Product Description

Customer Reviews (21)

Love Eudora Welty
My old worn out copy of this book was finally on its last leg so I decided it was time to shelve it for good, and replace it.

The picture shown is not the same as the book I received, although it is the same book, so I don't really think it matters. Just a heads up in case the same thing happens to anyone else.

availability
I was very pleased with the prompt delivery of my purchase. I went to three bookstores and it was not available. I went to Amazon and not only available but the price of the book was less than the bookstores. I will order from this company in the near future.

Amazing
Absolutely compelling stories about the South.What a brilliant and lovely writer.Honest and captivating.

Amazing Analogies and Characterizations
Welty is a short story writer that I have tried very hard to like.I'm still culling through her large opus of stories and do have a couple of favorites.I liked A Curtain of Green, but to me this story did not seem typical of her.I enjoyed her most frequently anthologized work "Why I Live at the P.O."It is funny and cleverly written.But still I find that not many of her stories "slam" me the way her promotor and good friend Katherine Ann Porter's work does.Welty is, however, an amazingly adept story teller and undeniable a master of analogy and characterization.I keep looking for something in her stories that make them memorable for me, and I just can't seem to find it.I grew up near the geographical area in which most of her stories are set and can vouch for their authenticity and the accuracy of the dialects and customs of that region.In rating her story collection, I'd like to give her 4 stars for her brilliant writing skills and 3 for my personal enjoyment of the stories.I like 'em, but don't love 'em.

Wonderful reading.
Collected Short Stories of Eudora Welty:a delicious book, perfect for reading during the hot months of summer. ... Read more

Product Description
This two-volume collection reveals the singular imaginative power of one of America's most admired Southern writers. "Complete Novels" gathers all of Welty's longer fiction, from "The Robber Bridegroom" (1942) to her Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Optimist's Daughter" (1972).Amazon.com Review
This Library of America volume gathers all the long fictionpublished by the beloved Mississippi writer Eudora Welty. Throughouther long and storied career, Welty has been most famous, perhaps, forher short stories. But it's in her novels that she attempted some ofher most ambitious and powerful creations: the idiosyncratic fablethat is The Robber Bridegroom, drawing on legends, localhistory, folktale, and myth; the underrated, wickedly funny shortnovel The Ponder Heart; and Losing Battles, a familialepic 15 years in the making and begun in bits and pieces while Weltycared for her sick mother. In a strange inversion of the author'susual career trajectory, Welty's only attempt at a roman àclef came late in life, with the PulitzerPrize-winning The Optimist's Daughter, the quiet, moving,largely autobiographical story of a woman coming to grips with herfather's death. The novels alone earn Welty a place as one of thefinest writers our century has produced; taken together with theLibrary of America companion volume, Stories, Essays, & Memoir,it's a body of work that William Maxwell calls "beyond human power ofpraising." Welty rarely strayed for long from the place of her birth,but her fiction is as capacious as the human heart itself. LikeFaulkner, she has taken her own corner of Mississippi and made itencompass the world. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

What a writer!
Eudora Welty has a voice all her own, and the two Library of America volumes let you get inside her writing in a way that reading the books and stories individually somehow doesn't. The one disappointment in all of her writings was "Losing Battles"--despite the fact that, apparently, it was her most popular novel. I read about 200 pages of it before deciding, with real regret, that was indeed a losing battle to try to get into it. But thankfully, the other novels more than make up for it. "The Robber Bridgegroom" is a hilarious American fairy tale/tall tale that was even better the second time around, "Delta Wedding" is one of those sprawling books you get lost in and don't ever want to end, "The Ponder Heart" is another high-order hoot, and "The Optimist's Daughter" is flat-out one of the best American novels of the 20th century. What a writer!

Mistress of Southern Fiction
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.

Greatest living southern writer
I began my acquaintance with Eudora Welty's works in college withOne Writer's Beginnings and fell in love with the lyrics of her writing.I moved on to her short stories where I believe Ms. Welty surely shines brightest, but her novels are almost as wonderful.Very few people have the depth of insight into the mind and motivations of southerners that Eudora Welty has.She is right up there with William Faulkner.She has the gift of seeing and conveying the universal experiences of her decidedly regional cast of characters.

Since this is a collection of all of Ms. Welty's novels it is difficult to give a concise review.Suffice it to say that for reading pleasure you will not spend better money.The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize, but Losing Battles may be evenbetter (the novel centers on all of the family stories told at a huge family reunion--great framing device for so many wonderful tales).The Robber Bridegroom is a southern fairy tale.

Eudora Welty is a giant of literature.This is a great Library of America collection.Buy it! ... Read more

Product Description
"Stories, Essays, and Memoir" contains all of Welty's collected short stories, her first book, "A Curtain of Green and Other Stories" (1941), stories based on her travels, and the ever-popular memoir, "One Writer's Beginnings" (1984).Amazon.com Review
It's small wonder that the Library of America chose EudoraWelty as the first living (at that time) author published in this prestigiousseries. Welty was the kind of writer people routinely call "anAmerican institution." But don't let the sweet white-haired-old-ladyimage fool you: Welty's work is anything but benign. For more than 50years, Welty spoke with a fierce and uncompromising literaryvoice. Or, rather, voices: the stories collected in this volumefeature a dizzying array of characters, each of whom seems to whisperdirectly into the reader's ear. From the toxic rage of "Where Is theVoice Coming From?" to the jazzy rhythms of "Powerhouse," these talesblaze with intensity and a comic energy that's both gentle andfierce. Even that bane of junior-high-school speech tournamentseverywhere, "Why I Live at the P.O.," benefits from rereading; as faras this brand of down-home farce goes, Welty does it better thananyone. Bringing together the contents of Welty's four short-fictioncollections, this Library of America volume also includes severalessays as well as Welty's very fine 1984 memoir, "One Writer'sBeginnings." In it she speaks of connections, continuities, the wayboth her fiction and her experiences emerged gradually into focus overtime:

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

Customer Reviews (6)

Thanks
Came in a timely manner. Nice book cover. I like having an older print of a southern great!

What more can be said?
The first reviews of this collection pretty much sum this volume up. The only thing I can add is that if this collection is not in your library, if you have not read Welty, you are certainly the poorer for it.

One gem after another
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.

The Great Southern Writer Who Wasn't Southern
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.
"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.

Also recommended:
Eudora Welty : Complete Novels: The Robber Bridegroom, Delta Wedding, The Ponder Heart, Losing Battles, The Optimist's Daughter (Library of America)
Flannery O'Connor : Collected Works : Wise Blood / A Good Man Is Hard to Find / The Violent Bear It Away / Everything that Rises Must Converge / Essays & Letters (Library of America)
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter/Reflections in a Golden Eye/The Ballad of the Sad Cafe/The Member of the Wedding/The Clock Without Hands (Library of America)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Universal Legacy Series) ... Read more

Product Description

The radiant world of Eudora Welty's art is charged by a poignant and familiar beauty, and here in a stunning book of her photographs is a dazzling record of this writer's unique and special vision.

