Product Description

A great writer's poignant photographs of Mississippi graveyards and memorial stones

For many years Eudora Welty wished to produce a book about country churchyards. Published at long last, in her ninety-first year, this book includes ninety of her photographs along with a conversation in which Welty shares her impressions and her memories of the 1930s and 1940s when she rambled through Mississippi cemeteries taking pictures. She recalls poignant and sometimes chilling experiences that occurred.

"I took a lot of cemetery pictures in my life," she said. "For me cemeteries had a sinister appeal somehow." Her camera eye focused on distinctive funerary emblems, statuary, storied urns, and appealing folklife qualities expressed in the gravestones. Just as many pieces of Welty's fiction feature lyrical descriptions of cemeteries and graves in a way that is expressly Weltian, so too do these photographs taken in the cool, sequestered churchyards and graveyards of Jackson, Port Gibson, Churchill, Rodney, Utica, Crystal Springs, Vicksburg, Rocky Springs, and sites near the old Natchez Trace.

They not only document her rambles but also accent the images of regional cemeteries that appear in her stories and novels. This is her unique view of the southern graveyard and of its unusual artworks that arrested her attention -- chains, willows, baskets, angels, lambs, pointing hands, doves, and wreaths. "I like the tombstones showing children asleep in seashells," she says. For her, an absorbed observer, there is charm in the stone motifs and in the sentimental modes of commemorating the dead.

As a contemplative loner she called no attention to herself as she wandered quietly through small-town cemeteries with her camera. Both the country settings and the heart-felt inscriptions on decaying marble heightened her imagination and triggered her creative impulses.

Accompanying the photographs are selected passages about graveyards and funerals from her fiction -- Losing Battles, The Golden Apples and Other Stories, A Curtain of Green and Other Stories, and The Optimist's Daughter -- and from her essay "Some Notes on River Country."

In the introduction Elizabeth Spencer, a Mississippi writer who has been a life-long friend of Welty's, explores the photographic images for the meanings they yield, for the light they throw onto Welty's fiction, and for her own memories of their home state's evocative graveyards and burial customs.

Eudora Welty, one of America's most acclaimed and honored writers, is the author of many novels and story collections, including The Optimist's Daughter (Pulitzer Prize), Losing Battles, The Ponder Heart, The Robber Bridegroom, and A Curtain of Green and Other Stories and two collections of her photographic work Photographs and One Time, One Place: Mississippi in the Depression (both from University Press of Mississippi). ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Countryside dead
"I always wanted to put together a book to be called 'Country Churchyards,' composed of the pictures I took in cemeteries."

So explains Eudora Welty to Hunter cole in 1999, only a couple years before her death.So it seems strangely appropriate that one of this great author's last works was a photographic record of various churches, graveyards and tombstones that she saw over her long lifetime. And "Country Churchyards" only proves Welty to be as brilliant and insightful a photographer as she was a writer.

Elizabeth Spencer spins out an essay about Welty and her attraction to churchyards, the Souther attitude to graves, as well as the transience of these monuments. It's a lovely piece of prose, especially since Spencer has quite a way with words (".... a quiet spot surrounded by an iron fence, entered by an ornamental wrought-iron gate, dripping grey with Spanish moss, m may be knowing in its silence that it is not forgotten any more than it forgot...").

But the stars of this book are indisputably Welty's photographs. The first few are striking but not terribly accomplished pictures of churches, as well as a lone statue of a tiara-wearing angel with one arm held up. It looks like it's waving.

But the pictures become more striking and more polished as the book goes on, and Welty's focus shifts to the more unusual churchyards -- ornate monuments, mossy stones surrounded by willows, striking churches veiled by fences and forests, statues of women weeping and drowsing, worried-looking saints, a life-sized Jesus carrying a cross, bas-reliefs of fallen trees, sleeping babies, and wrought-iron gates.

