One Writer's Beginnings (The William E. Massey Sr. Lectures in the History of American Civilization)

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Among the most beloved of American writers, Eudora Welty's stories and novels have entertained us for over half a century. Here, in her memoirs, she writes with her usual candor and grace about how a writer's sensibilities are shaped. As compelling as her stories, as witty as her personality, as finely honed as her fiction, Welty's account of her life is a powerful and fulfilling read.

Book Description

Now available as an audio CD, in Eudora Welty's own voice, or as a book.

Eudora Welty was born in 1909 in Jackson, Mississippi. In a "continuous thread of revelation" she sketches her autobiography and tells us how her family and her surroundings contributed to the shaping not only of her personality but of her writing. Homely and commonplace sights, sounds, and objects resonate with the emotions of recollection: the striking clocks, the Victrola, her orphaned father's coverless little book saved since boyhood, the tall mountains of the West Virginia back country that become a metaphor for her mother's sturdy independence, Eudora's earliest box camera that suspended a moment forever and taught her that every feeling awaits a gesture. She has recreated this vanished world with the same subtlety and insight that mark her fiction.

Even if Eudora Welty were not a major writer, her description of growing up in the South--of the interplay between black and white, between town and countryside, between dedicated schoolteachers and the public they taught--would he notable. That she is a splendid writer of fiction gives her own experience a family likeness to others in the generation of young Southerners that produced a literary renaissance. Until publication of this book, she had discouraged biographical investigations. It undoubtedly was not easy for this shy and reticent lady to undertake her own literary biography, to relive her own memories (painful as well as pleasant), to go through letters and photographs of her parents and grandparents. But we are in her debt, for the distillation of experience she offers us is a rare pleasure for her admirers, a treat to everyone who loves good writing and anyone who is interested in the seeds of creativity.

Customer Reviews:

very interesting.......2007-07-16

I found this book interesting as it brought me into a world that existed for a young girl in 1925. It's well written and not too taxing. If one is interested in how to write about themselves it's a great tool. (Although it doesn't give directions, it shows by example).

To learn to listen for the stories.......2007-03-15

This is an outstanding memoir. In telling of her own development as a writer Welty devotes much time to telling the story of her parents, and their families. She writes of them with respect, understanding and appreciation. She also by telling the story of the families gives a picture of the American world of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
While Welty does not devote most of her pages to describing her authorial practice she does provide insightful passages into her overall development. Here is a key one

" But it was not until I began to write, as I seriously did only when I reached my twenties, that I found the world out there revealing, because ( as with my father now)memory had become attached to seeing , love had added itself to discovery and because I recognized in my own continuing longing to keep going , the need I carried inside myself to know- the apprehension first, and then the passion, to connect myself to it. Through travel I first became aware of the outside world ; it was through travel that I found my own introspective way of becoming part of it."

Welty in the opening section of the work tells how she learned to listen not simply to, but for the stories which she would make literature out of. In the second section she speaks of 'Learning to See' .and the third is devoted to 'Finding a Voice'.
Again I was impressed by her ability to write even of minor characters in her life with perception and sympathy.
A fine work.

Inspirational for new student writers.......2006-07-13

Eudora Welty does an excellent job of understanding the importance of storytelling as it relates to becoming a writer. My students in the ENG101 Comp course have said this book was inspirational in jump starting their writing assignments for the course. They said she gave them many ideas; she presented herself as a "real" person - not an author they felt were "above them"...a great beginning for one writer's beginnings...in this case, my students!

Wonderful, warm story.......2006-05-25

What a lovely, warm and engaging little book! I have read many of Miss Welty's works, and wanted to know what makes such a talented writer "tick". I loved this book for the insight on growing up in the South, and for the kind way in which she wrote about her family. With so many people out there writing books about how terrible their upbringing was-this was truly refreshing. My house was a lot like hers in a way-every room was one in which books could be read. One of the most memorable lines in the book was "Learning stamps you with its moments". Miss Welty seemed very curious about the world around her and this was encouraged by her parents. This curiousity is what made her a wonderful writer. A lot of her memories of her childhood make appearances in her stories. I highly recommend "One Writer's Beginnings" to anyone who is curious about Miss Welty's work, or anyone who is already a fan and wants to know more about her.

Wonderful Book!.......2004-07-21

I pick this book up and read it over and over again. It's WONDERFUL! Ms. Welty does a great job explaining her life growing up in Jackson, Mississippi in the first half of the 20th Century and how it influenced her writing. Her descriptions of her school prinicipal and the town librarian are priceless as are her descriptions of sunday school at the Methodist Church. Originally delivered as a part of the Massey Lectures on American Civilization at Harvard University, she did a wonderful job spinning these into a super little book. After reading the book I had to visit her home in Jackson and see Jefferson Davis School across the street.

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Saint Eudora
Woman of the World Models Vigorous Aging
Wonderful!
Putting Substance to a Life
A well-researched, engaging look at the life of a powerful American voice

Eudora Welty: A Biography
Suzanne Marrs
Manufacturer: Harcourt
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0151009147

Book Description

Eudora Welty's works are treasures of American literature. When her first short-story collection was published in 1941, it heralded the arrival of a genuinely original writer who over the decades wrote hugely popular novels, novellas, essays, and a memoir, One Writer's Beginnings, that became a national bestseller. By the end of her life, Welty (who died in 2001) had been given nearly every literary award there was and was all but shrouded in admiration.

