Selected Stories of Eudora Welty

by Eudora Welty

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.

Genres: Short Stories

520 pages, Hardcover

Published January 12, 1978

About the author

Eudora Alice Welty was an award-winning American author who wrote short stories and novels about the American South. Her book The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973 and she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among numerous awards. She was the first living author to have her works published by the Library of America.

Welty was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and lived a significant portion of her life in the city's Belhaven neighborhood, where her home has been preserved. She was educated at the Mississippi State College for Women (now called Mississippi University for Women), the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Columbia Business School. While at Columbia University, where she was the captain of the women's polo team, Welty was a regular at Romany Marie's café in 1930.

During the 1930s, Welty worked as a photographer for the Works Progress Administration, a job that sent her all over the state of Mississippi photographing people from all economic and social classes. Collections of her photographs are One Time, One Place and Photographs.

Welty's true love was literature, not photography, and she soon devoted her energy to writing fiction. Her first short story, "Death of a Traveling Salesman," appeared in 1936. Her work attracted the attention of Katherine Anne Porter, who became a mentor to her and wrote the foreword to Welty's first collection of short stories, A Curtain of Green, in 1941. The book immediately established Welty as one of American literature's leading lights and featured the legendary and oft-anthologized stories "Why I Live at the P.O.," "Petrified Man," and "A Worn Path." Her novel, The Optimist's Daughter, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973.

In 1992, Welty was awarded the Rea Award for the Short Story for her lifetime contributions to the American short story, and was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, founded in 1987. In her later life, she lived near Belhaven College in Jackson, Mississippi, where, despite her fame, she was still a common sight among the people of her hometown.
Eudora Welty died of pneumonia in Jackson, Mississippi, at the age of 92, and is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Jackson.

Excerpted and adopted from Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Sarah B · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was my first time reading anything from this author and like any short story collection I liked some stories better than others. According to the copyright on the page at the front of the book, these were written in the 1930s and 1940s. I admit I have run across some things in these tales that confused me: the characters were doing things I just didn't understand. And I think that's because of the time period. Things have changed a lot since then. And I grew up before smartphones were even a thing but I still don't understand a few incidents.

These are dramas that focus mostly on characters talking to each other - although there were a few rather shocking tales in here that took a violent turn. Those caught me off guard! I just didn't seem to fit in with the other mild, mostly mundane ones. So if you decide to read this you may come across a few weapon swinging, angry individuals. There are also fighting families - the one tale like that in here actually disgusted me as I hated how they all ganged up against one person, disabled characters, a man who drives his car into a ditch and lots more. There are street scenes, the train station, the garden of a house, all very ordinary locations. But it's what people do and say that make these stories.

Here are a few that stood out to me:

The Whistle: a couple trying to save their tomato plants

A Memory: a person in the beach watching others

Clytie: this tale about madness has a shocking ending

Flowers for Marjorie: this can be called horror!

A Visit for Charity: a little girl visits elderly women

There were a few cases where the sentence structure in here was just odd. Some of the sentences seemed very clipped, almost like it was only part of a sentence and the other part was missing? Perhaps this was supposed to be local dialect? But in one story it got so bad I couldn't understand the sentences. This is the worst sentence of it I saw:

"Papa-Daddy's Mama's Papa and sulks."

Ummm.... I have a very hard time following that. Are they referring to someone's great-great grandfather?? Or ?? I have no idea. I THINK that Papa-Daddy was a grandfather?

Another odd thing that really confused me in a story in here (A Piece of News) was how a woman brought a newspaper into the house, laid it out flat on the floor in front of the fireplace and then she laid down on top of it. But I have no idea why she was laying on it. The story gives no explanation. Perhaps everyone understood this back in the 1930s. I kind of doubt if a layer of newspaper is going to protect you from a cold floor.

This book has a great variety of tales. It certainly is readable and there are well written descriptions too. Sometimes the writing is very vivid. It's why I had liked the beach story. But others have a lot of words but after finishing them I was unsure what they were about.

[Sonia Richter · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was led to Eudora Welty by Anne Patchett. I think it’s fascinating to see which great writers inspired other great writers. You can see a glimpse of their influence—not much, but a glimpse. One thing Patchett certainly learned from Welty was a simplicity of prose. Her stories are all so different. Some are romantic, filled with nature and description, and heart wrenching. Others are grotesque, disturbing. I love this about the Southern gothic tradition. But each of them capture a single moment in time in a fairly straightforward fashion. They’re overwhelmed by thought and atmosphere, but often, not much happens at all. My favorites in this collection were the wide net, the key, the whistle, and maybe lily daw. It’s so hard to choose. Wide net is definitely a stand out, though. It’s one of those stories that turns the completely stereotypical “you wake up from your dream” trope into a beautifully tragic image of what could be, but wasn’t. It’s also an incredible picture of love and all it’s complications and moments of content. Here’s my reminder to myself to return to the story.

[Ruth Dahl · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought that I didn’t like short stories. Turns out that I just don’t like bad short stories.

Each of the short stories in this is a masterpiece.

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another Mississippi writer from the mid-20th century. Welty wrote only short stories. Somewhat depressing, strange, but a much easier read than Faulkner.