Customer Reviews (6)

Another Side to Eudora Welty
Although Eudora Welty did give us ON WRITING, this book, EUDORA WELTY: PHOTOGRAPHS, is not a how-to book. It is an eye-opening collection of her photographs taken over much of her lifetime and presented starkly, without her commentary (there is an interview and an introduction by Reynolds Price), as a document of her perceptions, observations, and selective photographic and visual expertise. I included it in The Gorelick-Guest Collection of Books on Art at the Cultural Center of Cape Cod so that users would know the images of this master and perhaps learn to follow their own personal visions. So, yes, maybe it is a how-to book. Irecommend spending time with this unusual work to see, indeed, how it's done.

Incredibly Beautiful
This book is filled with beautiful photographs that show a profound respect for the dignity of each person photographed--rich or poor, black or white, old or young.Eudora Welty was truly a woman ahead of her time.As a current resident of Mississippi, the pictures have a special resonance.

See What Welty Saw
Welty's tallent with the unspoken is clear as one turns each page.This book is as beautiful as it is haunting.I am originally from the delta, which makes these pages seem like a part of me.It is wonderful to see what Welty saw -- the folks who inspired her stories.

A FascinatingLook at Pre-war Mississippi
This collection of photographs vibrantly brings to life a bygone era in Mississippi.As a former resident of the state Ms. Welty photographed, I found this book to be an indispensible document of a life now gone (for better and worse).The simplicity and beauty of the featured photographs move me almost as much as the author's fiction.While we do not remember Eudora Welty for her photographs, I find it hard to be disappointed with them; alas, I can only find fault with the volume's brevity.This book would be a wonderful addition to any collection.

A FascinatingLook at Pre-war Mississippi
This collection of photographs vibrantly brings to life a bygone era in Mississippi.As a former resident of the state Ms. Welty photographed, I found this book to be an indispensible document of a life now gone (for better and worse).The simplicity and beauty of the featured photographs move me almost as much as the author's fiction.While we do not remember Eudora Welty for her photographs, I find it hard to be disappointed with them.I can only find fault with the volume's brevity.This book would be a wonderful addition to any collection. ... Read more

Product Description
Eudora Welty was one of the twentieth century’s greatest literary figures. For as long as students have been studying her fiction as literature, writers have been looking to her to answer the profound questions of what makes a story good, a novel successful, a writer an artist. On Writing presents the answers in seven concise chapters discussing the subjects most important to the narrative craft, and which every fiction writer should know, such as place, voice, memory, and language. But even more important is what Welty calls “the mystery” of fiction writing—how the writer assembles language and ideas to create a work of art.

Originally part of her larger work The Eye of the Story but never before published in a stand-
alone volume, On Writing is a handbook every fiction writer, whether novice or master, should keep within arm’s reach. Like The Elements of Style, On Writing is concise and fundamental, authoritative and timeless—as was Eudora Welty herself. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

great insights
If you are a writer, or a lover of literature and literary writing, American in particular, Southern American even more so, this will be a pleasure.

Title should be "On Literary Criticism"
Eudora Welty was an icon of twentieth century literature. Her work reprinted here is straight out of my literary criticism classes of the sixties. All essays were originally published in the sixties and seventies. This book is useful for the student of literary criticism. It is NOT useful for the student of writing technique, characterization, short stories, plot development, use of place and time.

Not for Writers Only
It is unfortunate that most readers who make their way to this page will be writers for this collection of Eudora Welty's essays on the craft of writing is not just for writers.

Readers, too, will find wisdom and insight here. Wisdom to apply to their own lives. Insight into Welty's other works.That The Modern Library collected them is a gift in and of itself.

Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of "Harkening" ... Read more

Product 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. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (22)

Agree with other One Star Posters
After being frustrated trying to get into this book, I read all the reviews.I should have done that first and saved time. I picked this book off a library shelf because I had read some of Eudora Welty's short stories.

Now I won't feel guilty in NOT finishing the book.

I won't repeat what the other one star posters said.They hit the nail on the head.

fine novel about an isolated southern family
Delta Wedding is one of only five novels that Eudora Welty wrote and may be her best.This novel about an isolated slightly aristocratic southern family is full of interesting characterization and dry humor.We really feel like we know the Fairchilds after completing the book. The perspective of the young cousinLaura who comes fromJackson to the wedding is important and it gives depth. At times the book rambles and there are dead spots but overall a goodpiece of literature

uninspired
this novel is tired, uninspired, at the same time full of life and lifeless.Boring is the best word.You have to CARE about the characters, the plot, the situations, the conflicts, the setting (as set by the author), else the novel fails. And this one fails miserably.Grossly overrated.

boring and seemingly endless
This book was recommed to me in an online discussion group for classics, so I ordered it and looked forward to reading it. However, I never really got into it, I tried very hard several times, there are hardly any books I have not finished but with this one I just couldn't make myself read on. There are endless descriptions of what various members of the Fairchild family think and do during a long hot week. The style varies, depending on which persons thoughts we are following, but the thoughts are so boring and the writing doesn't help either. After about 100 pages I gave up and I couldn't even think of someone who I could give this book to.

Delta Wedding
I had always wanted to read something by Eudora Welty, and this book cured me of that.What a confusing bunch of characters--one didn't know if they were white or black--young or old.The one bright spot in the book was her very descriptive language. ... Read more

Product Description
Throughout her writing career Eudora Welty's camera was a close companion. She is among the very few authors who are acclaimed for their work in both literature and photography. The 100 duotone pictures in this volume are selections from the many she took during the Great Depression as she traveled in her home state of Mississippi while she was working for the WPA. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Great photographs, but you can do better ...
Before Eudora Welty was a published writer, she was a semi-professional photographer. The "snapshots" (her term) in this book are eloquent images in themselves; Welty's accompanying essay, though brief, is excellent.

Ordinarily this would be more than enough for me to recommend the book. But in this case, there's a much better collection of these photos for you to own. _Eudora Welty Photographs_, also published by University of Mississippi press, includes the hundred photos collected here plus about eighty others. Although it lacks Welty's introductory essay, it more than compensates with a tribute from Reynolds Price and an in-depth interview. The photo reproduction is superior as well. So skip _One Time, One Place_ and buy _Eudora Welty Photographs_ instead. ... Read more

Product Description
Three generations of Granny Vaughn's descendants gather at her Mississippi home to celebrate her 90th birthday. Possessed of the true storyteller's gift, the members of this clan cannot resist the temptation to swap tales. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

Adorable
This book has a certain sweetness to it. So sweet that diabetics can only read it when fastened to an insulin pump. It is laden with vegetable metaphors, comparing things to flowers, trees, leaves. Involving an adorable southern family, an adorable county in rural Mississippi and little towns so adorable that theymake your saliva curdle, after one hundred pages you get this great urge to commit adorable mayhem. No racism, no clans, after 150 pages, nary an African American.I notice that you can buy it used for a penny. Purchase it only if you intend to recycle it to Kimberly Clark.

Takes me back
You can never go wrong with Eudora Welty, she IS the South!

Lose this book
This novel is hideously overlong and completely unfunny. Eudora certainly knows how to create an atmosphere, that much is true, but this is an atmosphere I was eager to be done with, featuring the most miserable family reunion and godforsaken little town I've ever heard of. Don't waste your time.

