Eudora Welty Stories Essays And Memoir [Hardcover]

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.

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.

Reading these stories, I fell in love with Eudora Welty's writing. A completely original voice, with a blend of grace, humor and courage that you simply don't find anywhere else--particularly among today's writers. While most of the stories play in the south, probably my favorite is "The Bride of the Innisfallen," which plays in England and Ireland. I didn't fully understand it the first time I read it, but I was sufficiently intrigued that I immediately read it again (something I rarely do) and was completely blown away. American writing doesn't get any better than this.

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