Not to mention the angels -- lots and lots of them, and only a couple are drippy child-cherubs. More often they are beautiful strong androgynes who are pointing at the horizon and watching over the graves. And the beauty of the graveyards themselves are brought to light occasionally, such as the misty sunlit pictures of vast leafy trees, flowers and tangled grasses, with a few tombstones among them.

Everybody loves a beautiful old graveyard, and I used to live near one of the loveliest ones you can imagine, crammed between a library and a busy side-street. Despite this, the exquisite old stones and elaborate Catholic statuary gave the whole area a feeling of peace.

So it's unsurprising that Eudora Welty, who spent a lifetime sketching eloquent, bittersweet, warm stories and novels about the South she grew up in, is able to convey all that beauty and history to her readers. And her photography is no less effective than her writing -- once she overcame the initial amateurish problems, Welty was able to infuse a lot of feeling into what she photographed.

The photos are all black-and-white, and most of them have a misty sunlit feeling. And Welty successfully gives many of her photographs a wistful, poignant feeling -- especially when she focuses on the little sleeping stone babies, or a stone dog waiting patiently on its master's grave. Then again, there are graves where you wonder what the designers were thinking -- for example, what is with all the SHEEP? Were some of these people unusually attached to their woolly bovines?

Additionally, the photos are also taken from a variety of angles, which is especially important when photographing the gorgeous old churches, or special shots like the angel watching the graveyard (who is photographed from behind). Accasionally you get the feeling that somebody has wandered into the photo -- such as one man who appears on horseback near a church, and seems surprised to see Welty's camera.

"Country Churchyards" is exactly what it sounds like, but in Eudora Welty's hands it became a sweet, melancholy chronicle of where the dead lie. A sweet little photographic record.

Trading on Her Name
I obviously am coming late to this book.I've been a fan of Miss Welty's writing since growing up in the sixties.I actually wrote her a fan letter and got a reply and like a stupid child, didn't keep it.

I also own Miss Welty's other photo books.As a photo bug of forty years, I enjoyed her other work during the Depression, though it certainly was not special in itself.It is worth more as a historical record.

Upon buying this book I was surprised that it made it to publication.I have shot hundreds of the same type of photos traveling through small towns myself.These photos remain as did her earlier photographic work--snapshots of a time and a place.There's nothing wrong with snapshots, but I them for what they are: a historical record.Others have done much better work on cemeteries and gravestones.

I'm confident that, without Miss Welty's name, this book would never have reached publication.

LOVE THIS BOOK!
Did I say I love this book enough? Eudora Welty, the great Mississippi writer took these photographs many years ago. They cover churches and cemeteries around the Jackson area. Some of these places I know and have in my own collection of photos. Haunting places. There is much to be said of Welty's work with the camera. She has a great eye for detail, for light, and for mood.She has captured a period that is long gone. She loves angels. There are few commentaries because this is a book, not about words, but about churches, tombstones, and their lasting message. A great addition to both collectors of tombstone art and Eudora Welty's work. A classic. Buy it while you can. It will be a collectible one day.

More photographs from a writer's eye
Those who cherish Eudora Welty's earlier collection of photographs (_One Time, One Place_) need no urging from me to sample this new jewel box of images from a Mississippi past. Like the earlier collection, theseblack-and-white photographs document the rural South of the 1930's and1940's when Welty worked as a photographer for the WPA.As its titlesuggests, this book offers a tighter focus: on the burying-places of therich and poor, the black and the white. Here be angels of all sorts, urnsand chapels, sheep and dogs, children who seem but to sleep in masks ofmarble. Those who know Welty's keen gift for description will see how hereye for detail, setting and atmosphere was trained up in her earlyphotographic work. Each image seems surrounded by the rich and generousspirit through which Welty sees the world and those who toil in it.

Thephotographs are preceded by an account of a conversation with Miss Welty(as we Southern men and women of letters have learned to always refer toher) and interspersed with excerpts from the novels. Also a joy is theintroduction by fellow Mississipian Elizabeth Spencer, who places theseimages in the landscape of Welty's fiction, as expressions of "EudoraWelty's vision of death as a part of life." Spencer continues,"It must find its ceremony within family and community, and itssymbols, beautifully displayed here, arise out of the beliefs and feelingsof shared love."

