-ethnic the American Southerner.
Is the South changing? You bet, says Reed. Industrialism, urbanization, and desegregation are just a few of the things that have changed it almost beyond recognition. In fact, one constant in the South is change. "Those who like their boundaries well defined should not attempt to talk about Southerners, " writes Reed. But for those willing to ask some difficult questions about the life and culture of the elusive Southerner, this is the place to start.
Where is the South? Does it begin at the Mason-Dixon Line or the "Hell, yes!" line - where people begin to answer that way when asked if they're Southerners? Is it where kudzu grows? Or where bourbon is preferred over scotch? How do Southerners come by their reputation for laziness? What happens to Southern ways when Southerners leave the South - or Yankees come to it?
How does the rest of the world perceive Southern women? To address that question Reed examines the Southern belles and good ol' girls who have made it into the page of Playboy. (Sorry, pictures not included.)
In the title piece of this collection, Reed peruses country music lyrics to explore white Southern attitudes toward violence, from more-or-less-traditional homicides - romantic triangles and lovers' quarrels - to brawls that target everything from dogs to vending machines. And he cites his own "My Tears Spoiled My Aim" as one of the great unrecorded country songs of our My tears spoiled my aim; that's why you're not dead. I blew a hole in the wall two feet above the bed. I couldn't see where you were at, my tears were fallin' so. I tried to shoot by ear, but y'all were lyin' low.
Perhaps one of the things that best defines the South is like my favorite pair of blue jeans," says Reed. "it's shrunk some, faded a bit, got a few holes in it. It doesn't look much like it used to, but it's more comfortable, and there's probably a lot of wear left in it." My Tears Spoiled My Aim will leave you chuckling - and reflecting - as one of the most perceptive observers of the South shows that no matter how much it changes, it's still the South.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Southern

168 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1993

Reviews

[Jeremy]

You know how some books are timeless classics, that rise above time bound taste and momentary fashion?

Well, imagine the opposite, and you have this book.

The author seems to be a distinguished scholar of the South, a sociologist to be exact, and it is clear that this book, based on some lighthearted lectures, is not intended to be a work of serious scholarship but something in between that and a Jeff Foxworthy concert (although JF hadn't yet begun issuing his tests for redneckedness when this was written).

There are serious points made, every now and then, that resonate. But the humor almost without exception falls short of funny. There is a quote that he gets to at the end about Southern humor--a great Southern comic says "I don't tell funny stories. I tell stories funny." I think that is what this book is supposed to be. So an entire chapter on Southern woman hood uses 30 years of Playboy playmates to analyze how perceptions of Southern women have changed, though the lens of the remarkably few Southern belles to be Playmates in that period. I am shitting y'all not. I think that was intended to be a story told funny, but it isn't. Another time bound anachronism is the use of the N word. Perfectly permissible in its time, but distracts the modern reader, or at least this one.

I'd give this book a pass, and I wish I had. At least it had the virtue of being short, and the author is gifted at prose that flows.

[Isidore]

An interesting, light, moderately repetitive collection of essays by sociologist Reed, who evinces more of a sense of humour than one expects from members of his profession.

For the most part, he is primarily interested in defining Southern identity, and, in a pleasantly anecdotal way, exploring how the South has struggled to preserve that identity in the face of urbanization, Northern immigration, and the growing power of mass media. The collection dates from 1993, and the essays are earlier still, so his information is not up-to-date, but I don't think the various problems he discusses have changed very much---apart from growing worse.

[Jeremiah Whiteman]

Ideally, I’d give this book a 3.5, but I figured I’d round up.

Although this book is a bit outdated (1994), I found that some of Reed’s information, analysis of it, and correlations that he drew are still true for the most part concerning what the South is, at least in my part of Tennessee. I actually found it helpful for making sense of the community I grew up in and am still in.

If anything, this book may offer as just an amusing read. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it, but I wouldn’t not recommend it either. If you’re interested in the sociology of the South (or sociology in general), then you would probably find this a bit more interesting than most others would.

[Baz]

Read exactly as much as I needed to for class. Not that bad or anything, but because it's a collection of a bunch of different essays that Reed wrote independently of each other and for different occasions he returns to a lot of the same concepts in all of them and it gets repetitive pretty quick.

[Miles Smith]

This is a short but good work on the changing South in the late 20th Century. Reed's tone is conversational, friendly, and whimsical but never frivolous.

[Alex Perdue]

Definitely dated but an entertaining read with the kind of wit I enjoy!

[Richard]

an interesting scholarly social study of what it is to be SOUTHERN.
Didn't you know that Southern OHIO was in the 'SOUTH'???

[valpal]

a bit dated after 15 years, but interesting.