Andrew Nelson Lytle. Born 1902 Murfreesboro, TN. Professor of literature, novelist, actor, farmer. Graduated Vanderbilt University in 1925. I met Mr. Lytle in the summer of of 1977 between my junior and senior years at Sewanee. He had temporarily moved to Kentucky from his home at the Monteagle Assembly in Monteagle, TN to teach Southern literature at UK. He rented a place in Northern Scott County out in the country. Jeff Parr, soon to become Jeffery Parr, M.D. called me and gave me a command to meet him the next day. We were going to meet someone important. Jeff knew Mr. Lytle because they were both members of the Green Ribbon society, one of Sewanee’s many “secret” societies. We headed north on Newtown Pike to a place I still can’t find today. It may have been near Connersville. Northern Scott is hilly and full of cedars and roads that go every which way.
Mr. Lytle was living in a sparse white farmhouse. He put Jeff and me to work mucking his own version of the Augean stables where the manure was like brick. It was hot, and by 4 pm we were done (but not finished) and drinks were served. Weller green label over ice in silver goblets. Never had bourbon tasted so good.
It was at this meeting that Mr. Lytle drew me into his word view, his vision of the universe that I knew intutively was mine and always would be. He believed that man was essentially evil, not good as the humanists say, but could be saved by an acceptance that “Jesus Christ was the only true son of God and died for the sins of mankind”. He was wary of the state, anything corporate, hated gadgets, believed that Vanderbilt lost its soul when president Sarratt declared that Vanderbilt should be about producing “bankers and lawyers, not poets and farmers”. I slept that night knowing that someone had written and spoken for decades that which I believed to be true. It was fearful, but exhilarating.
Mr. Lytle’s major works include “The Velvet Horn”, “The Long Night”, “Bedford Forrest and his Critter Company” and a book of selected essays. He also wrote an essay for “I’ll Take my Stand” which was a manifesto of Southern agrarianism. His work today is considered hopelessly politically incorrect. Probably along with every other work of Southern literature written in the last hundred or more years.
Mr. Lytle told a story about himself. He despised hypocrites and he believed most of the preachers in Murfreesboro to be such. He challenged as many of them as would show up to a preaching duel on the town square. Sort of like Elijah and the prophets of Jezebel. None showed, so he preached himself to a small crowd, including the town prostitutes. He said that by the end he had them all in tears.
I went to Mr. Lytle’s funeral in 1995. It was in the St. Augustine’s chapel at Sewanee. He is buried in the Sewanee Cemetery, along with other founding heroes of the University who because of their associations with the Confederacy the University has all but disowned. However, as we slide towards statism and totalitarianism it seems their views will be entirely vindicated and we will wish we had listened.
(Editor’s note: The Green Ribbon society once staged an “attack” on Cannon Hall the dormitory I lived my first two years. It was named for Henry Cannon, the husband of Minnie Pearl. All I know is baseball bats were involved and windows were broken. The Cannonites beat back the attack.)