To spend time with this book is to walk among themossy trees, rest among the cool white monuments, and feel the pull of thatgreater community which surrounds us. It gives further evidence why MissWelty is one of our great national treasures. But I leave the last word toher, in this excerpt from _The Optimist's Daughter_:"The top ofthe hill ahead was crowded with winged angels and life-sized effigies ofbygone citizens in old-fashioned dress, standing as if by count among thecolumns and shafts and conifers like a familiar set of passengers collectedon deck of a ship, on which they all knew each other -- bona-fide membersof a small local excursion, embarked on a voyage that is always returningin dreams." ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (12)

shallow tale ina forest
The Robber Bridegroom is Eudora Welty's first novel and it is not very good.The book has some of her typical dryhumor and sparkling prose but the story is thoroughly uncompelling and there is a lot of dead space in what seems meant to be an adventure story.She is much better at relationships and social structure. Skip this book

Troll Lovers and Talking Ravens
He has long blond hair, carries a talking raven on his shoulder, and both outwits and outfights stupid but wily giants. Who is he? If you guessed "Odin", you've been reading the same sagas and folk tales I have -- and specifically the Twice-Told Tales of Nathaniel Hawthorne -- but the answer this time is Jamie Lockhart the Robber Bridegroom, the abductor of Rosamond, beautiful princess-like daughter of the rich planter Clement Musgrove, hated by her wicked-witch step-mother Salome. Others have recognized the folk-tale roots of Eudora Welty's first published novel, most recently the voracious reader and reviewer Herr Schneider; whether those roots are German or Norse makes little difference, though I'd argue that the secondary characters in this narrative - Little Harp, Goat, and Mike Fink - are trolls pure and simple. Younger readers, if there are any, might put the cart before the horse and compare this 1942 fantasy with the Coen Brothers Southern Gothic film "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?" In fact, there are plenty of homegrown 19th C American antecedents for The Robber Bridegroom, especially the almost-forgotten "Flush Times in Alabama and Mississippi" by Baldwin.

This is a rollickingly funny book, no matter what else one might claim to find in it. It's a comic antidote to all the dead-serious mythification of William Faulkner, an intentional (I think) counterweight to the exaggerated self-reverence of Southern culture. And it's short! About the length of a good viking romance.

Clement Musgrove, the planter father, is a curiously honorable man in a world where the only dishonor is getting thwarted in your rascality. Near the end of the tale, when everything has gone from worse to worst, Clement sets himself in the middle of a circle of stones and delivers a three-page monologue of runic wisdom. Here's an excerpt:

""What exactly is this now?... What is the place and time? Here are all possible trees in a forest, and they grow as tall and as great and as close to one another as they could ever grow in the world. Upon each limb is a singing bird, and across this floor, slowly and softly and forever moving in profile, is always a beast, one of a procession, weighted low with his burning coat, looking from the yellow eye set in his head.... But the time of cunning has come, and my time is over for cunning is of a world I will have no part in. ... Men are following men down the Misssissippi, hoarse and arrogant by day, wakeful and dreamless by night at the unknown landings. A trail leads like a tunnel under the roof of this wilderness. Everywhere the traps are set. Why? And what kind of time is this, when all ids first given, then stolen away?""Snorri Sturlison couldn't have said it better. And no sooner is Clement's monologue spoken than he is snatched by Indians, vengeful spirits as silent as the trees such planters as Clement have been despoiling for cotton lands.

Like all good folk tales, The Robber Bridegroom comes with a stinger, a grim Grimm moral.