Am I having a bad hair day or is this novel boring?
What's wrong with me? I love Eudora Welty's short stories. But this novel was exasperating. The story opens at a family reunion in backwoods Mississippi, where the author "overhears" endless conversations about nothing carried on by the Renfros and their kin.For hours, they debate whether the family antihero,, Jack Renfro, will appear at the reunion (after several years in the penitentiary).

For 60 pages, I waded through trivial dialogue as family members eagerly awaited Jack's appearance. I gather from other reviewers' comments that the family bad boy did show up eventually, but by that time I'd left the party. I'd closed the book and drifted off to sleep.

If you want plot action, this is not the book for you. I'd suggest you pick up Carson McCullers, Flannery O'Connor or even William Faulkner.

Southern Heratige Shines Once Again
Eudora Welty truly shows her Southern heratige in the novel, "Losing Battles." Three generations of Granny Vaughn's family come to celebrate her nineteth birthday. The family is also celebrating her grandson, Jack's, return home from prison. Welty writes this novel almost entirely in dialouge. At first it is very hard to keep up with all of the aunts, uncles, grandchildren, etc. talking, but as the novel progresses, it gets easier to read and you learn about each individual character. Even though this technique gets easier as the plot unfolds, it gets very tiring. It takes away a certain zest by not telling how the characters are feeling and thinking.Welty shows the great value of small towns. This novel brings about the closeness that communities should have. Take for example the fact that Jack ends up helping the judge who sentenced him to prison. The Banner community is very welcoming to other people, like Jack's new wife. The jargon used by Welty also creates a sense of closeness you feel toward the audience. "Losing Battles" reveals the importance of your roots and the people in which you come in contact with. On the day of the reunion a teacher who had taught three generations of Banner inhabitants passed away, giving the family more reasons to reminence about the old days. This part of the story created a twist and it allowed the novel to become more closer to heart. The laughter and the tears associated with the novel make it a 'losing battle' if you try to put it down. Even though it isn't my favorite novel in the world, it is well-written and one worth reading. So pick up a copy soon so you will be lost in the Southern heraitge that shined once again! ... Read more

Product Description
The Optimist's Daughter is the story of Laurel McKelva Hand, a young woman who has left the South and returns, years later, to New Orleans, where her father is dying. After his death, she and her silly young stepmother go back still farther, to the small Mississippi town where she grew up. Alone in the old house, Laurel finally comes to an understanding of the past, herself, and her parents.Amazon.com Review
The Optimist's Daughter is a compact and inward-looking littlenovel, a Pulitzer Prize winner that's slight of page yet big of heart. Theoptimist in question is 71-year-old Judge McKelva, who has come to a NewOrleans hospital from Mount Salus, Mississippi, complaining of a"disturbance" in his vision. To his daughter, Laurel, it's as rare for himto admit "self-concern" as it is for him to be sick, and she immediatelyflies down from Chicago to be by his side. The subsequent operation on the judge'seye goes well, but the recovery does not. He lies still with both eyes heavily bandaged, growing ever more passive untilfinally--with some help from the shockingly vulgar Fay, his wife of twoyears--he simply dies. Together Fay and Laurel travel to Mount Salus tobury him, and the novel begins the inward spiral that leads Laurel to themoment when "all she had found had found her," when the "deepest spring inher heart had uncovered itself" and begins to flow again.

Not much actually happens in the rest of the book--Fay's low-rentrelatives arrive for the funeral, a bird flies down the chimney and istrapped in the hall--and yet Welty manages to compress the richness of anentire life within its pages. This is a world, after all, in which a set ofcomplex relationships can be conveyed by the phrase "I know his wholefamily" or by the criticism "When he brought her here to your house, shehad very little idea of how to separate an egg."Does such a place existanymore? It is vanishing even from this novel, and the personificationof its vanishing is none other than Fay--petulant, graceless, childish,with neither the passion nor the imagination to love. Welty expends a lotof vindictive energy on Fay and her kin, who must be the most small-minded,mean-mouthed clan since the Snopeses hit Frenchman's Bend. There's morethan just class snobbery at work here (though that surely comes into ittoo). As Welty sees it, they are a special historical tribe who exult ingrieving because they have come to be good at it, and who seethe withresentment from the day they are born. They have come "out of all times oftrouble, past or future--the great, interrelated family of those who neverknow the meaning of what has happened to them."

Fay belongs to the future, as she makes clear; it's Laurel who belongs tothe past--Welty's own chosen territory. In her fine memoir, OneWriter's Beginnings, Welty described the way art could shine alight back "as when your train makes a curve, showing that there has been amountain of meaning rising behind you on the way you've come." Here, inone of her most autobiographical works, the past joins seamlessly with thepresent in a masterful evocation of grief, memory, loss, and love. Beautifully written, moving but never mawkish, The Optimist'sDaughter is Eudora Welty's greatest achievement--which is high praiseindeed. --Mary Park ... Read more

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Analysis
In the book `The Optimist's Daughter' by Eudora Welty there is a scene where the protagonist (Laurel McKelva) who is the daughter of the deceased Judge McKelva, finds a bird in her Father's (and now her mother-in-law Fay's) house. I believe that this bird represents all Laurels life throughout the book. It is my opinion that Eudora Welty decided to simplify Laurels life into this situation with the bird showing us all the events that had happened to Laurel in the book.
When Laurel first arrives home, she sees the bird, which `shot out of the dining room and now went arrowing up the stairwell in front of her eyes' (pg 129). This first action of the bird sounds quite like Laurel after her mother died. The bird left the relative safety of the dining room, which it had been accustomed to at that point because of a sudden change (Laurels arrival) and it darted off quickly somewhere else that it had never been to before.
Laurels life changed drastically when her mother died suddenly. Given the change in her life, she quickly darted of to another city, a place she did not know just like the bird did.
Then, Laurel goes into the master bedroom of the house, and turns on a light, which the bird is immediately attracted to and it comes towards it, where Laurel slams the door shut on it to keep it out. Just like how, when Judge McKelva called Laurel, she came rushing out to see if he was ok and he died, just as surprisingly as the door slamming, and then he leaves everything he owns to Fay almost like a slap to the face.
The bird is then restless, constantly `touching, taping, brushing itself against the walls and closed doors, never resting' (pg 130). The bird is uncomfortable, and is restless, but no matter how much it struggles, it does not get anywhere. This is very much like Laurel once she is back in Mount Salus. She doesn't like the fact that people are telling lies about Judge McKelva, she doesn't like the fact that he isn't going to be buried with the rest of his family, she doesn't like the fact that the casket is going to be kept open and she certainly doesn't like the fact that Fay made such a scene at the funeral. However, as much as she might try to raise an objection, or tell people that that is not the way it was, she is trying to no avail.
Then later, Mr. Check the carpenter is trying to help get the bird out of Laurel's room. Unfortunately all he does is make the situation worse and he simply shrugs it off when he does. This is very much alike to Laurel and her `bridesmaids' whom thought that they were helping her and being supportive but really weren't doing anything to help.
Finally, with the help of Missouri, Laurel manages to free the bird from the house and it flies away. This I believe, is the biggest section of symbolism. The house, I think, represents Laurels pass, the bird itself, representing Laurel. Laurel is trapped in the past, just like the bird is trapped in the house. Eventually however, the bird flies away back out into the unknown, free from the house, just like Laurel, will, leave Mount Salus and be free from her past and go back out to the world free from all that has happened.

