George Washington Harris, like many Southwest humorists, was an adventurer and jack-of-many-trades--among them metalworker, journalist, steamboat captain, farmer, politician, and railroader. Like many of his fellow humorists, he is remembered today for one book, the only one he published during his lifetime: Sut Lovingood. Yarns Spun by a "Nat'ral Born Durn'd Fool." But Sut Lovingood differs greatly from the gentlemanly narrators of A. B. Longstreet, Joseph Glover Baldwin, and Johnson Jones Hooper. Though their narrators record the crudities of frontier life and character, they are all insiders affirming society's values. An outsider, Sut Lovingood comments on his society's follies and cruelties, as well as his own. A Yankee-baiting, whiskey-drinking jokester with an aversion to parsons and pomposity and an eye for revenge, willing girls, and ready widows. Sut describes himself as a "nat'ral born durn'd fool" who "haint got nara soul" and whose best feature is his long...