Sister Grimm's Mississippi
In this delightful little nonsense, Welty transposed elements of several Grimm fairy tales to a Mississippi setting, during Spanish times. We have the evil stepmother, the talking raven, the talking locket inherited from the dead mother, the robber gang's hidden cottage badly in need of a house keeper, we have the singing maiden hiding her nakedness with her long golden hair, the bandit king and his true love not recognizing each other, the greedy wife who wants more and more riches...
Add the planter who lost his first wife and his son to fierce Indians, some real historic regional outlaws, including the talking head of one, the landscape on the river, with plantations and forests and generally puzzled wild life, and a fierce and puzzled tribe of Indians, who is clearly unused to Grimmsy/Weltyan behavior on the part of the palefaces, and you get a charming story about love and greed and with only so much deeper meaning as you think you must find when you can't help looking for it.

I picked up the LoA volume of Welty's novels after Gentleman Brown told me that Welty is the real Southern writer to know. Let's see how the other novels are, this one is just a warm up. Glad to see, though, that there was enough sense of humor in the 40s' publishing world to give this first novel a shot and a chance. In the 70s, the story was made into a Broadway show -- but I know nothing about its success with the public.
Glad to see, too, that the Grimms' sense of humor is not lost on everybody. And that bandits can become honorable merchants and that New Orleans hospitality was based on beauty and vice.

Cupid and Psyche meets the American Tall Tale
Welty's first published novel is a retelling of Psyche and Cupid, with a decidedly American twist. Instead of turning the Greek myth into a fairy tale, she's created a delightfully unbelievable, far-fetched and bizarre "tall tale".

Many of the elements of a fairy tale are there--the wicked stepmother, the beautiful heroine, the naive and loving father, the handsome hero--but these are overshadowed by tall tale traits such as the superb stretching-of-the-truth skills by nearly everyone encountered from the mail rider who was swallowed by a crocodile to our heroine, Rosamond, who can't tell a truth to save her life.

The story takes place along the Natchez Trace in Mississippi with "Red Indians", robbers and a few famous American tall tale characters filling up the bad guy roster--with the hero, Jamie, switching sides regularly. Rosamond's father Clement Musgrove is a wealthy planter who meets Jamie at an inn and unwittingly brings his disruptive presence into Musgrove family.

Many deaths, lies, misunderstandings and berry stains later, Rosamond and Jamie do live happily ever after. . . and Rosamond even starts telling the truth. . . well mostly the truth, "it was all true but the blue canopy".

This fanciful tale is a well-executed, superbly written, pleasant read and it's only afterwards that one realizes that Welty added a bit of acid to this pleasurable brew.

A warped fairy tale
Eudora Welty borrowed from the old Brothers Grimm fairy tale 'The Robber Bridegroom' to create this story that is part fairy tale, part historical fantasy, and very strange.Instead of old Europe, the action takes place in the southern United States.The old characters are all there: the innocent daughter, the merchant father, the irascible thief who becomes the 'bridegroom', and some new people have been added.A wicked stepmother, a boy named Goat, and an Indian tribe are just a few of the extras.

Apparently some of the characters, like Mike Fink and the Harp brothers, were real people, or at least were part of American folklore.Welty combines old world and new world fairy tales to create something completely unique.If you know the story of the Robber Bridgroom, you'll see how Welty has slyly snuck in very subtle similarities (the bird in the cage), and you'll be astonished at how much the ending was changed from the original story.

The book moves with rapid speed through larger than life situations.The Indians cooked and ate the merchant's family and he and his daughter escaped, THEN he married the evil Salome, THEN some guy tried to kill him while he slept with his bag of gold, THEN Lockhart carried his daughter away naked, THEN...It becomes almost too frantic, and you might need to go back a few pages now and again to make sure you didn't miss something.It's probably not the best introduction to Welty, but it's one of her most colorful works.For an elegantly written, surrealist fairy tale, you can't do much better than this. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (6)

A Different Presentation--
There are terrific reviews already on this site, and I can add little to what has already been said.I've been a Welty fan since discovering her work 40 years ago, and have a reply from her from many, many years ago when I wrote her a rather gushing fan letter in grade school.

I suppose that, like many Welty fans, I concentrated on her work.I'd read peripherally about her friendship with Porter and others, and I've enjoyed her photographic work.I'd also read One Writer's Beginnings. However, this work goes much deeper into Miss Welty's personal life than I'd been exposed to before.Who can say what's tragic or sad in another's life?We all create our existence to different muses.

I was delighted to find this book, and appreciate Ms. Marrs's scholarship.

Saint Eudora
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
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!
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
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. ... Read more

Product Description

Eudora Welty, one of America's great storytellers, relates, in her sweetly vibrant Mississippi drawl, five of her finest stories. from the uproariously irreverent Why I Live at the P.O. and the quieter, richly perceptive A Memory and A Worn Path to sponteneous Powerhouse and the insightful voice of women's truth's in Petrified Man, Welty opens up her stories and invites the listener in.

Customer Reviews (5)

Too Fast
I grew up a few miles from Jackson, Mississippi, where Eudora Welty lived.All of my parent's generation had the same melodious Old South speech. This speech is not the caricature heard in movies; it's an almost aristocratic, even slightly British accent, and very hard to describe.I thought it had died out until I ran across an on-line example of Welty's readings.The slow cadence is an essential element.I was so disappointed when I heard this tape.Someone surely had told her - no, must have threatened her - to read as fast as she possibly could.How sad!

Caramel Sunshine
What a joy to hear the voice of Eudora Welty! Caramel sunshine. Maybe the reviewer who wrote that the pace was too for them fast might get out the book and follow along. Or maybe they'd be more content imagining another voice and another rhyme.Their own maybe. The beauty of the written word is precisely that it can be pondered at leisure in a cocoon of one's own making. Another option is to take a risk and trust the author to speak her stories in real time. Ease on down and enjoy.

Fast Talk for a Southerner
While I love reading Eudora Welty stories in print form, I was highly disappointed with the tape. Ms. Welty reads so fast it took me half of the first story to begin to be able to follow her. Having lived in the deep south, I was used to people down there telling me, a native northerner, to slow down. Ms. Welty turns the tables with this tape. If you are able to play the tape at a reduced speed, you should enjoy her rich characterizations and storylines.

A captivating work
Hearing Ms. Welty's voice deliver her stories is a singularly moving experience.Her southern accent breathes life into the genius of this woman's pen.Once you have heard her words, in her voice, with the faintlyaudible sound of courthouse square traffic in the background, you willnever be unable to summon the pleasure of her witty dialogue and focused,poignant descriptions.

Outstanding Performance by Miss Eudora Welty!!!
This legendary writer does full justice to her classic short stories with thoroughly delightful readings!! This lady is not only a supremely gifted comic writer, she is a fabulous comedienne performer, giving deliciousreadings no veteran Hollywood or stage actress could match.She will haveyou on the floor with WHY I LIVE AT THE P.O. and especially THE PETRIFIEDMAN.This is one book on tape you will play over and over.This oneshould have won a Grammy for Best Spoken Recording.Miss Welty is a laughriot!This old gal is funnier than Lucille Ball!!! ... Read more

Product Description
Much like her highly acclaimed One Writer's Beginnings, The Eye of the Story offers Eudora Welty's invaluable meditations on the art of writing. In addition to seven essays on craft, this collection brings together her penetrating and instructive commentaries on a wide variety of individual writers, including Jane Austen, E. M. Forster, Willa Cather, Anton Chekhov, William Faulkner, and Virginia Woolf.

"In criticism as in fiction, Miss Welty's observations are blessed with a dazzling accuracy." -- The Nation

"Makes the relationship between reading and writing extraordinarily close." -- The New York Times Book Review

One of America's most admired authors, Eudora Welty was born in Jackson, Mississippi, which is still her home. She was educated locally and at Mississippi State College for Women, the University of Wisconsin, and the Columbia University Graduate School of Business. She is the author of, among many other books, One Writer's Beginnings, The Robber Bridegroom, Delta Wedding, The Ponder Heart, Losing Battles, and The Optimist's Daughter. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Feeling through fiction
Ms. Welty shows those who are desirous of writing fiction what the object and nuances are that make for a piece of good writing. If you've heard over and over again, "don't tell it; show it" then this book will help you understand what "it" looks like.
No exercises to prime the pump or brainstorming sessions here, for while those are useful for developing a skeleton, this book will help you to breathe life into your narrative. ... Read more

Product Description

Although she is eminent primarily as the prize-winning author of classic works of fiction, Eudora Welty is notable also as an astute literary critic. Her essays on the art of fiction and on the writers who enlarged the range of the short story and the novel are definitive pieces. Her distinguished book reviews, along with her critical essays, augment her reputation for being one of the most discerning author-critics in literary America.