In this definitive and authoritative account, Suzanne Marrs restores Welty's story to human proportions, tracing Welty's life from her roots in Jackson, Mississippi, to her rise to international stature. Making generous use of Welty's correspondence-particularly with contemporaries and admirers, including Katherine Anne Porter, E. M. Forster, and Elizabeth Bowen-Marrs has provided a fitting and fascinating tribute to one of the finest writers of the twentieth century.

Customer Reviews:

Saint Eudora.......2006-12-13

I like Suzanne Marrs' book but it is less a conventional biography than an annotated account of every social visit and trip abroad taken by Eudora Welty during her eighty plus years of living.

Welty seemed to enjoy her reputation as an outsider artist, and from her Mississippi roots she took strength, but she sure was connected to the bigtime power brokers of New York and London. No wonder her career took off so early. If your best friends were Mary Lou Aswell, the premiere fiction editor of the day, and oh, William and Emmy Maxwell, the NEW YORKER fiction editor and his wealthy wife, your career would skyrocket too. She won them all over with a winning combination of direct honesty, Southern charm, a real curiosity about the lives of others, and a nose for showing up all the right parties. Marrs shows us a Welty obsessed as Paris Hilton with making the rounds and being seen everywhere, and if you took out all the parties, dinners, and chic foreign travel, this giant biography would be about 80 pages. Elizabeth Bowen told British readers that DELTA WEDDING was "new" and "great," didn't mention their deep friendship. As one reads the book the spectacle of one hand washing the other, of sheer log rolling, is a living thing, frightening in its implications. First Welty created her own career, then it seemed to take over

And sad, sad, sad! If you credit Marrs' reading of Welty's life, she spent years pining after a man who turned out to be gay, and then when she was an old lady she fell in love with a fellow novelist, one married to yet a third. Pining away after Ross Macdonald (Ken Millar), she didn't care what people thought. She would give his books favorable reviews in the NEW YORK TIMES, why not? They dedicated books to each other and played out their celebrity romance in public, a mutual admiration society people enjoyed observing the way they liked to see Agatha Christie married to the archaeologist Max Mallowan, as two orders of celebrity drawn to each other like iron filings to a magnet. Was Millar in love with Welty? He told Reynolds Price he was. However, Marrs is big on "perhaps" (a word used over two hundred forty times in her biography) and it's hard to pin her down. The thrust of Marr's biography is to utterly destroy what's left of the reputation on Margaret Millar, the brilliant crime writer Ross Macdonald stayed married to. It's as if I was writing a biography of Angelina Jolie and felt compelled to obliterate poor Jennifer Aniston by concentrating solely on her bad habits and not on her possibly hurt feelings. When Welty hears the news that Margaret Millar has finally died, her response is terse and grim. "'Thank you for the information,' was Eudora's only reply."

Marrs, an academic working in Mississippi loved Eudora herself and by her own admission became one of her best young friend. And hence she might be chary of saying anything analytical or remotely critical about Welty. Unseemly is the number of pages she spends demolishing a previous biographer who had the temerity to call Welty "homely." It's pathetic that Marrs should have found it necessary to insist on Welty's good looks. I'm sorry, but if Ann Waldron's book may have suffered from a lack of cooperation from Welty's friends, at least it tried to penetrate the surface of America's best loved author. Too many friends will obscure the real subject of a biography, as well as too little. The one place where Marrs' book is compelling is in the slow, detailed analysis of Welty's last 30 years and how she wound up in a nightmare of being unable to write fiction. Surrounded by sycophants and scholars who, by the 1970s, had established a Eudora Welty industry, she lived in a state of denial, accepting by Marrs' count 39 honorary degrees in part, or so it seems, to reassure herself that she was universally adored. She had trouble saying no, and she'd go to the opening of an envelope. It was a terrible waste, and yet, what else could she do to find a scrap of happiness? She had to know people loved her. Scholars and helpers wound up keeping her name in the public eye by compiling new books of her own writings, publishing limited editions of her juvenilia, having her sign limited edition copies, and arranging for numerous TV interviews.

Occasionally Marrs lets the "beloved" mask slip and shows us glimpses of what might have been the real Welty. Her unexplained hatred of Martha Gellhorn--that "phony"--is one such opening. Or when Bill Maxwell, exasperated by Welty's whining, asks her how she could possibly be "broke" when she has a musical running on Broadway. Marrs has an empathic, eccentric style of her own, given to oratorical repetition. "This is not to say that Eudora had become a pacifist. She had not." Sometimes she seems to have an axe to grind herself. What's the point in demonizing the late Norma Brickell, for example, referring to her offhandedly, without a single citation, as a "notoriously dominating personality"? Could it be that Eudora resented Norma for having married Herschel Brickell, one of Welty's platonic boyfriends? If so, why not say so? Norma Brickell is unjustly maligned here and no one is going to speak up on her behalf. It wasn't Norma who voted against Eudora getting her nth Guggenheim--no, it was Herschel, "because, as he put it, "Them as has gits."

