Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

by John Berendt

too, had become enchanted by Savannah. But after having lived there for eight years, off and on, I had come to understand something of its self-imposed estrangement from the outside world. Pride was part of it. Indifference was too, and so was arrogance. But underneath all that, Savannah had only one motive: to preserve a way of life it believed to be under siege from all sides. It was for this reason that Savannah had discouraged Prudential from establishing its regional headquarters in the city in the 1950s (and why Prudential ended up in Jacksonville instead). It was why Savannah had given Gian Carlo Menotti’s Spoleto U.S.A. Festival the cold shoulder in the 1970s (and why the festival finally settled in Charleston). Savannah was not much interested in what went on outside Savannah. It had little enthusiasm for the popular culture, as headline entertainers like Eric Clapton, Sting, George Carlin, and Gladys Knight and the Pips discovered when they brought their acts to Savannah and found themselves playing to half-empty auditoriums.