Slice of the South
The Optimist's Daughter had a lot of good things about it.All in all, I liked it and I'm glad I read but it didn't make me want to rush out and read everything by Eudora Welty.

It's a very short book, yet it meanders slowly through a basic story.Welty does an excellent job of describing the atmosphere of the south.People in the Mississippi town where most of the novel is set have known each other for years.Most have stayed in the town with a notable exception being Laurel who is the Optimist's Daughter who has returned to care for her ailing father who eventually dies.

Laurel is the center of the novel as she comes to terms with loss.This is not just about the loss of her father but is also about the previous losses of her mother and husband.She endures so many levels of stress from past and present events.

One of Laurel's sources of stress is her father's silly, selfish, young second wife, Fay.She cannot understand how her father, "The Optimist" and significant presence in the town could have married such a horrible creature.

I found Laurel's journey and the multiple layers of grief to be very well described and interesting.I also enjoyed the feeling and atmosphere of the South.

I found the character of the second wife, Fay to be overpowering and inapprpriately extreme.She became hard to take after awhile and I would have preferred her influence to have been more muted.

I liked The Optimist's Daughter and give it a middling recommendation.

Optimist's Daughter is very zen
The father lived loud and proud, but died with a whimper not a bang, that is pretty sad.The daughter was a wimp, but she became assertive.Redemption is always a rewarding end to a story.The (2nd wife/ step-mother) was the only consistent character throughout; loud and abrasive from beginning to end.The kind you love to hate.I liked this short story turned novel, I would recommend reading it.Especially after reading a big thick book.This one is short and sweet and cleans your reading palette just perfectly.

Other Aspects of the South
This is a book by Eudora Welty.

Ms. Welty was what you would call a great "Southern" writer. Even though I am a southerner myself, such authors are not often favorites of mine - often too slow, wordy and tragic for me.

Anyway, I thought this book by Ms. Welty was OK. It had some interesting subplots, characters and settings, but it seemed to end rather abruptly and not say as much as it seemed to have the capacity to say. I gather she liked the short story, so maybe this was just her way - this was a very short novel. I think that the title may be a bit ironic too.

In addition to some great handling of local color, the book offers a view of the South in a transitional time of recent years, but it concentrates on issues other than race. That might make it of interest especially to people from outside the region; the South is about more than just racial issues (among the magnolias).

For some reason, people hate this review. Well, to each his/her own.

Disappointing
I wanted to read this book because the writing style of one of my favorite authors (Fred Chappell) was compared to that of Eudora Welty. My expectations, therefore, were high and I felt disappointed and wholly unsatisfied when I finished reading it. Perhaps this is due to some failing or intellectual lacking of my own (after all, the book DID win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction) but I found her characters to be rather flat and her attempts at abstract descriptions difficult to follow. If I had reread certain passages a few times, I might have been able to follow her train of thought but I read fiction for pleasure, not to practice my study skills. Throughout the entire book, I got the feeling that she was simply trying too hard to be poetic. While her writing must appeal to others, I, most likely, will not pick up another one of her books in the future. ... Read more

Product Description
"Beguiling as autobiography and . . . profound and priceless as guidance for anyone who aspires to write serious fiction. . . . In these few pages, Eudora Welty seems to have followed the trail . . . to the richness of her maturity with a gracious and warming clarity."--Los Angles Times Book Review. 17 halftone illustrations.Amazon.com Review
Among the most beloved of American writers, Eudora Welty'sstories and novels have entertained us for over half a century.Here,in her memoirs, she writes with her usual candor and grace about howa writer's sensibilities are shaped.As compelling as her stories, aswitty as her personality, as finely honed as her fiction, Welty'saccount of her life is a powerful and fulfilling read. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (35)

got nothing out of this
First of all, I don't think Welty's stature as a writer is now or ever has been such that a memoir was called for, but fine.The thing is only about 110 pages.

But reading this proved a total waste of time, at least for me.I just finished it, yet would be hard-pressed to name one interesting event or situation from the entire work.She does outline where she was living and when, and there are some characterizations of some relatives, but as for getting at the core of what made her want to write and how . . . this book has, believe it or not, little to say on that subject.

Try Maugham's "The Summing Up."Now THAT book was everything this one should have been, and by a far more able writer.

Not for Everyone
Welty has always interested me so I was thrilled to read her -- well, what a heck is this?autobiography, essay,?Yep, both.

Reading this book seemed as if I were sitting down for a conversation with Welty.What a treat.She truly comes alive here.

This book is certainly not for those who want a plot or action.This book does give the reader an idea of what life was like for the author growing up in the South early in the 20th century.It is quiet, thoughtful, and precious.

If you love writing, read this
Reviewers are correct in saying that this was not meant to be a how-to book about writing. I believe the book might be taken from several lectures she gave at Harvard rather late in life? In any case, the book will be greatly enjoyed partly because Welty is such a good writer that she could probably be captivating if she wrote about a trip to the grocery store.
I love to read about how great writers started out. What is their family background? What were their struggles? What motivated them? How did their writing develop? Who were their encouragers or discouragers? What were the hard lessons they learned? What things about the writing life did they enjoy most? Which were the most challenging? And on an on go my questions.
Welty does not disappoint. Though not exhaustively, she tells her story and the book is to be gradually savored, not rushed through in three hours. An excellent book.

A Mississippi Writer
I purchased Eudora Welty's book because I am interested in writing and she is a Mississippi writer.

Took too long
I was not very satisfied with the procedure.
I had to wait more than a month to get my book.
I never got a confirmation from the seller about the purchase, only from amazon.
When I contacted them to inquire about my book, they did not answer me.
I got the book eventually,the quality was as stated, but it took too long. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (4)

Picking better Fruit


Hippomenes (with apologies to Ogden Nash)

Behold the great Hippomenes!
Who spies his quarry through the trees,
Though prospect of his loss was grim,
Venus will look after him.

Race, race thou grand Hippomenes!
Throw apples at Atlanta's knees,
Win her love with one last try
The glint of gold will catch her eye.

Eudora's Sour Apples

While conceiving what direction to take this review, this writer had many choices.We could have traversed the stratosphere with the highbrow intellect of the King's English of Oxford University.Or, we could have writ this down like the class of lower aptitude that pervades the book at hand.A handbook, indeed.However, we of the committees of good taste and proclivity have decided to stick with the traditional method of the rant.

It has come to this writer's attention that there is a new book that is making the rounds of all the traditional literati:Eudora Welty's The Golden Apples.It is an interesting tome that takes place in little ole Harrisburg, Mississippi.As if we didn't already have enough on Mississippi from our fellow Yoknapatawphanian and bourbon connoisseur, Mr. Faulkner.(By the way, Yoknapatawphan means muddy shoed drunk in the Choctaw language).Unlike our friend Mr. Hemingway, both Ms. Welty and Mr. Faulkner do not appear to want themselves or their characters to step out into the cold dark world.It is quite evident to this reviewer they are quite safe in "the land of cotton."Look away, I say, look away!In Apples, Ms. Welty does not want her characters to step into the woods.God forbid they return from the forest primeval laden with child by a shadowy figure or an initiation of a band of horny twins.There are, Ms. Welty, scarier things in the world than what rattles around in the jungle.