I hope that Marrs will devote her energies on Welty's behalf to the extent of preparing editions of the two abandoned novel projects that caused her idol so much suffering, the novel called "Nicotiana" or "The Last of the Figs," and the 70s rape revenge tale she refers to as "The Shadow Club." It would be a shame indeed if none of this material was made available to Welty's vast public. Look how Hemingway's estate authorized the publication of novel after novel, after Hemingway's suicide. Spruced up and with forewords by Richard Ford or Reynolds Price, we'd have a new couple of Welty bestsellers on our hands.

Woman of the World Models Vigorous Aging.......2006-06-14

Solid research by a top Eudora Welty scholar is coupled here with close friendship in the last 15 years of Welty's long life. Suzanne Marrs friendship with Welty gave her unparalleled access to papers and a wide circle of Eudora Welty's friends.

In addition to the text there is a delightful section of 16 pages of photos ranging from Welty's childhood through old age--including a few she took herself.

Welty emerges from the pages of Marrs' biography as a woman engaged in the world--not sheltered from it as the popular myth of her life suggested. Even during the years of her so-called Writer's Block, she traveled widely and worked hard to craft and deliver speeches at colleges and universities that are later gathered into essays.

I was particularly touched by the passages relating to her involvement in taking care of her mother in old age and of how she strove--ultimately not for publication--to transform her pain at Ken Millar's (aka Ross Macdonald) Alzheimer's.

Although she grieved as close friends died, Eudora Welty also seems a wonderful model for vigorous aging as she kept active, involved, tried new things, and kept a cadre of acquaintances of all ages in her orbit.

--Janet Grace Riehl, author "Sightlines: A Poet's Diary"

Wonderful!.......2006-03-17

Eudora Welty was born in Jackson, Mississippi on April 13, 1909 and died July 23, 2001. She was a Southern woman and that simple fact was what initially brought her to my attention so many years ago. I so enjoy the Southern writer. And Eudora Welty is no exception. Welty is a critically acclaimed writer of essays, short stories and novels. Hers are the stories that I return to every so often, always finding something new in them.

Welty's 1984 memoir One Writer's Beginning was her own personal life account. And while that was interesting it is this biography that seems to fill in the blanks with substance; probably because the author had a distance Welty didn't. What I found most interesting is the author's ability to humanize this icon of literature. Welty was first and foremost a woman who though she had an extreme talent, enjoyed humor, loved deeply (even though she never married), had numerous friends (many who were writers), loved her mother (whom people thought dominated Welty) and thought of New York as her second home.

Welty was definitely not the "old maid" some thought she was. She fell in love with a man who cared for her but also was interested in men. She then lost in love with a married man who was stricken with Alzheimer's. But it was the long-term relationship with Kenneth Millar (detective fiction writer Ross Macdonald) that will make your heart skip a beat. They met at the Algonquin Hotel and corresponded with each other twice each month. They only spent a total of six weeks together over the years but they always believed that fate brought them together.

I enjoyed the small items in this book: that Welty admired Langston Hughes's poetry and that osteoporosis took six inches from her five-foot-ten height. Especially touching are the memories of the relationship with Ken Millar.

Marrs book is a complete, considerate and grand account of the life of an important American literary icon. It is a book that I will revisit just like her body of work. Armchair Interviews says her work, like her biography is something to be read, reread and savored.

Putting Substance to a Life.......2005-09-14

There seems to be something provincial about any writer that lives in Mississippi. They cannot be viewed as normal people. When they are female, far from beautiful, remain unmarried, somewhat sequestered, a name like Eudora, and live with their mother, the image comes unbidden of a demure Southern Lady, incapable of expressing emotion, if they have any. Eudora Welty fit this image perfectly, and because she did it is too easy to dismiss her writing as worthless.

Then you look at the prizes:Pulitzer, National Book, eight (yes 8) O. Henry's, National Medal of Literature, Medal of Freedom. There had to be something more behind the image, something of life to give the understanding for such insight.

Ms. Marrs biography does an excellent job of giving life to Eudora Welty. That she considered New York her alternate home. That she was for integration in a segregationist South. That the loves in her life happened to be unavailable, but that they indeed were there.

Ms. Marrs book provides a view of Eudora Welty that rounds out her life in a most plesant way.

A well-researched, engaging look at the life of a powerful American voice.......2005-08-12

More than 60 years since the publication of her first book, A CURTAIN OF GREEN, Eudora Welty's status as a major voice in American letters is unquestioned. One of the chief joys of her art is evinced in the ways her finely wrought short stories and elaborately patterned novels capture colorful characters whose depth and dignity are matched by a spirited, often unselfconscious zest for life and living. It is furthermore acknowledged that the range of men and women who people Welty's narratives offers consistent proof that "regional literature" is as varied as it is universal, that even the most geographically cloistered characters (think "Livvie" in the story of that name) are capable of feeling and sensing the same sort of complexities of the most sophisticated, urban-dwelling aristocrats who people Henry James's fiction.

