Northshore Authors Vol. 2: Non-Fiction Writers

by Ann Gilbert

While some readers look for escape in fiction, others, believe it or not, mostly enjoy non-fiction, such as biography and history. Non-fiction can offer the same escape—remember, “Truth can be stranger than fiction.” We are swept up and transported to other places and other times, and into mental, physical and psychological conflicts in personal memoirs or engaging histories such as Stephen Ambrose’s “Undaunted Courage” or John Barry’s “Rising Tide.”

In this issue, we bring you intriguing local histories by SLU’s Sam Hyde; the underwater denizens of the Gulf of Mexico as revealed by Jerald Horst; and John Kemp’s look at the mesmerizing work of photographer Julia Sims and artists Alan Flattmann and Rolland Golden, all of which will definitely give you a post-holiday lift.

Sam Hyde

Southeastern Louisiana University professor Sam Hyde achieved a bit of international fame upon publication of his book, “Pistols and Politics,” when the New York Times noted “its significance.” He was on national television with Anderson Cooper and received calls from around the world.

Aspiring writers are told to write about what they know, and Hyde did just that in “Pistols and Politics.” Growing up in Amite, he was surrounded by stories of the early, violent days of Tangipahoa Parish.

“It had the highest rural homicide rate at the close of the Reconstruction, more than any other place in the United States,” says Hyde, sitting behind his desk in his campus office. The notorious Appalachian feud of the McCoys and the Hatfields, with 12 murders, had nothing on the Florida Parish feuds, in which there were 133 murders.

The killings were mostly because of feuds based on another interesting aspect of early Tangipahoa Parish history. The eight parishes called “Florida” were governed by the French, Spanish, British and American, and they gave out conflicting land grants, says Hyde. The book, which was his dissertation, describes this and other political and social conditions contributing to that culture of violence. His second work, “A Fierce and Fractious Frontier,” is a collection of essays on the same topic.

Published about 10 years ago, “Pistols and Politics,” still reverberates. The defense attorneys in a California capital murder case are using Hyde’s book in their appeal to get the sentence of their client reduced from death to life in prison. They will try to prove their client was shaped by the lawlessness of the parish where he lived for 11 years.

Hyde has edited two collections of essays: “Plain Folk of the South Revisited” and “Sunbelt Revolution,” which covers the civil rights struggle in the Gulf South from 1866 to 2000. He also co-authored a small paperback book on the destruction of the Manchac swamp. His next book will be on the colonial period in this area, covering the early 1700s through 1820. It will include Andrew Jackson’s passage through St. Tammany on the way to meet the British in the Battle of New Orleans.

As this interview began, Hyde was proofing the manuscript of his current project, the memoir of a Civil War general, Halbert Paine of Wisconsin, who wrote his impressions of the Florida Parishes before and after the war.

Talking to Hyde about history is no dull discourse. He just overflows with enthusiasm for his subject matter, as would a little boy. His eyes are filled with wonder. When he gets up from behind his desk to pull a book off a shelf, he does so in sock feet.

Hyde is director of the Center for Southeastern Louisiana Studies at SLU, which researches the social, political and cultural development and history of the region. He also manages the SLU archives, which is the depository for 900 collections (diaries and letters, among other things) having to do with the Florida Parishes.

Managing the center is just about a fulltime job, but Hyde teaches one course a semester, either ancient China or Southern/regional history. He oversees the center’s production of films, which can be seen on SLU’s Channel 18. “Reluctant America” won a silver medal at the New York International Film Festival.

The center is already planning how to celebrate the bicentennial of the West Florida Revolt, when, for 74 short days, those eight parishes were an independent country. Texas copied the Lone Star Flag that flew over the West Florida Republic.

“Almost every day people call to say thank you for writing about this area,” Hyde says. “It has an exciting and peculiar history.”

Jerald Horst

To call “Angler’s Guide to the Fishes of the Gulf of Mexico” a reference book is to deny the magnificent color illustrations that fill every page. This tome is a work of art, thanks to artist Duane Raver of North Carolina. Though small in size, this book is beautiful enough to be on the coffee table for the whole family to enjoy and learn about the denizens of the deep off the coast of Louisiana.

Jerald Horst’s primary purpose in writing the guide is to answer any and all questions a commercial or recreational fisherman might have about what is on the end of his line. Horst includes essential information on identification, habitat, size and even food value. Contributing to the project was Mike Lane of Metairie. Horst lives in Franklinton.

He writes in what he calls a “lay-person-friendly” style and maybe with an unintentional sense of humor. For example, “Sharks retain urea in their bodies and spoil quickly. Eviscerate before icing to avoid the wet diaper odor in the flesh.” The more an angler knows about his quarry, the more successful and rewarding his pursuit will be, Horst says. The book provides detailed biology. Illustrations are used rather than photographs, because, “As strange as it seems, photography cannot capture all the diagnostic features. Illustrations are much better for identification.” The 206 fish each get a two-page spread in the book, and that does not include every species in the Gulf.

Horst is one of the few LSU faculty members to have been named full professor without a Ph.D. Recently retired, he actually spent little time in the classroom, and was found mostly on boats or in seafood processing plants. His field was fisheries, and the scientist spent his university career interpreting research for the commercial fishermen so they could better manage the supply. When he lectured, it was at clinics, workshops and seminars to sportsmen and commercial fishermen.

