From the Mississippi Dept. of Archives and History
I CAN’T REMEMBER when I first became aware of the work of Eudora Welty, what story I read first, or when. I was probably in high school, and though I appreciated both Welty’s craft and her Southern settings (having spent part of my childhood in Tennessee) I lost track of her as an adult. Today, her birthday, is a good day to apologize to her for such a flagrant omission, and to remind myself that it’s time to dive back in.
Only last year, thanks to a wonderful website whose recommendations for books, music and tools for living are unerringly fantastic, I read Welty’s memoir, One Writer’s Beginnings, a book that shook me, made me think hard on how I see my world, and what I might do with what I see.
Welty, a sister to two brothers, wrote endlessly about relationships within towns, within families, connections longed for or actually achieved. Welty never married, and though she traveled throughout the U.S. and Europe, she always came back to her home in Mississippi, where she finally settled for good to care for her aging mother, and where she died in 2001 at age 92.
It’s fitting that Eudora was also a photographer, for a time. In both photography and in writing, the emphasis in on the capture of a moment–but not any moment. Both writer and photographer, to succeed, must capture just the right moment so that the viewer or the reader may understand more about the subject than is contained in the words or the emulsion.
Welty strenuously resisted efforts by others to make her work about her or her life; she guarded her privacy, and seemed to have mostly behaved like the Southern lady she was, though she was know for a ready and wicked wit, too. How else could she have written the brilliant and wicked story “Why I Live at the P.O.”, a tale of sisterly jealousy so strong that its narrator leaves home to live at the Post Office where she works, all to escape her sister, who she feels is unfairly showered with the world’s blessings?
Eudora Welty, voted “Best All Round Girl” by her high school class, went on to win awards and veneration, without ever losing her sense that life is inevitably made in its tiniest details. Eudora, thank you, and happy birthday.
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Paige
Thank you for sharing this! I will keep an eye out for her work -
Just fiddling with my contact details – trying to work out how to amend them permanently! Might take a while!!!
Welcome back, Mary! If you dive into Eudora’s world, be sure to let me know what you think.
I actually met Welty in the early 1980s. I was just out of college–in the South, where I’m from–and was driving from Texas to Georgia. I had been given her phone number by a professor of mine–and a letter (!) of introduction. (Oh, those were the days.) Anyway, I called her up while I was in Baton Rouge, she invited me over to her house when I passed through Mississippi, and we sat out on her porch while she peeled par-poached tomatoes to get them ready for canning. It was crazy special. I remember her tea service was very formal and grandmotherly. I asked her what she thought of other Southern writers (O’Connor and Faulkner, but also Penn Warren) and she crinkled up her nose, shook her head, and didn’t say a word. I don’t know if she didn’t care for them or for my question. I wrote her a couple times later in graduate school and she always wrote back very formal, stiff letters asking especially after that professor I’d had.
Good thing you didn’t ask about Carson McCullers, who Welty apparently especially disliked! What a great story, and memory. I hope you have those letters in a special place–what treasures. Thank you so much for reading, and especially for giving us this image of Eudora and her tomatoes.
In honor of Eudora Welty’s birthday, this blog post is linked on the LitBirthdays calendar for April 13, 2010.