With respect to the author, however, most scholars tend to dismiss Welty's emotional and active life as devoid of incident or color. In a widely read "Introduction" to the author in THE NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE, VOLUME 2, for example, the editors insist that her "outwardly uneventful life and her writing are most intimately connected to the topography and atmosphere of the season and the soil of the native Mississippi that ha[d] been her lifelong home." Such logic assumes Welty sacrificed the chance of a fulfilling personal life in the service of her art.

Suzanne Marrs, the author of EUDORA WELTY: A Biography, insists that this is a reductive view that fails to consider the author's full engagement in matters of family, romantic love, travel, and politics over the course of nine decades. In a patient, well-documented, thoroughly considered overview of the writer's life, Marrs debunks the notion that Welty's existence was "uneventful"; and if, even after such a painstaking process, Welty's personal narrative seems tame in comparison to the high drama of her mentor, Katherine Anne Porter, or the intense personal trials of her contemporary, Richard Wright, Marrs's EUDORA WELTY amply documents the writer's full participation in almost every aspect of a long and fulfilling life.

Organized into 11 chapters, EUDORA WELTY first traces the author's sheltered upbringing by two well-educated parents who migrated from the north shortly before her birth; it then delves into key moments of the author's self discovery. (Marrs's careful, patient analysis reveals that Welty's talents weren't simply literary; her lifelong passion for photography began as early as the 1930s.) Just as Welty's formative years as a young writer led to the publication of her first and perhaps most celebrated book, she was confronted by the atrocities of World War II --- an event that affected her on a political and personal level. It is in the ensuing decade that we witness a passionate, albeit frustrated, long-distance love affair between Welty and longtime friend John Robinson. Exactly why this relationship did not progress into a physical one leading to marriage is, with a good deal of evidence, attributed to Robinson's ambiguous sexuality, a fact that he was painfully slow to realize and one that ultimately placed Welty, a longtime friend to many homosexual men, in a strained position with regards to same-sex couples.

Several other subjects are thoroughly considered from this period as well, including extensive travel throughout the United Sates and Europe and the author's prolific string of largely acclaimed publications that, from the mid-1950s to the early 1970s, led to a conspicuous 15 years of creative silence. During that time, Marrs documents Welty's heavy involvement in Mississippi politics, her stand on hot-button issues, such as racism, and her earnest attempt to break writer's block through prolonged work on LOSING BATTLES, her most ambitious and fully developed novel, that ironically grew out of a short story.

By the early 1970s, Welty worked through her writer's block with another string of impressive publications, including THE OPTIMIST'S DAUGHTER, which earned her the Pulitzer Prize. But Marrs's EUDORA WELTY is not an in-depth study of the writer's work. (For this readers should consult the biographer's ONE WRITER'S IMAGINATION: The Fiction of Eudora Welty.) Instead, Marrs here considers Welty's fiction as representative of the writer's personal struggles. The brutal rape scene that concludes the story "At the Landing," the final fiction in Welty's short story collection THE WIDE NET, is read as a "misuse of power and violation of individual sanctity that Eudora associated with fascism and even at times with politicians more generally." Such readings are insightful and well-considered, but I often wondered if Marrs might go a bit further: in the previous example, the rape victim, Jenny, is first brutalized by a man who, though he "violates" her, still holds her heart. Is this perhaps a projection of her feelings about her frustrated passions for Robinson?

Marrs also considers a second romance in Eudora's life, this one with writer Kenneth Millar, a relationship that bloomed from a platonic, mutual admiration for one another's work. This romance, which appears to have remained unconsummated, was mutually nourishing for both parties until Millar's sad death to Alzheimer's. In addition to these romances, Marrs discusses Welty's close but difficult relationship with her mother, her fruitful correspondences with fellow writers, and her evolution from woman-as-letters to elder statesperson in the arts.

Far surpassing Ann Waldron's 1998 EUDORA, Suzanne Marrs's EUDORA WELTY is altogether an engaging, well-researched and --- to my way of thinking --- necessary read for any self-respecting Americanist and Welty scholar.

--- Reviewed by Tony Leuzzi

Eudora Welty : Stories, Essays & Memoir (Library of America, 102)

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The Great Southern Writer Who Wasn't Southern
Creations of a unique voice.
An Essential

Eudora Welty : Stories, Essays & Memoir (Library of America, 102)
Eudora Welty
Manufacturer: Library of America
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1883011558

Amazon.com

It's small wonder that the Library of America chose Eudora Welty as the first living (at that time) author published in this prestigious series. Welty was the kind of writer people routinely call "an American institution." But don't let the sweet white-haired-old-lady image fool you: Welty's work is anything but benign. For more than 50 years, Welty spoke with a fierce and uncompromising literary voice. Or, rather, voices: the stories collected in this volume feature a dizzying array of characters, each of whom seems to whisper directly into the reader's ear. From the toxic rage of "Where Is the Voice Coming From?" to the jazzy rhythms of "Powerhouse," these tales blaze with intensity and a comic energy that's both gentle and fierce. Even that bane of junior-high-school speech tournaments everywhere, "Why I Live at the P.O.," benefits from rereading; as far as this brand of down-home farce goes, Welty does it better than anyone. Bringing together the contents of Welty's four short-fiction collections, this Library of America volume also includes several essays as well as Welty's very fine 1984 memoir, "One Writer's Beginnings." In it she speaks of connections, continuities, the way both her fiction and her experiences emerged gradually into focus over time:

...suddenly a light is thrown back, as when your train makes a curve, showing that there has been a mountain of meaning rising behind you on the way you've come, is rising there still, proven now through retrospect.

