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A Writer's Eye: Collected Book Reviews
Although she is eminent primarily as the prize-winning author of classic works of fiction, Eudora Welty is notable also as an astute literary critic. Her essays on the art of fiction and on the writers who enlarged the range of the short story and the novel are definitive pieces. Her distinguished book reviews, along with her critical essays, augment her reputation for being one of the most discerning author-critics in literary America.
This collection of her book reviews manifests the connecting of her penetrating eye with her responsive intellect in forming sympathetic judgments of the books she reviewed. Between 1942 and 1984 Welty wrote sixty-seven reviews of seventy-four books. Fifty-eight of these appeared in the New York Times Book Review , and others in the Saturday Review of Literature, Tomorrow, the Hudson Review, the New York Post , and the Sewanee Review . The reviewed books include novels, short story collections, books of essays, biographies and memoirs, books of letters, children's books, books of ghost stories, photography books, books of literary criticism, and books of World War II art.
Over nearly half a century she reviewed books by some of the foremost authors of her Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, V. S. Pritchett, Colette, Isak Dinesen, E. B. White, E. M. Forster, J. D. Salinger, Ross Macdonald, Patrick White, S. J. Perelman, Annie DIllard, Elizabeth Bowen, and Katherine Anne Porter.
A Writer's Eye includes all of Welty's book reviews, even one published under the pseudonym “Michael Ravenna.” Sixteen of the reviews were collected previously in Welty's The Eye of the Story (1978). In this collection Pearl Amelia McHaney's introduction records the history of Welty's career in book reviewing and illuminates the honestly and compassion with which Welty wrote reviews.
Welty's keen vision, her wit, and her refined style make these “monuments to interruption,” a phrase she wrote in description of Virginia Woolf's essays and reviews, an important record of her literary standards and special interests. They show us as well how book reviewing consumed a large measure of creative time that she customarily devoted to fiction writing. Placed beside her authoritative critical essays, this volume enhances Welty's considerable literary stature and completes the image of Eudora Welty as a consummate woman of letters.
This collection of her book reviews manifests the connecting of her penetrating eye with her responsive intellect in forming sympathetic judgments of the books she reviewed. Between 1942 and 1984 Welty wrote sixty-seven reviews of seventy-four books. Fifty-eight of these appeared in the New York Times Book Review , and others in the Saturday Review of Literature, Tomorrow, the Hudson Review, the New York Post , and the Sewanee Review . The reviewed books include novels, short story collections, books of essays, biographies and memoirs, books of letters, children's books, books of ghost stories, photography books, books of literary criticism, and books of World War II art.
Over nearly half a century she reviewed books by some of the foremost authors of her Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, V. S. Pritchett, Colette, Isak Dinesen, E. B. White, E. M. Forster, J. D. Salinger, Ross Macdonald, Patrick White, S. J. Perelman, Annie DIllard, Elizabeth Bowen, and Katherine Anne Porter.
A Writer's Eye includes all of Welty's book reviews, even one published under the pseudonym “Michael Ravenna.” Sixteen of the reviews were collected previously in Welty's The Eye of the Story (1978). In this collection Pearl Amelia McHaney's introduction records the history of Welty's career in book reviewing and illuminates the honestly and compassion with which Welty wrote reviews.
Welty's keen vision, her wit, and her refined style make these “monuments to interruption,” a phrase she wrote in description of Virginia Woolf's essays and reviews, an important record of her literary standards and special interests. They show us as well how book reviewing consumed a large measure of creative time that she customarily devoted to fiction writing. Placed beside her authoritative critical essays, this volume enhances Welty's considerable literary stature and completes the image of Eudora Welty as a consummate woman of letters.
312 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1994
About the author
Eudora Welty
230 books1,078 followersEudora 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 12, 2020
If you are ever at a loss for what to read next, here is a remedy. A collection of book reviews by an accomplished writer. Eudora seemed to lift her game linguistically when she reviewed authors she liked. Here is an astonishing paragraph on Virginia Woolf for example:
"That beautiful mind! That was the thin. Lucid, passionate, independent, acute, proudly and incessantly nourished, eccentric for honorable reason, sensitive for every reason, it has marked us forever. Hers was a sensitivity beside which a Geiger counter is a child’s toy made of a couple of tin cans and a rather common piece of string. Allow it its blind spots, for it could detect pure god. It could detect purity. In the presence of poetic fire it sent out showers of sparks of its own. It was a mind like some marvelous enchanters’ instrument that her beloved Elizabethans might have got rumor of and written poems about." Eudora Welty, A Writer’s Eye, (Jackson, Miss.: University Press of Mississippi, 1994), 121
Apart from some glittering prose, Eudora provides much food for thought.
"That beautiful mind! That was the thin. Lucid, passionate, independent, acute, proudly and incessantly nourished, eccentric for honorable reason, sensitive for every reason, it has marked us forever. Hers was a sensitivity beside which a Geiger counter is a child’s toy made of a couple of tin cans and a rather common piece of string. Allow it its blind spots, for it could detect pure god. It could detect purity. In the presence of poetic fire it sent out showers of sparks of its own. It was a mind like some marvelous enchanters’ instrument that her beloved Elizabethans might have got rumor of and written poems about." Eudora Welty, A Writer’s Eye, (Jackson, Miss.: University Press of Mississippi, 1994), 121
Apart from some glittering prose, Eudora provides much food for thought.
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March 26, 2014Wondrous. Tracked down to be able to read Welty's review of Ross Macdonald's The Underground Man (a review so clear-eyed and human it began a romance between the two). Stayed to read wonderful pieces on Dinesen, Forster, E.B. White, Colette, and Annie Dillard (she doesn't like Pilgrim at Tinker's Creek!). But most, most, most of all, a stunning review of JD Salinger's Nine Stories. Read that review here: http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/09/13...
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews