"He travels fastest who travels alone, and that goes double for she."

January 6, 2016 8:10 PM

Florence King, best known in some circles as the author of Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady, and best known in others as "The Misanthrope's Corner" and "The Bent Pin" columnist for the National Review, died today, a day after her 80th birthday.

Although she once wrote, "I'd rather rot on my own floor than be found by a bunch of bingo players in a nursing home," her National Review colleague Jack Fowler wrote today:

After various hospitalizations and their aftermath — during which she continued to write, brilliantly — about a month ago she told Nick and I that the time had come for her to move into an assisted living community, which is the last place you’d expect to find a world-class curmudgeon (and she was that). But Florence was physically beaten, and living alone — as she had done all of her adult life — was no longer an option. Living with others did not last long. Maybe the company of others just wasn’t meant to be.

King's writing career was varied, spanning the women's pages at the Raleigh News and Observer, an historical romance novel written under a pseudonym, the novel When Sisterhood Was In Flower (available in full in The Florence King Reader), pornography (under a pseudonym), assorted book reviews, and several books. In addition to the ones mentioned above, she authored:

• Southern Ladies and Gentlemen (a comic survey of the Mason-Dixon region and its denizens)
• WASP, Where is Thy Sting? (a comic survey of White Anglo-Saxon Protestants)
• He: An Irreverent Look at the American Male (a comic survey of 1970s American masculinity)
• With Charity Toward None: A Fond Look at Misanthropy (a comic survey of history's most notable misanthropes>

and her columns were gathered into the following compilations:

• Reflections in a Jaundiced Eye
• Lump It or Leave It
• STET, Damnit!
• Deja Reviews: Florence King All Over Again

Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady details King's poignant love affair with another woman during graduate school, and King wrote frankly in many of her columns about being sexually involved with both men and women. Yet she was committed enough to conservatism to turn down an invitation to speak at a lesbian feminist conference with "Its time you knew that I'm a Republican."

posted by sobell (30 comments total)

She was one of my favorite essayists.

.
posted by bswinburn at 8:25 PM on January 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

I read Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady when I was in university and I have to keep re-buying the book because I have given away at least five or six copies of it.

She was so very much her own unique person & a brilliant personality. I do enjoy her older work more than her National Review columns - her conservatism seemed to have a fair bit of deliberate rebellion, even trolling, more so than logic to it; and she was obviously one of those women who, having herself succeeded in a man's world, rejects much of women's issues therefore.

But she is a wonderful writer, so direct, tightly-edited, pragmatic, and a keen observer & analyst of details (which I could eat up with a spoon). Her novel has a hilarious section that is a thinly-veiled autobiographical account of how to write porn books (of that time), and the piece in The Florence King Reader about writing a romance novel is great too.

I am sorry to hear we have lost her; I always hoped to have the chance to meet her, at least once. Dewars to Florence.
posted by flex at 8:28 PM on January 6, 2016 [4 favorites]

.
One of my favorite parts of CoaFSL is when her grade school teacher had the class be historical characters: "My name is Lizzie Borden".
posted by brujita at 9:08 PM on January 6, 2016

She removed the sex scene from WSWiF when it was republished in the FKR.
posted by brujita at 9:09 PM on January 6, 2016

She removed the sex scene from WSWiF when it was republished in the FKR.

Yes. I remember her writing, "It lifted out as easily as a scab" or something similar, as her way of saying she didn't think it was necessary.
posted by sobell at 9:26 PM on January 6, 2016

.
posted by Cash4Lead at 9:27 PM on January 6, 2016

.
posted by Countess Elena at 9:29 PM on January 6, 2016

(And can I just say how excited I am to have anyone commenting on my first MeFi post? Eeeeee!)
posted by sobell at 9:52 PM on January 6, 2016 [6 favorites]

I was suprised that she was still alive...incredible woman, whose politics were ambivalent at best.
posted by PinkMoose at 10:00 PM on January 6, 2016

I own every one of her books .... she was absolutely hilarious.
posted by impatient0 at 10:08 PM on January 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

.
posted by Pendragon at 11:50 PM on January 6, 2016

.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:56 PM on January 6, 2016

.
posted by Svejk at 1:11 AM on January 7, 2016

Aww, dammit. People keep dying before I've had enough of them. Stupid mortality.
posted by DaveP at 3:07 AM on January 7, 2016

"No matter which sex I went to bed with, I never smoked on the street."