This volume is that light thrown back; the full import of Welty's enormously influential work is perhaps apparent only now, in this substantial and rewarding retrospective of her career. --Mary Park

Customer Reviews:

The Great Southern Writer Who Wasn't Southern.......2006-12-21

Each new volume from The Library of America, the non-profit publisher that has become the de facto literary hall of fame, is a cause for celebration. Its goal of preserving in an enduring format the best fiction and non-fiction is a significant bulwark against the encroaching tides of cultural relativism that attempts to render any value judgments meaningless, as well as a consumer society that insists that if it ain't new, it ain't good.

In the case of Eudora Welty, we're given two volumes: a collection of five novels ("The Robber Bridegroom," "Delta Wedding," "The Ponder Heart," "Losing Battles" and the Pulitzer-winning "The Optimist's Daughter"), and another of her essays, her memoir "One Writer's Beginnings" and her short stories. From her first published short stories, "Lily Daw and the Three Ladies" in 1937, to her last novel in 1972, Welty captures with her highly readable style and sharp eye and ear the varieties and eccentricities of Southern life.

But while the South claims Welty as one of its own, she may not necessarily return the favor. Teh cause is both geographic and a matter of choice. Although she was born in Jackson, Miss., in 1909 and lived there all her life, her father was from Ohio and her mother from West Virginia, a state created by the Civil War that went for the Union. This isn't Margaret Mitchell we're talking about here.

Then, in her essay "Place in Fiction," she stresses that while it is important for a writer to capture the feeling of an area, it is not the paramount goal in fiction:

"It is through place that we put out roots ... but where those roots reach toward ... is the deep and running vein, eternal and consistent and everywhere purely itself, that feeds and is fed by the human understanding."

But what pedigree does not provide, her environment probably did, for her work contains those elements poularly associated with Southern fiction. "Delta Wedding" celebrates the Southern family through the sprawling Fairchild clan and its passel of sons, daughters, cousins, aunts, great-aunts, nieces and nephews, all involved in each others' lives to a degree rarely seen today.

Many of her stories revolve around characters marginalized by society, struggling to exist and reach out to others: the simple Lily Daw who tries to evade the determination of the town's ladies to either marry her off or send her to the asylum; the generous, slightly retarded Daniel Ponder who would give away everything he has at the drop of a hat; the demented Clytie in "A Curtain of Green," who rushes about looking in people's faces until, seeing her reflection in a barrel of rainwater, dives in and drowns.

Eudora Welty was a sharp, perceptive writer, and her enshrinement by the Library of America is most welcome.

Creations of a unique voice........2003-08-02

"Listening," "Learning to See" and "Finding a Voice," Eudora Welty entitled the three chapters of her autobiography "One Writer's Beginnings," the concluding entry in this collection, one of the two Library of America compilations dedicated to her work. And while these may be steps that most writers will undergo at some point, Welty's compact autobiography is notable both because it allows a rare glimpse into the celebrated writer's otherwise fiercely protected private life and it illustrates the roots from which sprang such extraordinary protagonists as "The Ponder Heart"'s Edna Earle and Daniel Ponder, Miss Eckhart and the Morgana families in "The Golden Apples" and, of course, the anti-heroes of her Pulitzer Prize winning novel "The Optimist's Daughter," Judge McKelva, his second wife Fay and (most importantly) his daughter Laurel.

A native and - with minimal exceptions - lifelong resident of Jackson, Mississippi, Welty received her first introduction to storytelling as a listener; and early on, learned to sharpen her ears not only to a story's contents but also to its narrator and its protagonists' individual nature: "[T]here [never was] a line read that I didn't hear," and "any room ... at any time of day, was there to read in, or to be read to," she notes in "One Writer's Beginnings," adding that the discovery that all those stories had been written by someone, not come into existence of their own, not only surprised but also severely disappointed her. Equally importantly, family visits to relatives brought out the born observer in her; each trip providing its own lessons and revelations, each a story onto itself - the seed from which later grew the literary creations collected in this compilation and its companion volume. At the same time, her father's interest in technology introduced her to photography as a means of capturing visual impressions, one moment at a time; and when traveling around Mississippi as an agent for a state agency (her first job) she learned to use that camera as "a hand-held auxiliary of wanting-to-know" and discovered that "to be able to capture transience, by being ready to click the shutter at the crucial moment, was [then] the greatest need I had" ("One Writer's Beginnings:" Not surprisingly, her photography was published in several collections which have found much acclaim of their own.)

