2021 Eudora Welty

 This year I'm reading through a hefty collection of Eudora Welty's short stories, with at least one friend. Our #2021EudoraWelty is open to all, so please, feel free to jump in and join us if you are so inclined. Twenty-two stories in, and I have found Ms. Welty to be a strong writer, who creates excellent little scenes full of memorable characters. Welty employs more of a vignette look at her subjects or a particular idea. There is a similarity to Flannery O'Connor's writing (perhaps in the vignette look?), although the two are decidedly distinctive. Some of her stories feel more like character sketches. 

"I want the world to know I’m happy. And if Stella-Rondo should come to me this minute, on bended knees, and attempt to explain the incidents of her life with Mr. Whitaker, I’d simply put my fingers in both my ears and refuse to listen." —Eudora Welty, Why I Live at the P.O. 

Welty mentioned "Keela" (one of the January stories) in a 1989 interview that is included in the introduction to Photographs, which of course delighted me to no end. It is so fun when your books converge, although I suppose it is to be expected if both involve the same creative. Here are Welty's own words: "It's a psychological story I wrote in "Keela." I was interested in what sort of points of view people could have toward such an atrocious thing, including that of the victim himself. He, I guessed, like people in many a kind of experience, enjoyed it years later in his looking back on the days of excitement. You know, things, awful as well as not, get to be kind of interesting in a different way after you've lived through them and they are embedded in your past. Lee Roy had eventually forgotten all the humiliation and horror... All of his children are there, and they don't want to hear about it. They just say, 'Hush, Pappy!'"

"The Whistle" from February hit a bit too close to home with its despondent tone as tenant farmers Jason and Sarah Morton were freezing in their little shack, seeing as I read it during our Texas freeze/no power. "Clytie" and "Flowers for Marjorie" were both tragic... but I did enjoy them. "Old Mr. Marblehall" reminded me of another story, but shame on me I did not make any scribbles or notes anywhere, and I cannot remember what story I was reminded of. ⁠ 

"Death of a Traveling Salesman," was probably my favorite of the March stories. So well told!

As prompted by #2021EudoraWelty, I'm slowly creating a little Welty collection for myself. I enjoyed reading One Writer's Beginnings, a short collection of autobiographical essays. Paging through Photographs, a collection of photos that Welty took, the majority her documentation of 1930s Mississippi when she worked for the WPA, was a real treat. ⁠