.
posted by virago at 5:01 AM on January 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 5:11 AM on January 7, 2016

Her appreciation of Christopher Hitchens is well worth reading.

(And she would have screamed bloody murder at "she told Nick and I". Is that what NR has come to?)
posted by BWA at 5:26 AM on January 7, 2016

Aaaaand- they seem to have corrected it.
posted by BWA at 5:53 AM on January 7, 2016

When I was a kid my dad and stepmom kept their overflow books, typically the stuff they read in college and their early twenties, in my bedroom, and when I'd come to visit I'd pillage the shelves for racy stuff to read. The gartered legs on the cover of CoaFSL was an instant attraction and I read it right around the time I hit puberty. I can't say it didn't influence the kind of women I would be attracted to later in life, and I'm OK with that.

.
posted by echocollate at 6:14 AM on January 7, 2016

I was actually trying to find out if she was still alive a few months ago! Thanks for this post.

From the NR article: She is an important part of the history and fiber of this institution known for harboring great writers.

I don't know, I'm pretty sure she's the only NR writer I'd give the time of day.

I think "trolling" is an effective description of her writing, but it was masterful trolling bolstered by a real talent for character description. She didn't so much punch down or up but all around. I could not disagree more with her politics, but she came at them from a very different place than most of her cohorts.
posted by emjaybee at 8:27 AM on January 7, 2016 [3 favorites]

> I think "trolling" is an effective description of her writing, but it was masterful trolling bolstered by a real talent for character description. She didn't so much punch down or up but all around. I could not disagree more with her politics, but she came at them from a very different place than most of her cohorts.

Excellent summary of King's style, emjaybee.

And although I frequently took issue with her views, I felt she arrived at them honestly. She was hardly one to latch on to any particular group's party line and spout it unthinkingly, word for word. (According to her obit, King had admitted shortly before her death that because she was no longer well enough to live alone, it was time for her to move into an assisted living community -- which, for a misanthrope, would have been a "living hell" community.)

> One of my favorite parts of CoaFSL is when her grade school teacher had the class be historical characters: "My name is Lizzie Borden".

I don't know if you've seen it, brujita, but the next-to-last chapter of WASP, Where is Thy Sting? includes King's take on the Borden story, and it's a great read. That chapter was presented in slightly different form as "a case study of Anglo-Saxon America" in the National Review: "Lizzie Borden -- WASP."
posted by virago at 11:29 AM on January 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

Yes, I have all the books written under her own name, several of her porn books and The Barbarian Princess....I'd love to know which 70's actress for whom she ghostwrote.
posted by brujita at 12:04 PM on January 7, 2016

Like flex, I've purchased Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady at least 5 times because my copy kept wandering off. I've loaned it to so many people in so many different realms of my life that I've even had folks try to loan my own copy back to me.

For that book alone, I loved her. Like many, her politics didn't mesh with mine, but her words rang epically true when she talked about family and southerners.

Florence, may it be quiet and totally absent of annoying humans where you are now.
posted by teleri025 at 12:10 PM on January 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

I have a couple of her books on my shelf as well. Her views aren't necessarily mine, but she arrived at them through deliberation and intellect. I respect that. RIP.

Also, she's hilarious. I look forward to teaching some young family members the fart poem from Confessions.
posted by aperturescientist at 12:17 PM on January 7, 2016

virago, your name is especially apt for this thread. Every time I've seen it, it's made me think of Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady and Mama's bowling ball.
posted by sobell at 12:57 PM on January 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

The headline that NR gave to King's essay on Lizzie Borden spells the accused's surname "Border." If it didn't entail, you know, contacting National Review, I'd give them a heads up. (And I thought that spelling was one of those building blocks of learning that conservatives were always championing ...)

Thanks, sobell! I should be so lucky as to live up to the term "virago" as it's defined in Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady!

A couple of interesting tidbits on King from Know Southern History:

Her political preference is Royalist.

Her last job was (as) the assistant editor of Uncensored Confessions (magazine).

For the last several years, Florence King has kept to herself in her home in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

posted by virago at 1:33 PM on January 7, 2016

I'll always remember her being in one of Jon Winokur's Curmudgeon books. I second the "hope she's away from all people" wish.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:32 PM on January 7, 2016

A lady to her nicotine-stained fingertips.
posted by jfwlucy at 6:51 PM on January 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

.

I have only read Confessions... but I loved it. And her.
posted by Duffington at 2:26 PM on January 8, 2016

Martinis for all of us. Separately.
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:37 AM on January 11, 2016