Thus, from early childhood on, Eudora Welty not only had a keen sense of the world around her but also, of words as such: of their existence as much as the interrelation between their sound, physical appearance and the things they stand for. Encouraged by her mother, a teacher, and over her father's worries (he considered fiction writing an occupation of dubitable financial promise and, worse, inferior to fact because it was "not true") Welty embarked on a writer's path which would lead her to award-winning heights and to a reputation as one of the South's finest writers, with as abounding as obvious comparisons to fellow Mississippian William Faulkner in particular; a literary debt she acknowledged when she wrote that "his work, though it can't increase in itself, increases us" and "[w]hat is written in the South from now on is going to be taken into account by Faulkner's work" ("Must the Novelist Crusade?", 1965). The Library of America dedicated two volumes to her work; one containing her novels, the other - this one - her short stories, essays (some, like her autobiography, based on a series of lectures) and her autobiography.

An approach that Welty developed early on was to consider the publication of her stories in periodicals merely a step towards each story's final shape, and she generally revised her stories before including them in collections. This compilation brings together all her short stories in the versions intended to be final by Welty herself: the 1941 edition of "A Curtain of Green and Other Stories" (her first short story collection), the 1943 edition of "The Wide Net and Other Stories" and the 1949 edition of "The Golden Apples" - each collection suffered substantial editorial revisions in subsequent publications. Included are also two stand-alone short stories ("Where is This Voice Coming From?" and "The Demonstrators"), the first one inspired by the 1963 murder of Mississippi NAACP leader Medgar Evers and revised by Welty over the telephone after having been accepted by "The New Yorker," to avoid a potentially prejudicial effect of its original ending on the then-impending trial.

A keen observer, Welty was also a writer endowed with a sharp sense of humor and satire, and with the gift to brilliantly use location, localisms, accents, patterns of speech and customs to make a point. Not a single word is wasted: "Marrying must have been some of his showing off - like man never married at all till *he* flung in," we're told about King MacLain in the opening story of "The Golden Apples," "Shower of Gold." And you don't have to learn anything more about the man, do you? Equally as instructive on Welty's writing are the eight essays included in this collection, all taken from the 1978 compilation "The Eye of the Story" and dealing with particular aspects of her own fiction as much as, more generally, with "Place in Fiction" (1954) and the fiction writer's role ("Writing and Analyzing a Story," originally published in 1955 under the title "How I Write" and substantially revised for its inclusion in "The Eye of the Story" and "Must the Novelist Crusade?").

"There is no explanation outside fiction for what its writer is learning to do," Eudora Welty maintained in "Writing and Analyzing a Story;" explaining that each story references only the writer's vision at the moment of the creation of that story, and the creative process itself: nothing that can be "mapped and plotted" but a product taking shape in the process of creation itself, giving each story a unique identity of its own. And while her fiction, alas, can no longer grow any more than Faulkner's, she has left us enough of those unique creations to cherish for a long time to come.

An Essential.......2002-05-01

At the time of her death, Eudora Welty was widely regarded as America's single greatest living author. Although she produced several critically acclaimed novels, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning THE OPTIMIST'S DAUGHTER, Welty achieved her greatest fame through mastery of that most difficult of all literary forms, the short story.

Welty's skill with short stories is amazing, for she possessed a talent that combined a remarkable ear for the spoken word, meticulous observation of physical world, and the truly mysterious ability to slip almost effortlessly into the very marrow of the characters she depicts. Her comic stories are perhaps best known to the public in general, but she is equally at home with provocative and unsettling material, and although her tales are most often firmly rooted in America's deep south they have a sense of humanity that transcends the limitations of purely regional literature.

In addition to stories previously collected under the titles A CURTAIN OF GREEN, THE WIDE NET, THE GOLDEN APPLES, and THE BRIDE OF THE INNISFALLEN, this Library of America publication also includes the independently published stories "Where Is the Voice Coming From?" and "The Demonstrators," nine selected essays, and Welty's memoir ONE WRITER'S BEGINNINGS. A chronology of Welty's life up to 1996, textual notes, and general notes (including Katherine Anne Porter's introduction for A CURTAIN OF GREEN) are also included. This book (and its Library of America) companion, EUDORA WELTY: COMPLETE NOVELS) are essentials for any one who admires Welty's work and wishes to possess it in handy, collected form; those who have had limited exposure to Welty's work, however, might be better served by smaller collections.

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Southern Selves: From Mark Twain and Eudora Welty to Maya Angelou and Kaye Gibbons A Collection of Autobiographical Writing
James Watkins
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 067978103X
Release Date: 1998-07-28

Book Description

In this marvelous anthology thirty-one of the South's finest writers--from Kaye Gibbons and Reynolds Price, to Eudora Welty and Richard Wright--make their intensely personal contributions to a vibrant collective picture of southern life.

In the hands of these superb artists, the South's rich tradition of storytelling is brilliantly revealed. Whether slave or master, intellectual or "redneck," each voice in this moving and unforgettable collection is proof that southern literature richly deserves its reputation for irreverent humor, exquisite language, a feeling for place, and an undying, often heartbreaking sense of the past.

