Our website will expand upon our programming to stimulate further reading by our audience; provide exciting follow-up materials for classroom use; entertain and educate users through games and puzzles; and lay the groundwork for further exploration of the literature and themes of southern writing.

Using our pilot program, OF LOVE AND DUST, as an example, here is a brief outline of what the website user will enjoy by clicking on the following windows:

• THE AUTHOR
• THE WORK
• THE CLASSROOM
• THE SOUTH
• THE BOOKSITE
• THE MOVIE PUZZLE
• THE SCREENWRITER
• THE EXPRESSIONARY

THE AUTHOR:
In this window, the user will find a BIOGRAPHY of the author, as well as a section ON WRITING, in which the author discourses about writing in general, the particular work, and any advice to writers he may have offered in his career. NOTEWORTHY QUOTES will list any quotations of particular relevance.

The goal is to encourage students and adults to WRITE by learning how others have done it and what they have to say about it.

NOTEWORTHY QUOTE for Gaines: "So many of our novels deal only with the great city ghettos…We've only been living in these ghettos for 75 years or so, but the other 300 years-I think this is worth writing about."

A hyperlink to THE CLASSROOM and the window TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION could then offer topics for a teacher to use, such as: "What are some differences in writing between 'urban' and 'rural' authors in terms of style, language, structure, setting, character." Or, "Discuss how a SENSE OF PLACE infuses OF LOVE AND DUST and adds to its power."

ON WRITING: Gaines once wrote that what had been particularly important in shaping his writng was "working in the fields, going fishing in the swamps with the older people, and, especially, listening to the people who came to my aunt's house, the aunt who raised me." Since Gaines moved to California at age fifteen, the teacher can talk about the importance of childhood memories in writer's lives. A hyperlink to THE CLASSROOM can lead to writing EXERCISES such as: "Eavesdrop on a conversation without letting the speaker(s) know. Write down verbatim what they said. Now turn this conversation into a scene with dialogue and action."

MAJOR INFLUENCES: Here we find the people, places, and events that influenced our author. Gaines, for instance, was greatly influence by Russian writers, because he found that other southern writers did not "speak his language." As he said, "The Russian writers dealt with peasantry differently…I did not particularly find what I was looking for in the Southern writers. When they came to describing my own people, they did not do it the way that I knew my people to be. The Russians were not talking about my people, but about a peasantry for which they seemed to show such feeling. Reading them, I could find a way to write about my own people."

THE WORK:
This window contains a PLOT SUMMARY, LIST OF CHARACTERS, MAJOR THEMES, and CRITICAL REVIEWS of the work and the author, as well as suggestions for FURTHER READING.

Hyperlinks to THE CLASSROOM can provide the teacher with various TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION and WRITING EXERCISES, such as: "What is the chief character trait of the protagonist and how does this trait drive the plot?" Or, "Choose a character and write a brief monologue in his/her voice on a subject of your choice."

FURTHER READING: · Atlanta Journal and Constitution, March 28, 1993, p. M1.

· Babb, Valerie-Melissa, Ernest Gaines, Twayne, 1991.

· Emerge, May 1994, p. 66.

· Essence, August 1993, p. 52.

· Gaines, Ernest J., Conversations with Ernest Gaines, edited by John Lowe, University Press of Mississippi, 1995.

· Gaudet, Marcia, and Carl Wooten, Porch Talk with Ernest Gaines: Conversations on the Writer's Craft, Louisiana State University Press, 1990.

· Publishers Weekly, March 1, 1993. p. 38.

· Washington Post, July 20, 1993, p. D1.

The teacher can employ many of these articles for further discussion. For instance, the article "Porch Talk with Ernest Gaines: Conversations on the Writer's Craft" is an obvious hyperlink to the ON WRITING window.

THE CLASSROOM:
ESSAYS can provide the teacher with topics for writing, such as: "Compare and contrast the writing of Gaines and Ralph Ellison." THEMES can elucidate many of the themes in the work, such as "The Search for Human Dignity," "The Salvation of Pride," "The Politics of Power," and so forth, as well as the hyperlink mentioned above. EXERCISES can include, in addition to the one mentioned above: "Find an object in the novel used in a powerful emotional and psychological manner. Create a scene in which you use this object in a different and equally compelling manner."