“When one approaches fisheries, there are a seemingly endless number of options on harvest sizes, numbers, allocations, seasons and gear allowed,” Horst explains. “For each option, there are pros and cons, and many of the choices can produce serious negatives for the fish or the fisherman.”

Horst’s strong opinions come through during the interview: “Commercial fishermen are being choked to death by regulation. Recreational fishermen don’t understand the scrutiny they get from those who think blood sports are barbaric.” And last but not least, “Consumers are still woefully ignorant of where their seafood comes from or the threats to the supply.”

Horst grew up far from the sea in southwestern North Dakota, and entered first grade speaking only German. Moving to West Feliciana in junior high, he says, “I never listened in class, preferring to daydream about fishing in Bayou Sara or Thompson’s Creek.” He wrote a fisheries management newsletter for 30 years and was a columnist for The Times Picayune for 10 years.

While Horst still has a houseboat in the Atchafalaya Basin, where he enjoys catching brim, these days you will mostly find him wearing jean overalls and a straw hat at his country place near Franklinton. He maintains a huge garden, a fruit orchard, a tiny vineyard, a berry patch and cattle to provide beef for the table.

He says, “I do indeed like to cook and enjoy food travel. We have a professional kitchen in our home and I use it a lot—but I fish only enough for food. I actually don’t like catch-and-release sport fishing, as the thought of inflicting unnecessary pain is repugnant to me.”

John Kemp

John Kemp is a prolific writer. He has 10 books under his belt.

Five are on historic Southern figures—scholarly tomes that were written when he was curator at the Louisiana State Museum. His subjects included child labor photographer Lewis Hine, whose work led to child labor laws after he photographed children in oyster and shrimp factories with bleeding hands.

Kemp’s books are now of a lighter fare. In the last 12 years, he has written lengthy essays for four magnificent art books, which now grace coffee tables across the Deep South. Kemp and nature photographer Julia Sims have found a successful partnership. Although it took a year to get an appointment with LSU Press to present their idea for a book, they were finally invited. The staff was gathered, and Kemp and Sims showed her slides. “We got a contract that day,” he says with restrained pride. “It was gratifying not to hear, ‘We’ll call you.’”

They have produced two books, and another is due out this year. “Manchac Swamp” has the distinction of being one of the best sellers at LSU Press and is in its fifth printing, now with Pelican Press in Gretna. “Vanishing Paradise” is about the old family duck camps in the marshes of South Louisiana. In “Solace of Nature,” Sims shoots wilderness Louisiana and the mountains of the American West and Canada. She is open and frank about how nature brought her comfort during difficult times in her life.

After writing many feature stories on artists for various publications, Kemp says it was a natural progression to do books on them. “It was the next logical step.”

“Rolland Golden: The Journeys of a Southern Artist,” also by Pelican, is a retrospective of that Folsom artist, who is moving to Natchez, Miss., after closing his French Quarter gallery in the wake of the storm. Highways and byways are favorite subjects of this painter, who says, “I like driving them, and I like painting them.” Golden calls some of his work “borderline surreal, meaning that it is possible, but not likely.” He juxtaposes spotted cows with checkers, and fallen leaves with skyscraper windows at sunset.

“Alan Flattmann’s French Quarter Impressions” reveals the many personalities of that historic neighborhood as painted by Flattmann, who lives in Covington, but travels around the world to paint. Flattmann says he has had a lifelong love affair with the Quarter. He is poetic in his pastel renderings of that historic district. Pelican Press also published this work.

For each of these books, Kemp introduces the artist to the reader in prose that flows. He reveals to us their discerning eyes. We learn how the painters and the photographer approach their work, what inspires them and what they hope to achieve through their art. Kemp sidesteps naming his favorite book. Instead he suggests, “Like one’s family and friends, each was rewarding and fulfilling for its own reasons.”

Kemp eventually left the scholarly historical research at the state museum—he has a master’s in history—for more contemporary writing at a daily newspaper. “I thought I wanted to be a political reporter.” He quit that daily grind for life in academia with a staff of nine. It gave him more time to write those feature articles he enjoys doing for publications such as Louisiana Life and Country Roads.

Kemp is a tireless writer. Even when he worked at full-time jobs, such as public relations director for Southeastern in Hammond for 14 years, he wrote regular art criticism for The Times Picayune and for three national art magazines. Art is still a major subject of his creative endeavors. He reviews the art scene for the WYES television “Stepping Out” show on Fridays, where he’s been a TV panelist with host Peggy LaBorde for 20 years.

Research for his books has taken Kemp and his wife, Betty, from Jackson Hole, Wyo., where Sims has a mountain cabin, to the streets of New York City, where he observed Golden photographing subject matter. Kemp had to watch where he stepped when he followed Sims into the swamp to interview the grizzled old men who trap, hunt and live in the hidden recesses of nature. He and his wife particularly recall the travels about the state to small towns, where they soaked up the charm and ambience, so he could extol the virtues of the restored architecture, quaint shops and unique festivals in magazines.

Today, as deputy director of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, he is managing editor of the LEH award-winning magazine, Louisiana Cultural Vistas, writing and editing articles on every aspect of this state’s history, architecture and the arts. And he still finds the time to introduce us to the outstanding artists of our area in books of lasting value.