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Reviewed by Heather Grimshaw for Bookreporter.com
Rewarding glimpses into a remarkable life
The Petrified Biographer

Eudora Welty: A Writer's Life
Ann Waldron
Manufacturer: Anchor
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0385476485
Release Date: 1999-10-19

Amazon.com

"They'd have a hard time trying to find out something about me," Eudora Welty once told an interviewer to explain her fierce aversion to biography. Ann Waldron, who has written well-received biographies of Southern novelist Caroline Gordon and editor Hodding Carter, discovered just how hard a time when she set out to write the first, and of course unauthorized, biography of this "sanctified, canonized, apotheosized" literary figure. But Waldron persisted to brilliant results: Eudora: A Writer's Life is not only a fully detailed portrait but a fair and balanced one.

"Ugly to the point of being grotesque," as a fellow Mississippian said of her, Welty, who was born in Jackson in 1909, always made her way by charm, wit, and an offbeat sense of humor. Though Waldron admits that few of Welty's friends would talk to her, she nonetheless tracked down amazing amounts of new material on her personal life--her tense, guilt-ridden relationship with her widowed mother; her sustaining friendships with such literary figures as Katherine Anne Porter, Elizabeth Bowen, and Reynolds Price; and her possible romance with the mysterious John Robinson, who, like many of the men in Welty's life, turned out to be gay.

Waldron does a creditable, if at times perfunctory, job of following the trajectory of Welty's literary career--from her first hauntingly strange short stories collected in A Curtain of Green to whimsical productions of her midcareer like The Ponder Heart to her "warm, appealing, beautifully written" memoir, One Writer's Beginnings. Literary analysis is scant here, but that's fine, because many others have written at length and in depth about Welty's work. But only Ann Waldron has dared to do the life--and she has succeeded in making it clear, sympathetic, respectful, and wonderfully readable. --David Laskin

Book Description

Eudora Welty is a beloved institution of Southern fiction and American literature, whose closely guarded privacy has prevented a full-scale study of her life and work--until now.

A significant contribution to the world of letters, Ann Waldron's biography chronicles the history and achievements of one of our greatest living authors, from a Mississippi childhood to the sale of her first short story, from her literary friendships with Katherine Anne Porter and Elizabeth Bowen to her rivalry with Carson McCullers.

Elegant and authoritative, this first biography to chart the life of a national treasure is a must-have for Welty fans and scholars everywhere.

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Reviewed by Heather Grimshaw for Bookreporter.com.......2000-03-28

Interpretations of books may differ, but most readers agree that an author's lot in life is to unlock diaries, tell secrets, and share the intimate thoughts of their characters. But when it comes to sharing their lives, some authors are more willing to bare their pasts and share their inspiration than others. Eudora Welty did not embrace the notion of her life populating pages of a biography, yet Ann Waldron portrays the author in EUDORA: A Writer's Life in a way that will surely prompt a renewed interest in her works.

Waldron employs a stark style of writing that is at times dry, listing dates and events with little commentary, but her simplicity allows the richness of her content to shine. A book that promises to enthrall readers whose literary interests have led to Welty's novels, EUDORA: A Writer's Life will undoubtedly serve as a useful reference.

Those whose interest in Welty precedes her novels should be prepared for a sneak peek into the author's development of characters and the personal experiences that may have molded them in her mind. Using quotes from interviews and snippets from correspondence, Waldron is able to project Welty's voice in a way that allows readers to hear Welty as though she were in the same room. Writers will especially appreciate one quote from Welty, in which she explains the way she discovered one character's role in several short stories. "All I had to do was put two and two together, him and my little group, and I had him by the tail," she said.

While Waldron shares some of Welty's inner thoughts, as documented in letters and such, she does not presume to analyze the meaning behind Welty's stories or the motivation of her characters, a practice that Welty openly disparaged. In one chapter, Welty comments on letters she received from readers wanting to know whether a character's choice of an apple in "A Visit of Charity" is a reference to the Garden of Eden. Welty, whose impatience resonates in her quote said of the question, "The things some people teach! She was just eating that [an apple] the way you would a Hershey bar --- or anything else you'd saved for a reward after an ordeal. I used to visit the old ladies. They scared me. I couldn't wait to leave."

This quote and others help to draw a picture of Welty, often called "Eudo" by family and friends and loved unilaterally by colleagues, friends, family, and audiences around the world. She was not, however, a woman who enjoyed the social life of the times. Her looks are described by some as ugly, off-putting, and odd; but such descriptions are always followed by praise of her character, her zest for life, and her talent as a writer. Welty's looks may have prevented a slightly less creative girl from achieving similar heights, but she seemed to channel both the negative and the positives of her life into her work. She was able to transcend the superficiality of the times, which put a staggering amount of importance on looks, and is remembered by colleagues as a woman before her time.

The book, which spans 340 pages, also delves into the network of literary giants that Welty cultivated. From her hometown of Jackson, Mississippi to New York City and abroad Welty toured, spoke, and nurtured a growing base of loyal friends and fans. She was called approachable by students who attended her lectures and lovable by friends who shared intimate moments and memories with her. Well respected and revered by writers, editors, and publishers, Welty was a multifaceted woman who first tested creative waters as a photographer who was known to walk into less fortunate neighborhoods and take pictures of people from all walks of life.