The story has been told that Ms. Welty was a photographer in her prior vocation.I would like to suggest she take back up her brownie and return post haste to the world of the daguerreotype.I do not find her writing or typing (if I may borrow from Mr. Capote) either enriching or entertaining.I will get into that in more specifics in a moment.

During a recent lark, I myself ventured into the wilderness, not for the traditional forty days mind you, but to see what I could see.I also carried with me my brownie and took a photo or so.My favorite picture was the one of the rundown farmhouse.It conveyed what it was, what it is and what it will become.At one time, I'm sure, it was a flourishing home with children and grandchildren running about.It is now in ruin and decay and in the future, it will be razed for some purpose.This sounds somewhat like what Miss Eckhart in June Recital was up to, razing the past for an unknown future.

The book is laid out with a short to long story rotation.(Not unlike the of all the young ladies who attended the NC State promenade being laid end to end, and no one being surprised in the least.)Just when you think she has run out of things to say, she hits you with stories that are 78, 45, and 58 pages long respectfully.This is a triumph of the will . . . will you read this, or will you not.Personally, I could only get through, with woe and boredom, the first three stories Shower of Gold, June Recital and Sir Rabbit (which consequently, I wished I had hippity, hoppity, hopped down the bunny trail) without scouring the medicine cabinet for arsenic or razor blades.

In Shower, we meet a fine hardworking lady named Snowdie who just happens to be an albino.Her life has not been too terribly hard.That is until she meets King MacLain.She and King meet, marry and then he up and leaves.However, one day, Snowdie gets a message to meet him in Morgan's Woods (from here on to be referred to as the woods of conception/fornication).Nine months after their tryst in the underbrush, Snowdie produces twins.After numerous global sightings of King, he finally returns to Morgana only to be scared away by his own children.
In June, we meet a voyeuristic malaria sufferer.Loch has taken to bed with what can be assumed is malaria (quinine was the hint).He is using his father's telescope to peer into the dilapidated house next door where he notices some interesting goings on -- most notably, a romantic tryst between a sailor (anchors aweigh!) and Virgie Rainey.I do confess that one of my most favorite lines in the book is from this vignette."Her name was Virgie Rainey.She had been in Cassie's room all the way through school, so that made her sixteen; she would ruin any nice idea." I have heard of home wreckers, but idea wreckers.Indeed.This piece is also a flashback to when a family actually used to live in that house.(I would like a flashback so that I can remember what it was like to have my faculties before I started this review.)

Finally, in Rabbit, we meet the spawn of King MacLain lurking around in the woods of conception/fornication.Mattie Will, with hoe (garden implement) in hand, is permissively abused by King MacLain's sons.Mattie says that she allowed this because their mother was an albino.What does this sexual charity teach us?

The apples in this book have been at least a distraction, nothing more.I'm sure if Hippomenes had rolled these apples in front of Atlanta, she would have never stopped to them up.I would like to hope that in future trysts with the typewriter, Ms. Welty's trees never bear fruit and if they should it falls far from the tree and the seeds never sprout.

A Book for Wanderers
In The Golden Apples, Welty offers a cycle of subtle, complex and often hilarious stories/myths from the fictional town of Morgana, Mississippi.Told from a variety of perspectives and voices, the cycle uses southern imagery, greek mythology (sometimes via the poetry of Yeats) and musings on art and music to narrate the history of a cast of characters either absorbed by or isolated from Morgana and the surrounding world.The reader, in assembling meaning from the flood of rich narrative becomes more than a casual observer, but a participant in the ongoing mythology of Morgana.

Like Winesberg or Yoknapatawpha or even Middle Earth, Welty creates a world so complete and convincing that we can't help but immerse ourselves.And what lies in the gaps between the stories and known chronology becomes just as captivating as the story we're given.

Golden Apples, in its complexity, can be a lot of work.But the payoff is huge.

Short Story collection mascarading as a novel
Golden Apples is a novel by Eudora Welty that reads like a series of bizarre short stories with the same recurring characters set in a fictional town in Mississippi. Some readers may find it difficult because of its use of language (...). Others may find it difficult just for it's odd prose. The chapters are not linear nor are obvious segues ever used to cue the reader in that a jump in time has taken place. There are also lots of characters with similar names making it easy to lose track of who has done what, when. If I were more drawn into the book I'd want to reread it to get the pieces I missed or misunderstood but frankly I'm just not captivated enough to want to do that right now.

Beautiful, Subtle, Resonating Stories
"The Golden Apples" is one of the five best short story collections I've read.Welty's description of character, and its transformation throughout life (it's almost like an episodic novel) issubtle, humorous, and moving.Her style is poetic yet lucid, perfect forthe emotionally complex situations she describes.The citizens of Morgana,Mississippi, with all their virtues, flaws and perversities, reminded me ofAnderson's "Winesberg, Ohio."But Welty's eye seems defter,deeper, less given to easy pay-off and caricature.Similarly, she issuperior to Flannary O'Connor because her tales deal with the nuances ofeveryday events rather than thunder-and-lightning epiphanies.

Dive intothis swirling, invigorating pool and have your views of people and theworld changed, as were mine. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (4)

Slow start
I am not particularly fond of short stories, in general. Most of the time I finish them with a shrug and a `so what?' I know there are some great short stories. I find it hard to define what makes one, but I know easily when I read one, or when I read a story that isn't great.

Starting Eudora Welty's collected short stories in the LoA edition, one begins with her first published story book, A Curtain of Green. The stories were all previously published in magazines during the late 1930s and early 40s. There is an introduction by Katherine Anne Porter (whom I know only by name, but she seems to have been some kind of a mentor) saying that EW wrote naturally, without being spoiled by a formal kind of training in writing, and had no problem getting published. Possibly that was what kept her from becoming a better writer in young years. I mean the lack of difficulties to find a publisher, not the lack of training. I am quite willing to believe that training in writing is not a promising activity.

She was a Mississippian with some outside experience, but she chose to return and live at home. She reached a good age and a Pulitzer and was, as I am told, the first writer to be in the LoA during lifetime. The stories are all about small town life in Mississippi. Most are 3rd person narratives, but there are also some 1st person tales.

The subjects are mostly the same as in other Southern Gothic collections: simple minds (if female, easy prey...), handicapped people (the deaf and mute couple on their honey moon missing their train to Niagara Falls...), freaks (a black clubfooted man in a show, playing an Indian woman who eats chickens alive - that kind of thing), picturesquely dysfunctional families (the woman who sleeps in her post office, to show her family that she does not need them...), decayed gentry (the mad sisters with the mad brother and the vegetable father...), mindless violence (the hitchhiker killing his travel companion because he bragged and carried a gittar around...), stupidity (ubiquitous).

But there are also better ones, like the title story, about the green curtain. A woman, struggling to live with her husband's death by accident, has a moment of hatred for fate and of attempting revenge against the world.
Or the story called Whistle, one of the best here, in my opinion: the dirt poor farmer couple who burns their furniture in a rage, for firewood. These two show that there might be much more than average `Southern Gothic' coming up, later.

In other words, all in all I expected more. The language is also not particularly original or otherwise striking.
Maybe one should stay away from collected stories and restrict one's curiosity to selected ones. Of course that runs the risk involved in trusting somebody else's selection criteria.
I am sure, somehow, that better things are down the road.

A skilled writer, but too much ambiguity for my taste
Eudora Welty had a long and distinguished writing career.Her stories are set in the small southern towns that she knows so well, and she is known for her character portrayal.This book, which is my first experience with her work, is no exception.The stories are short and full of meaning.Some are simple and some border on the horrific.But all of them leave a lasting impression, causing me to ponder their meaning.The characters are well developed.There is no doubt that Ms. Welty is a master of her craft.

It's true that the people come alive right off the pages.Only problem is that I just didn't like any of them.Each story presents some sort of a puzzle.She packs them with great imagery and wonderful details.I found myself getting involved in reading them.And then, when the story ended, there was a lingering question. What had happened? I was always left with an uncomfortable feeling.And left wondering.

I am sure that this ambiguity was the writer's intention.And I do applaud her skill.I'm glad I had the experience of reading her work.I just don't want to read any more of it.

Review
This was the first Eudora Welty book I've read. Because this is my freshman year in college, I'm wondering why it took me so long.
Like her senior, Southern cohort Faulkner, Welty concentrates her gentle touch on characters in and around Mississippi. Every story is remarkable in its own way, but there are a few standouts. "Lily Daw and the Three Ladies" is an amusing tale of a dim-witted girl who's on the brink of marriage, is snatched away, and then thrown right back when her beau comes calling. The Hitch Hikers is a brooding story of a murder in a traveling salesman's car. My favorite is The Key, in which a filched key gives doubtful, deaf newlyweds new reason for hope of love and contentment.
Miss Welty puts an incredible amount of feeling into her stories, but is not afraid to allow the charming or even picayune to provide distraction from the gravity surrounding. This collection encapsulates the famous Death of a Traveling Salesman. Lovely.

A brilliant debut
In her first book, Eudora Welty surpassed the mannered and overreaching efforts of more celebrated Southern authors.She examined the inner lives of varied characters -- male and female, black and white, funny and brutal-- and submitted them all to her quiet and curious personality.The effectis both timeless and strange. ... Read more

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Three men and a heron
`The Mississippi shuddered and lifted from its bed, reaching like a somnambulist driven to go in new places; the ice stretched far out over the waves.' Page one of First Love, the first story in this collection.

The Wide Net was Welty's second published short story collection. It came out in 1943, and all stories had been published previously.
In her first story book (Curtain of Green), I was a little unhappy with some of the stories. They seemed to me examples of a certain simplistic genre, where writer and reader conspire to make fun of the stupidity of people, and where we are watching grotesque people or grotesque events, like readers of yellow press products.

The Wide Net does not have that kind of writing, and that alone is reason why I like it better. But I still don't like it all the way. The language is fresh and aggressive, but also flawed. Please look at the sentence that I quote above, from First Love. It shows both, the strength and the failure of Welty's style. It is all very nice for the river to shudder and reach etc; but never will ice stretch far out over waves. That just does not happen in this world, unless I totally misunderstand the meaning of this sentence.

The title story tells us of a young man who is afraid that his young pregnant wife may have jumped into the river. He calls a friend and most of the neighborhood men, and starts dredging the river with a wide net. We expect a drama and are given a farce. The men have a jolly good fishing day. A lovely story, but a little inconsequential. As it is, I like it better than if it had stayed on its starting course of drama.

Welty lets us meet historical persons.
Aaron Burr and his treason trial are observed through the eyes of a deaf 12 year old orphan who works in a Natchez Inn as a bootblack.
Audubon meets, by coincidence, 2 other historical figures, an evangelist on a soul fishing trip, and an outlaw on his hunt for robbery victims, in a moment of silent beauty. Which gets disturbed by Audubon, the pragmatist. Something for birders.

More of a mythical nature: Asphodel, the Greek underworld's location for the boring neutral souls, who are neither heroic nor damnable, is visited by 3 spinsters who tell each other of a friend's exciting and dramatic life.
We also have stories on the edge of the esoteric (the little girl moving in and out of dreams during a storm, and finding real life evidence of her imagined play mate next day; the gambling place where the same old woman with a purple hat shows up every day over 30 years and gets killed twice...). Not my favorite genre either, but better than `Southern Gothic'.

I don't know Welty's later work yet, but her moving away from the early `realism' is still unclear to me. Where was she going? I will have to read the Golden Apples to find out.

First Read
I waited way too long to read Eudora Welty, but for those in the same situation, The Wide Net is a fine place to start.In reading, you will likely be reminded of Flannery O'Connor and William Faulkner.Clearly a Southern writer like them, Welty respects her often peculiar characters.She uses sly humer well, as in the title story where a bridegroom searching the river for his presumably drowned wife nonetheless is able to haul up a slew of fish to be sold on the streets of town.Each of her main characters is memorable, with the finely drawn quirkiness that stamps them as individuals.Of the eight stories here, the best are The Wide Net, First Love, A Still Moment and The Purple Hat.Only Asphodel and At the Landing didn't work for me in their attempts -- I think -- to spin realism into myth.Her fine attention to detail and description stays with a reader long after the story's end.When she nails something, it stays nailed.For example, it will be some time before I forget the scene of the deaf bootblack boy watching a sleeping Aaron Burr in First Love, and this passage from that scene -- "The heart is secret even when the moment it dreamed of has come, a moment when there might have been a revelation...."Or this evocation of New Orleans that opens The Purple Hat -- "It was in a bar, a quiet little hole in the wall.It was four o'clock in the afternoon.Beyond the open door the rain fell, the heavy color of the sea, in air where the sunlight was still suspended.Its watery relection lighted the room, as a room might have lighted a mousehole.It was in New Orleans." ... Read more

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Great Collection of Welty Interviews
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. ... Read more

Product Description
Seventy years ago the musical fable “Peter and the Wolf” unexpectedly took the world by storm. Written and composed by the Russian Serge Prokofiev, this droll story for narrator and orchestra has sold millions of recordings in countless versions, narrated by great performers from Sir John Gielgud to Sting. The only problem up until now has been that “Peter and the Wolf” – composed specifically for children, and featuring a narrator with orchestra - is practically the only piece of its kind. The vast audience that loves “Peter” has not been able to find a similarly enchanting musical story.But now all that will change! The Shoe Bird has arrived!

In The Shoe Birdmulti-Grammy-award-winning performer and Guinness World Records™ holderJim Dale brings to life a flock of unforgettable bird characters – Arturo the parrot, Gloria the goose, Minerva the owl, even the extinct Dodo! This is Eudora Welty’s fantastical story of how some feathered friends made a fateful switch from flying to wearing shoes, little knowing that they would soon become the prey of Freddy the Cat!Masterfully scored for full symphony orchestra and children’s choirs by Welty’s fellow Mississippian Samuel Jones, The Shoe Bird appeals immediately to children and adults, just like the classic Peter and the Wolf.

