Southern summer also has an admirable work ethic. It rarely takes breaks and doesn’t mind working the night shift. I will never forget in 1950s/1960s Eastern Virginia, lying in my sweat-drenched bed, window open in futile hope of a breeze, with a near-deafening chorus of crickets laughing a capella at my misery. Most oddly, I have a bit of nostalgia for that memory. When I read Faulkner, the August heat he describes is visceral.