Welty identified her dream to be a writer in the early 20s and her determination led her from the society pages of a daily Mississippi newspaper to becoming junior publicist for the Works Progress Administration; and, later, a novelist whose life is of interest to readers around the world.

After reading about her life, I find myself recalling characters that at one point or another find themselves in similar circumstances or places that Eudora experienced, and have already put her autobiography titled ONE WRITER'S BEGINNINGS on my literary wish list.

--- Reviewed by Heather Grimshaw

Rewarding glimpses into a remarkable life.......1999-07-29

I spent most of the weekend immersed in this book--and becoming enchanted with Eudora Welty. Monday I was at the library getting several of her works. I wanted to start at the beginning, so I read her first short story--Death of a Traveling Salesman. It was as gripping and powerful as I had hoped. This biography is respectful and insightful. It provides you with a strong sense of a gentle, talented southern lady who was absolutely true to herself and the world in which she spent her life and nurtured her talents. I am looking forward to reading everything Eudora Welty wrote and getting to know her. And it all began with this biography.

The Petrified Biographer.......1999-04-13

This is a terrible, mean-spirited attack against our greatest living writer, attacking her looks, her private life, etc. Eudora Welty has said throughout her life that she didn't want a biography written about her. This woman obviously does not respect her or she would respect her wishes. And why do such a book at this late date, with Miss Welty about to turn 90?? The author coyly pretends to be an admirer and then makes endless lurid allusions to a lady who basically has devoted her whole life to cultivating her art. Our most gifted writer is dismissed as a homely, unwanted "fag hag." (Judging by the photo of the dust jacket, Miss Waldron is no Hedy Lamarr herself). What would Edna Earle say about such a woman!! Don't buy this garbage. Buy another copy of one of Miss Eudora's books instead. You'll love it and it won't upset your stomach. To think some poor trees had to be slaughtered for this trash!! By the way, Happy 90th Birthday to Miss Eudora Welty who will certainly survive such a infantile attack as this. And someday an HONORABLE biography about her no will doubt be written.

One Writer's Imagination: The Fiction of Eudora Welty (Southern Literary Studies)

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One Writer's Imagination: The Fiction of Eudora Welty (Southern Literary Studies)
Suzanne Marrs
Manufacturer: Louisiana State University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0807128414

Book Description

In ONE WRITER'S IMAGINATION, Suzanne Marrs draws upon nearly twenty years of conversations, interviews, and friendship with Eudora Welty to discuss the intersections between biography and art in the Pulitzer Prize winner's work. Through an engaging chronological and comprehensive reading of the Welty canon, Marrs describes the ways Welty's creative process transformed and transfigured fact to serve the purposes of fiction. She points to the spark that lit Welty's imagination--an imagination that thrived on polarities in her personal life and in society at large.

Marrs offers new evidence of the role Welty's mother, circle of friends, and community played in her development as a writer and analyzes the manner in which her most heartfelt relationships--including her romance with John Robinson--informs her work. She charts the profound and often subtle ways Welty's fiction responded to the crucial historical episodes of her time and the writer's personal reactions to the issues of her day. In doing so, Marrs proves Welty to be a much more political artist than has been conventionally thought.

Marrs's relationship to Eudora Welty as a friend, scholar, and archivist--with access to private papers and restricted correspondence--makes her a unique authority on Welty's forty-year career. The eclectic approach of her study speaks to the exhilarating power of imagination Welty so thoroughly enjoyed in the act of writing.

Book Description

This is the original cast recording of the stage performance adapted by Brenda Currin and David Kaplan and featuring A Fantasia on Beethoven's Fifth Piano Concerto, along with a stunning spoken performance by Miss Currin, who reads from several Eudora Welty short stories. The result is a striking mixture of words and music that evokes Welty's world of passion, humor, and the culture of the Deep South.

Author and Agent: Eudora Welty and Diarmuid Russell

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The Best Personal portrait of Eudora Welty Ever Written

Author and Agent: Eudora Welty and Diarmuid Russell
Michael Kreyling
Manufacturer: Noonday Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0374523304

Customer Reviews:

The Best Personal portrait of Eudora Welty Ever Written.......1999-05-11

This is a knockout of a book. This is what readers and fans of the great writers want to know, the author's career history, how they first attracted attention and made literary history. Fascinating insights into Miss Welty's decades long business relationship and friendship with her agent Mr. Russell, touching and beautiful. This is what we want, not some conjecture-ridden tacky piece of slop like Ann Weldron's "biography" of Miss Welty.

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Great Collection of Welty Interviews

Conversations with Eudora Welty
Walt Whitman
Manufacturer: Pocket
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0671541676

Customer Reviews:

Great Collection of Welty Interviews.......1999-10-10

This is a thoroughly enjoyable collection of interviews and profiles on the legendary miss Welty that were published in various magazines and newspapers. Great for research into Miss Welty's thoughts on writing, writers, and her work.

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Eudora

Manufacturer: Univ Pr of Mississippi (Trd)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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