Pearl's Progress Author:James Kaplan When New Yorker Philip Pearl accepts a teaching post as assistant professor of English at Pickett State University in Mississippi--his small book of poems, Oedipus at Secaucus , secures him the job--he is unprepared for the cultural shock of life in the New South. Adjusting to the fish camps and honkytonks proves relatively easy, but when Pearl ... more »becomes romantically attached to two local girls, one of whom has a shotgun-packing boyfriend, he begins to long for the "security" of New York. Pearl's classes are tranquil compared with life outside college but, taken together, they comprise a truly Southern education for him.« less