{"id":23176,"date":"2015-03-15T16:24:36","date_gmt":"2015-03-15T21:24:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=23176"},"modified":"2015-07-27T12:49:30","modified_gmt":"2015-07-27T17:49:30","slug":"eudora-the-great-and-humble-pt-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/eudora-the-great-and-humble-pt-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Eudora the Great and Humble Pt. 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

While preparing last issue\u2019s column on Eudora Welty<\/strong> (Local Voice<\/em> #223)<\/a>, I cast a wide net for anecdotes about the Mississippi author of such enduring tales as \u201cThe Optimist\u2019s Daughter,\u201d the 1972 Pulitzer winner for fiction.<\/span><\/p>\n

Once deadline had passed, two pieces to the puzzle emerged: one from the stacks of the Library of Babel in a book by another great female writer\u2014the Canadian expatriate Mavis Gallant<\/strong> (1922\u20132014); the other via e-mail from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.<\/span><\/p>\n

I was introduced to Gallant through her obituary last February and added her to my 2015 discipline to only read female authors.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the introduction to Gallant\u2019s story collection Varieties of Exile <\/em>(New York Review Books, 2003), Russell Banks<\/strong> writes \u201c\u2026 less than a handful of living story writers are her equal: William Trevor, and Gallant\u2019s countrywoman Alice Munro, perhaps, and\u2014since the death of Eudora Welty\u2014no American that I can think of.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Which is to say that when it comes to Americans who had practiced the art of the short story there was Welty and then there is everyone else. If you have the right adversary, say a champion of John Cheever<\/strong>, that wouldn\u2019t be a bad game of literary badminton as we wait out another dreadful winter.<\/span><\/p>\n

And then, Danny Heitman<\/strong> got back to me from Baton Rouge, where he writes for The Advocate,<\/em> the daily paper in the capital of the Pelican State.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"EudoraWeltyHouse\"<\/a>Heitman interviewed Welty at her home on Pinehurst Street in Jackson on a hot, glaring July day in 1994, about seven years before her death at age 92. Last year, he profiled the author in Humanities<\/em> magazine.<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the things that caught his attention\u2014the idea that all good narrative flows forward even when a writer digresses\u2014was also mentioned by Banks as part of Gallant\u2019s genius.<\/span><\/p>\n

Heitman noted it with a passage from Welty\u2019s 1984 memoir, One Writer\u2019s Beginnings,<\/em> which spoke of an apprenticeship that began before young Eudora had committed to the Vocation (yes, capital V) of storytelling.<\/span><\/p>\n

She remembered: \u201cIn our house on North Congress Street in Jackson where I was born, the oldest of three children \u2026 we grew up to the striking of clocks. There was a mission-style oak grandfather clock standing in the hall which sent its gong-like strokes through the living room, dining room, kitchen, and pantry, and up the sounding board of the stairwell.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThrough the night it could find its way into our ears \u2026.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Welty then mentioned that her parents\u2019 had a second clock\u2014smaller, similarly striking\u2014\u201cthat answered it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This was a good lesson for a future writer of fiction, she observed, \u201cbeing able to learn so penetratingly \u2026 about chronology. It was one of a good many things I learned almost without knowing it; it would be there when I needed it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It was a lesson which Banks believes Mavis Gallant knew as well, whether learned or intrinsic.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gallant, he pointed out in the same introduction that lauds Welty, keeps \u201cthe story flowing, like a meandering stream crossing a broad plain to the sea, like consciousness.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"224WeltyQuote\"<\/a>I have yet to discover enough about Mavis Gallant to know much about her except that, like Welty she tended to be quiet and reserved. What most people didn\u2019t know about Eudora, said Heitman was \u201cthe wry edge to her humor.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Looking back on his visit to her house\u2014now a museum\u2014some 20 years ago, he said that she had taken to \u201cusing one of those lift chairs with a mechanical cushion that rises up to help convalescents to their feet.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cShe told me it was a bit like an ejector seat, and that she occasionally wished for one over on the sofa, to help get rid of the company.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

At the time Welty confided this, Heitman was sitting on the sofa.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHer meaning was subtle yet clear,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was my cue that our interview had gone on too long.\u201d<\/span> \"The<\/a><\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

This article was originally printed in The Local Voice<\/em> #224 (published March 5, 2015.)<\/span>
\n To download a PDF of this issue, click here<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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