The underground stream : the life and art of Caroline Gordon

Summary: Jonza draws on manuscript drafts and unpublished works and letters by Gordon as well as a significant body of her journalistic writing that was unavailable to earlier biographers. From the journalistic writing, in particular, Jonza concludes that Gordon, despite her demurrals, had a fully developed aesthetic criteria, an appreciation for regional literature, and a passion for the literary life long before her association with Tate. Jonza also identifies simultaneous levels of artistry in much of Gordon's fiction - a surface story advancing conservative, patriarchal values and an "underground stream" of feminist concerns. Acutely aware of gender distinctions and barriers to her success as a writer, Gordon often strove for a prose that was not identifiably female or feminine and that used narratives and narrators molded in the southern masculine tradition.