THE SOUTH:
This window contains a MAP of the area in which the novel takes place. It is also the site where we expand upon the four main themes of our series: RACE, HOPE, HOME/SENSE OF PLACE, and FAMILY/COMMUNITY.

RACE: The work is full of the effects of racism on the characters, ending with Bonbon's assertion that to have spared Marcus' life would have meant his own death at the hands of other Cajuns.

HOPE: By refusing to accept the old world order, our protagonist provides hope for our narrator, and, by extension, the black race-hope that courageous acts of defiance can lead to a new world order.

HOME/SENSE OF PLACE: The novel deals with how a new world of expanding human relationships erodes the old world of love for the land and social/economic stratification.

FAMILY/COMMUNITY: The novel gives a complete and compelling picture of the black community. The first-person narrator speaks in the idiom of the time and place and asserts the values of the black community-values the protagonist challenges.

THE BOOKSITE:

THE MOVIE:

THE SCREENWRITER:

THE EXPRESSIONARY:
One of the most delightful aspects of southern literature are the colorful and original expressions of southerners. This window will list many of these EXPRESSIONS and explain WHAT THEY MEAN, WHERE THEY CAME FROM, and COMMENTARY.

In OF LOVE AND DUST, the expression "fixin' to": Meaning: "about to; on the point of." Under COMMENTARY, we read what Charles Dickens wrote in his AMERICAN NOTES:

"There are few words which perform such various duties as this word 'fix…' You call upon a gentleman in a country town, and his help informs you that he is 'fixing himself' just now, but will be down directly; by which you understand that he is dressing. You inquire, on board a steamboat, of a fellow-passenger, whether breakfast will be ready soon, and he tells you he should think so, for, when he was last below, they were 'fixing the tables,' in other words, laying the cloth. You beg a porter to collect your luggage, and he entreats you not to be uneasy, for he'll 'fix it presently.' If you complain of an indisposition, you are advised to have recourse in Doctor So-and-so, who will 'fix' you in no time."

Hyperlinks to CLASSROOM TOPICS can provide many amusing and educational EXERCISES on the use of language, punning, metaphors, etc.

In addition to the windows mentioned above, our website will contain the usual windows for SEARCH THE INTERNET, FAVORITES, KEYWORD SEARCH, and DICTIONARY.

We will provide a comprehensive website which concentrates on reinforcing a reading of literature. First it will reveal the literary roots from which our stories spring or to which they have a connection. In the case of Wolf Whistle sources we allude to in our description of the program refer to authors Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Hannah Arendt. We would invite readers to find these authors and discover their works and their meaning.

There will be portions of the site designed to reveal the literary layers of a story so that visitors to the site can see how a story is written; how many levels or layers it has.

Another part of the site will provide insights into the social and cultural history of which the story is a part. This is where we might, among other things, delineate the themes we outlined as important in Southern Literature and demonstrate how they are revealed in our story. In the case of Of Love and Dust these would be as follows:

• Race: A system that grades human beings according to their color is the crucible of life on the plantation. It is harsh even to those who seemingly wield control for it also directs their lives with an inevitability that is crushing.
• Hope: The story evolves as a tale of Black revenge but when Payne falls in love with a white woman and risks his life to escape with her to a place where race might not matter, the author offers the reader the glimmer of hope that some day, even in the South, black and white will be able to live together in harmony. Paynes friend Kelly also carries with him some of that hope and the realization that however reckless Payne was, he was also true to himself.
• Home/sense of Place: The withering corn fields and dusty roads of the Louisiana low country are a vivid and potent reminder of the strong sense of place shared by both blacks and whites in this novel. Payne rebels against this sense of place, as does Kelly, finally, seeing how it can entrap as well as emancipate
• Family/community: The black workers on the plantation are bound by a strong sense of community. Payne's actions threaten this spirit and raise the intriguing question of what happens when the bonds of community are so strong that they exclude the very values - and people- that are necessary to help the community change in positive ways .

There will be a cross-indexed bibliography which can lead the curious in many directions.

There will be contests and a literary game to draw visitors to the site.