The Shoe Birdis a new work that reinvigorates a great tradition of storytelling fun for the whole family. It can be heard again and again, always rewarding the listener with the wit and wisdom of Eudora Welty, the delightful animal characters impersonated by Jim Dale, and the rich musical background of full symphony orchestra and chorus. Jim Dale is very enthusiastic and ready to promote The Shoe Bird which he considers one of his favorite recording projects. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

So Much Fun!
I wish I had known about this little gem before now.I would have purchased copies for all of the children I know (both young and old).It's so well done - the music is exquisite.The story is not complicated - but it certainly helps a person's enjoyment if they are familiar with different bird types.The choirs are very, very good.As are the instruments and narrater.It's a nice introduction to classical music. And it's fun to listen to on car rides too.
I picked this up at the library - but I intend to buy many copies of it.Highly recommend.

The Shoe Bird sings
Beautifully done .. and with a good moral:Be happy with who you are.

Loved this musical story!
We've played this several times for our 10 month old.It is a lovely story and has enough music to keep her interest. Quirky and easy to listen to - sure to become a family classic.

Fabulously narrated story and wonderful music
This is wonderful for all ages!The story is terrific and the narration and music really bring the book to life.The children's choir adds to the depth of the recording (and is terrific).Our whole family has enjoyed this!I'd have given it 5 stars but there are some sound level/volume challenges during the recording (which means you have to adjust the volume a tad so you can hear or so it's not too loud).Despite that, it is still WONDERFUL!The story is captivating and is packed with teachable moments/morals.Highly, highly recommended!

A fable for ALL ages!
This is a beautiful audio book that all ages will enjoy.The story is rich and carries so much meaning we all can apply to life ... Read more

Product Description
Uncle Daniel Ponder, whose fortune is exceeded only by his desire to give it away, is the talk of Clay County and a constant source of vexation for his niece, Edna Earle, whose determined efforts to thwart his generosity prove inadequate to his ingenuity. "Miss Welty at her magical best."--San Francisco Chronicle. (Literature/Classics) ... Read more

Customer Reviews (13)

Death by tickling?
For the most part, even though my IQ does not equal my shoe size, and I'm a "Yankee", to a point, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Welty gave me Edna Earle to have a conversation with. The writing style is superb. As far as the plot goes everything was fine until we got to the murder. A prosecutor (even in a small town) has to provide some basis in fact that a murder has actually been committed in order to file an indictment. Ex. Stabbing, gun shot, strangulation, etc. Murder by tickling? Just how do you prove that?

Mr. Springer's appearance was long enough to become dangerous. I'm paraphrasing here, but Edna Earle early on stated Mr. Springer "hightailed" it out of town. Which led me to believe he did it. Anyway, the ending left me feeling empty. I guess it went over my head.

"Divinity travels perfectly, if you ever need to know"
That's one of the many parenthetical bits of wisdom tossed off by the narrator of The Ponder Heart, Miz Edna Earle Ponder, the youngest daughter of ponderous plantation wealth destined to remain a spinster and care for her batty Uncle Daniel, himself the youngest and last male of a clan that everyone in Clay County, Mississippi reveres and envies. Uncle Daniel has a habit of giving things away out of the innocence of his Ponder Heart, perhaps not a heart of gold but at least a heart of divinity. In case you're city-bred, you should know that divinity isn't a synonym here for Godhood but rather a confection of egg white and corn syrup. You'll find a recipe for it in Joy of Cooking but not in Julia Child.

Honestly, I never liked divinity much as a kid. It's sweet and sticky and full of air, like coagulated cotton candy. And it's a perfect metaphor for this novella, written in the early 1950s when Jim Crow still held court and when the enduring verities of Southern backwardness and isolation were regarded as quaint to the edge of endearing. The skin pigment melanin was equated with sloth and foolishness in Welty's Clay County, while strangers - a euphemism for yankees - were utterly clueless and presumably up to no good. The Ponder Heart is essentially a 150-page shaggy dog story, an elaborate joke that takes its time reaching the punch line. One could choose to read it more seriously, as a depiction of the death throes of the chivalrous 'old order' of Southern society... if one were a literary poobah on the faculty of a state university somewhere... or one could just read it for the laughs. I'd recommend the latter choice.

I must have read something more profound by Eudora Welty way back in my youth, since I've harbored the notion that she was one of the major stars in the firmament of Southern literature. I wish I could remember what. This novella is "no great shakes" even as humor. It's sentimental and affected, and the joke runs thin before it's half told. It seems to me now that Welty is no more than a slick local-colorist, the equivalent in prose of a Norman Rockwell magazine cover. This book at least belongs on the shelf of regional genre writing, alongside Bret Harte, Hamlin Garland, and Garrison Keillor. Even in that category, it isn't a stand-out.

But then, as I said, I'm not partial to sticky sweetness.

Heart of the Ponders
People love a holy fool -- Prince Myshkin, Innocent Smith, Elwood P. Dowd.

And one of the more lovable ones is Daniel Ponder, whom his niece describes as "just like your uncle, if you've got one -- only he has one weakness." Actually his weaknesses seem to be excessive friendliness and generosity -- and that's what indirectly sparks off this arch, slightly madcap little murder trial.

Edna Earle runs a hotel in a small Southern town called Clay, and helps take care of her sweet, not-too-bright Uncle Dan. Dan is generous and friendly almost to a fault, which even leads his stiff-backed father to commit him to an asylum (in a "Harveyesque" twist, the dad is accidentally committed instead).

More importantly, Uncle Dan gets married -- once to an eccentric Baptist widow, and then to an ephemerally pretty teenager from a none-too-genteel background. Considering the marriage a "trial," the self-absorbed Bonnie Dee soon leaves Dan, comes back, ejects him from his own vast house. When Edna convinces Dan to cut off all money, she asks him to return -- only to be found dead the next morning.

And after the most white-trash funeral you can imagine, Bonnie Dee's nasty family immediately charges Dan with murder. Unfortunately, Dan doesn't really recognize the danger he is in. And the murder trial soon turns into a circus, with the trashy family, lightning balls, some inconveniently-placed servants, and two completely inept lawyers in the mix.

As with all of Eudora Welty's fiction, "The Ponder Heart" drips with Southern atmosphere and gentle eccentricities. Instead of the typical cliche trappings, Welty introduces us more to the attitudes and likably odd people who populate the South, ranging from outright weirdos to the slightly odd. In few other books could you find a murder trial interrupted by a couple of boys dragging a fig tree.

And since the whole book is seen through Edna's eyes, Welty spins out a story in arch, slightly exasperated prose. It spins out slowly and with many side-stories and tangents, full of conversational moments ("Oh, but he was proud of her") and vivid little descriptions ("like one of those dandelion puff-balls"). And her throwaway lines can tell you more than most writers can with a whole paragraph, such as Edna noting that Mrs. Peacock wore tennis shoes to her daughter's funeral -- which, in an instant, tells us everything we need to know about Mrs. Peacock.

But the sense of restrained absurdity really blossoms when the trial starts -- that's when Welty really brings out the satire guns. The whole thing starts to resemble a circus, with really awful lawyers, trashy in-laws, and a blind coroner who contributes exactly nothing. The whole trial becomes more and more surreal, until Uncle Dan's eccentric, generous nature clinches it.

In fact, Uncle Dan is the heart of the entire story: a lovable child-man whose naive, generous spirit is uncorrupted by the nasty intentions of those around him. He's too sweet to be irritating, and too unworldly to be easy to live with. It's easy to see why the fiercely down-to-earth Edna loves and protects the old guy, no matter what he does.

