Affection, Not Scorn: Readers of a Best-Selling Novel, Rural White Characters, and the Politics of Public Relief

Literary historians note that Jesse Stuart’s impetus for his satirical portrait of a hill-country clan in his 1943 novel Taps for Private Tussie was his scorn for government aid. Close readings support a common interpretation of the cultural work performed by the novel: that it ridicules the Tussie clan and links welfare programs to laziness. A reception study of Stuart’s archived correspondence, however, indicates that Stuart’s fans read his characters as pastoral, authentic, and endearing. Readers’ bemused and antimodernist appreciation for white hill people, understood as a category apart, transpired as part of Americans’ imaginations of race and poverty and attitudes toward public policy. In some cases, readers’ jealousy of the Tussies hint at an anti-capitalist stirring. Insights drawn from a combination of close reading, reader reception analysis, and attention to public policy over time suggest just how much the study of fiction and its audiences matters.