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In a major reinterpretation, Resisting History reveals that women, as subjects of writing and as writing subjects themselves, played a far more important role in shaping the landscape of modernism than has been previously acknowledged. Here Barbara Ladd offers powerful new readings of three southern writers who reimagined authorship between World War I and the mid1950s.Ladd argues that the idea of a "new woman"—released from some of the traditional constraints of family and community, more mobile, and participating in new contractual forms of relationality—precipitated a highly productive authorial crisis of gender in William Faulkner. As "new women" themselves, Zora Neale Hurston and Eudora Welty explored the territory of the authorial sublime and claimed, for themselves and other women, new forms of cultural agency. Together, these writers expose a territory of female suffering and aspiration that has been largely ignored in literary histories.In opposition to the belief that women’s lives, and dreams, are bound up in ideas of community and precontractual forms of relationality, Ladd demonstrates that all three writers—Faulkner in As I Lay Dying, Welty in selected short stories and in The Golden Apples, and Hurston in Tell My Horse—place women in territories where community is threatened or nonexistent and new opportunities for selfdefinition can be seized. And in A Fable, Faulkner undertakes a related project in his exploration of gender and history in an era of world war, focusing on men, mourning, and resistance and on the insurgences of the "masses"—the feminized "others" of History—in order to rethink authorship and resistance for a totalitarian age. Filled with insights and written with obvious passion for the subject, Resisting History challenges received ideas about history as a coherent narrative and about the development of U.S. modernism and points the way to new histories of literary and cultural modernisms in which the work of women shares center stage with the work of men.AUTHOR BIO: Barbara Ladd is an associate professor of English at Emory University and the author of Nationalism and the Color Line in George W. Cable, Mark Twain, and William Faulkner. ... Read more

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According to Bloom, Eudora Welty was both a master storyteller and a superb prose-poet, combining populist and elitist elements in her art. Here, numerous critical works are offered on her short stories, including "Death of a Traveling Salesman," "Why I Live at the P.O.," "The Wide Net," and "No Place for You, My Love."

This title also features a biography of Eudora Welty, a user guide, a detailed thematic analysis of each short story, a list of characters in each story, a complete bibliography of Welty’s works, an index of themes and ideas, and editor’s notes and introduction by Harold Bloom.

This series, Bloom’s Major Short Story Writers, is edited by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University; Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Professor of English, New York University Graduate School; preeminent literary critic of our time. The world’s most prominent writers of short stories are covered in one series with expert analysis by Bloom and other critics. These titles contain a wealth of information on the writers and short stories that are most commonly read in high schools, colleges, and universities. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

I Did Not Review THISBook
I reviewed Bloom's 1999 Research Guide on Welty, not this 1986 Critical Views on Welty.

Careless Scholarship
The idea for this collection of excerpts is commendable, as an introduction to Welty for, perhaps, high school students; but a hardback at this price is too costly for that purpose, and the scholarship is too flawed for any use.Even a quick glance reveals (1) outdated information about the Welty scholars quoted and (2) errors in the bibliography. Ruth VandeKieft (not "Kieft") is deceased, Pollack is not at Sweetbriar, Prenshaw is no longer at Southern Mississippi, nor I at Oral Roberts University. Barbara Fialkowski did not write A Still Moment but, rather, one essay in it.This collection of excerpts looks as if it were put together quickly not by Bloom, who should know better, but by someone who does not know Welty or Welty criticism. Although my own book, excerpted in the text, is not listed in "Books About Welty," ten that are listed are general works I consulted but that are not themselves about Welty at all (including Frank, Kestner, Frye, Kayser, Fleenor, Gilligan, Weisenfarth).If the editor had consulted the excerpted authors, this could have been a better book. ... Read more