"The Ponder Heart" is a warm little story that happily dances on the borders of Southern farce, but never gets too silly. Delicious, funny and heartwarming.

Keen observations and exquisite, humorous Southern writing.
"The South impresses its image on the Southern writer from the moment he is able to distinguish one sound from another," Flannery O'Connor wrote in her 1963 essay "The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South," and Eudora Welty expressed a similar sentiment roughly 20 years later in her
memoir "One Writer's Beginnings," when she wrote that ever since she had first been read to, and then started to read herself, there had never been a line that she had not *heard* as her eyes followed the words on the page, possibly out of the desire to read as a listener.And indeed, as Flannery O'Connor remarked in the above-mentioned essay, "the Southern writer's greatest tie with the South is through his ear."

While proof of the truth of these statements can be found throughout the literature written by both of these preeminent Southern novelists, Eudora Welty's novella "The Ponder Heart" is perhaps one of the most obvious examples thereof as it is actually written in the form of a monologue, addressed to an imaginary traveler who happens to find himself - by force of circumstance rather than plan - in the small town of Clay, Mississippi, somewhere off the main highway and not quite halfway between Tupelo and the Mississippi-Alabama border, in Edna Earle Ponder's Beulah Hotel; face to face with the hostess."My Uncle Daniel's just like your uncle, if you've got one ... he loves society and he gets carried away," she immediately tells her visitor about her Uncle Daniel's "one weakness" and proceeds, without further ado, to tell her family's story; thus proving herself afflicted by that same weakness of "getting carried away," and as the reader/listener soon discovers, it is just as impossible to get a word in with her narrative as it is with Uncle Daniel Ponder.

But then, you don't even really want to interrupt her: too often she makes you smile or laugh out loud at her descriptions of family and townsfolk, too much you are getting caught up in the story, and too acute is the appearance of her observations.For no doubt, Eudora Welty was not only a keen observer of Southern society; she also mastered the transformation of her observations into the written word with a skill matched only by a select few of her fellow Southern writers.And true to Welty's reflection in her memoir - and to her desire to write as a listener, as much as she used to read as a listener - it is impossible not to actually hear Edna Earle talking to you as you turn the pages, in that unmistakable drawl which seems to roll past your ears languidly, much like the waves of the mighty Mississippi, and which smells of bourbon and magnolias.

Thus, in the space of less than 200 pages, we make the acquaintance of Grandpa Ponder, whose fortune would become Edna Earle's to watch over and Uncle Daniel's to give away, Uncle Daniel's first wife Miss Teacake Magee nee Sistrunk (who sang at her own wedding, which turned out to be bad luck because the marriage didn't hold), his second wife Bonnie Dee Peacock ("a little thing with yellow fluffy hair," white trash as trash can be, who after a couple months' marriage "on trial" declared the trial over and left town, but was later lured back to Clay, much to her own misfortune) and of course Uncle Daniel himself, a big man with a big heart and only seemingly a simple soul who constantly needs minding, first by his father (Grandpa Ponder), then by Edna Earle - but who surprises you again and again with his unexpected, only half-conscious witticisms and insights: a veritable court jester in the medieval tradition with the flair of a 20th century gentleman raised in the traditions of the old South.And the story that unfolds before your eyes and ears is as colorful as its protagonists, from Uncle Daniel's early commitment to an asylum to his trial for Bonnie Dee Peacock's murder, with an outcome as wildly unexpected as only Daniel Ponder could have caused it.

Flannery O'Connor, who likewise created many a character who could have populated the world of Eudora Welty's "The Ponder Heart," said that whenever she was asked why Southern writers in particular seemed to have a tendency to write about freaks, this was "because we are still able to recognize one."She warned, however, that outlandish as they might be, the heroes of modern Southern literature are not primarily intended to be comic but rather, prophetic figures reminding us of a long-forgotten responsibility, and she noted that *any* fiction coming out of the South was invariably liable to be called "grotesque," unless it actually was grotesque, in which case it would be called "photographic realism." ("The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South.")And Eudora Welty, whose keen sense of observation in fact did find expression not only in her writing but also in a number of celebrated collections of photography, called location, in an essay written the same year as "The Ponder Heart," "the crossroads of circumstance" and "the heart's field;" intrinsically linked to the emotions and experiences described in any good piece of fiction writing.("Place in Fiction," 1954.)In that sense, "A Ponder Heart" is a piece of Southern fiction in the best literary tradition - in addition to which, it is a pure delight to read.

Also recommended:
Eudora Welty : Stories, Essays & Memoir (Library of America, 102)
Eudora Welty : Complete Novels: The Robber Bridegroom, Delta Wedding, The Ponder Heart, Losing Battles, The Optimist's Daughter (Library of America)
Flannery O'Connor : Collected Works : Wise Blood / A Good Man Is Hard to Find / The Violent Bear It Away / Everything that Rises Must Converge / Essays & Letters (Library of America)
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter/Reflections in a Golden Eye/The Ballad of the Sad Cafe/The Member of the Wedding/The Clock Without Hands (Library of America)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Universal Legacy Series)

Almost slapstick funny
If you like southern writers, if you like Eudora Welty, if you like eccentric characters, if you like a little slapstick in your novels, don't miss this one.
Uncle Daniel goes down in literary history as one of the most engaging and memorable of all characters as he 'just loves to give things away, loves to make people happy.' And, oh, the trouble he causes with his largesse!
Read it and laugh. ... Read more

Product Description
These forty-three photographs, taken in the 1930s and 1940s with three different cameras, illustrate both the formal and narrative skills of framing the world as only a great short story writer could. They show Eudora Welty (1909-2001) ardently pursuing an audience and honing her technique as she worked behind the lens.

Considering light, design, texture, framing, and perspective, she experimented with composition. She tried different films, papers, and exposures, took shots from various angles and distances, cropped and enlarged photographs in her kitchen darkroom, then waited until morning to discover what had been revealed.

Paramount in Eudora Welty as Photographer are the photographs themselves. Only nine have been published previously. The accompanying essays by Welty scholar Pearl Amelia McHaney; by Chief curator of photography at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Sandra S. Phillips; and by photographer and photography historian Deborah Willis describe Welty's developing aesthetic and her representations of the world as illustrated by the photographs. Welty took photographs of people, animals, patterns, shadows, and structures natural and man-made in Mississippi, Louisiana, New York, and North Carolina. The photographs are paired to contrast and complement, to surprise and suggest, and to please and provoke. Among the photographs in Eudora Welty as Photographer are prints exhibited in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1934; Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in 1935; and in New York City in 1936 and 1937. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Good Conversation with a Great Author
Eudora Welty is I believe the only author to be honored with a second volume in the "Conversations with" series published by Univerisity of Mississippi - but that has less to do with state pride on their queen of letters than the fact that Welty thoroughly deserves a second volume, not only because of her importance as a writer but because of her keen insights on writing, literature, and life.Ever gracious, she always went out of her way for an interviewer,never treating journalists as if they were pests that had to be dealt with on occasion like some writers.I confess I enjoy reading about Miss Welty almost as much as I do reading her own works, it's so rare to find a major author with such humanity, good humor, and grace.Aspiring authors would do well not just to study her work but to study the woman,Miss Welty was a role model on every level. ... Read more