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Eudora Welty holds a prominent position among Southern writers, receiving critical attention in publications that scan a wide range of interests. Journals that specialize in American literature, journals that publish general essays, and journals that focus on Southern literature frequently include articles about Welty's works. This book traces the critical response to Welty's fiction by providing representative selections of criticism from the 1940s to the present day. ... Read more

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Part of The Wadsworth Casebooks for Reading, Research, and Writing Series, this new title provides all the materials a student needs to complete a literary research assignment in one convenient location. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A strong, determined, and caring grandmmother!!!
"A Worn Path" was about an old black grandmother named Phoenix.She had a sick grandson and was very determined to keep him alive. During this story she faced alot of obstacles but, nothing could keep her from getting the proper medication for her grandson. This is story that shows many different things but, one important thing stuck to me from reading this story. Because this story's setting was set around Christmas time, the word "Charity" is mentioned in the story. It made me wonder...is the money or personal sacrifice most important in charity.

A calm,mellow,determined story of a grandmother going to ...
This story isn't shabby, considering the exposition being a cold, chilly afternoon. The narration is nothing fancy, and there's no mega flashbacks so you can easily follow and feel the emotions and thoughts of this little,old, colored lady with a red hood. Good story. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Some of Welty's Best Works
This collection of short stories by Eudora Welty contains two of my all-time favorite short stories: 'Why I live in the P.O.' and 'The Worn Path'.Not only have I read each of these stories several times, but I have listened to them on tape performed by the author.They have been so popular in my family that one of my children knows 'Why I Live in the P.O.' by heart and has performed it for us many a time.

'The Worn Path' is a poignant and tragic tale about a grandmother who is trying desperately to get medicine in time to save her grandson's life.'Why I live in the P.O.' is a comic tale about a young woman who feels that she is not appreciated enough by her family so she leaves her home, moving to the post office where she serves as post mistress for her small town.The story is so funny that I laugh out loud every time I read it or hear it.

I can't say enough about the brilliance of Eudora Welty's writing.She masters tragedy and comedy both.This collection contains some of her best works.

MIssissippi Literary Patchwork
This HBJ anthology presents 13 stories whose publication dates cover a span of 25 years, selected and introduced by Ruth Van de Kieff.Except for the last one, placed in the UK on a boat train, these tales reflect Welty's penchant for Mississippi-especially along the Natchez Trace.Her subjects range from a morbid fascination with freaks, to a glorious depiction of the role of Nature.Touching upon crime, poverty, the subtleties of Marriage, and the Black experience she portrays the intricacies of human condition with suave sensitivity.

Welty's themes are more subtle: tragedy narrowly averted, male paranoia, female jealousy and affectations.Quietly seeking the" the mystery of inner life" she deftly plumbs the depth of the human heart, depicting events and experiences which seem both abnormal, yet perfectly natural. For this author Place is everything-permeating the external life of her characters, subtly shaping their internal thoughts, dreams and ultimately, their behavior. A few stories reveal her outright humor and stage-worthy dialogue, yet the action of most of these tales is painstakingly slow, deftly blending literary Chiaroscuro in a
Southern milieu. Vintage Welty to tantalyze and invite thoughtful readers to further exploration.

Good Introduction to Welty's Work
This is a representative collection of the late Eudora Welty's short stories.While Welty wrote several novels, including the entertaining Robber Bridegroom, her reputation rests mainly on her short stories.This collection contains many of her most famous stories and shows well the range of her writing.Welty was an extremely skilful writer who could vary her writing style from the lyrical to the concise.Welty's work seems to inspire dichotomous reactions; either rapture or dislike.I find her work interesting but not compelling.This book is an excellent means to decide whether or not you wish to invest the a significant amount of time in reading Welty.

Was worse then expected.
Do not read this book unless you like short stories or are required to do so.Each story is like reading the exposition of a novel, which is the most uninteresting part.Here are some of what the stories are about: 1) Awoman who lives at the post office and has male relatives who wear dresses2) A man who's wife said she drowned herself because he came home late, sothe man went to look for here body in the river AND 3) Two mentallychallenged people who want to get married and one is a xylophone player Ifthese sound interesting to you get the book.They certainly weren't forme.Yet everyone's taste is different.

Here, Thirteen Is Lucky
I know that Welty has several editions out of her stories.I know that these stories have been anthologized a lot ("A Worn Path," "A Wide Net," and "The Hitch-Hikers").So it doesn'tmatter to me what edition of her stories that you buy, as long as you readthem.

This edition is my first exposure to her collected stories (after Ifirst read her autobiographical book, "One Writer's Beginnings")and I must admit that I am fascinated.She includes an incredible about inthe settings, in the agile characterizations, and in her own unique, pointof view.She is a master storyteller.

My personal favorites include"A Wide Net," "A Worn Path," and "Why I Sleep AtThe P.O." ... Read more

Product Description
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Eudora Welty's writing and photography were the subject of more than one thousand reviews, of which over two hundred are collected here. From the first, reviewers loved Welty's language and disparaged her lack of plot. Their eager anticipation for the next book is rarely diminished by the shock of reading entirely different styles of writing. Her work was admired even as it challenged its readers. The reviews selected for reprinting here represent the diversity of Welty's reception and assessment. Reviews from small towns, urban centers, noted fiction writers, professional reviewers, academics, and everyday readers are included. The comments of reviewing rivals such as the New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune, Nation and New Yorker, when read side by side, reveal the nuances both of the reviewers and of the work of this important Southern writer. ... Read more

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When Arturo the Parrot, whose job was to help greet people as they came into The Friendly Shoe Store, picked up and repeated a small boy's disgruntled comment---Shoes are for the birds!---it certainly changed the course of his life! This is Eudora Welty's only book specifically for young readers. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

disappointing
LOVE JIM DALE but even he can't make this interesting.It was really a waste of time and money.We listen to books on cd all the time and it was painful to make everyone listen to this all the way through.It's not long at all- just feels like it ... Read more

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Eudora Welty's subjects are the people who live in southern towns like Jackson, Mississippi, which has been her home for all of her long life. I've stayed in one place,' she says, and 'it's become the source of the information that stirs my imagination.' Her distinctive voice and wry observations are rooted in the southern conversational tradition. The stories in this volume, from the first two collections she published, range in tone from the quietly understated and psychologically subtle to the outrageously grotesque. Linking them all is Welty's remarkable ear for the language and point of view of the South. 'She's a lot smarter than her cousins in Beula,' someone remarks about a reputed suicide in one story. 'Especially Edna Earle, that never did get to be what you'd call a heavy thinker. Edna Earle could sit and ponder all day on how the little tail of the 'c' got through the 'I' in a Coca-Cola sign."

The stories in this volume, from the first two collections she published, range in tone from the quietly understated and psychologically subtle to the outrageously grotesque. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Whisical short stories with a southern flavor.4 Stars!
These stories are a great read.With tons of soul, humor and guts, Eudora Welty weaves these tales of the south like a master.Mark down the ones you like because you'll want to read them again. ... Read more

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Eudora Welty and Walker Percy were friends but very different writers, even though both were from the Deep South and intensely interested in the relation of place to their fiction. This work explores in each the concept of home and the importance of home to the homo viator ("man on his way"), and anti-idealism and anti-romanticism.

The differences between Welty and Percy and in their fiction were revealed in the habits of their lives. Welty spent her life in Jackson, Mississippi, and was very much a member of the community. Percy was a wanderer who finally settled in Covington, Louisiana, because it was, as he called it, a "noplace." The author also asserts that Percy somewhat envied Welty and her stability in Jackson, and that for him, place was such a nagging concern that it became a personal problem to him as homo viator. ... Read more