A Word on Words; 2807; Pearl Mchaney & Michael Kreyling

mr johnson you know once again welcome your own words we're talking about eudora welty and are two books just out on eudora welty and the first is called eudora welty writers reflections on first read your work and that's done by pearl mccain welcome to word on words pearl thank you and michael great thing as written understanding eudora welty welcome michael to give you are to distinguish their professors michael from vanderbilt pero from georgia state university and i'm sure that assad was includes a long list of reading for students on eudora welty but i really a look forward to sitting dow yukos she is so but also a lawyer in one of the special people in american literature than now we call her i think we do a

solo writer is this is literary awards all was either born or has led to significant part of his or her life in one of the states of the original confederacy orange certain border part ha ha ha ha ha ha we won't necessarily have to call welty a southern writer because her father was from ohio and you're from west virginia she's an outsider if you want to read that she she is described almost inevitably by publishers the people who promote your books and other media as quote a so it seems to me though that that that that title is incomplete that if you describe someone by

works you have to put into a caricature of a characterization of eudora welty something about this so hard and spirit of went numb at southern women but a moment that i don't think so at all especially her letter word from abroad and in a song which has promised in the mid nineteen fifties she's clearly much moral of been a feminist writer than to the southern writer there's only one store i think you're a published that has anything in it about the civil war which is about the way you would just like to know so i think you end in the new criticism is coming in at a batter is mostly from feminist critics who found things in there that had been buried for a long time so i think she's much more of a woman writer than a southern writer she reviewed an early collection of stories by nancy hail and there are a lot of stories that she said

were women's stories but that the problem was that she stopped at the curtain and she didn't delve into what the meaning of these stories were for women and definitely we now can see her fiction as subversive and the sensor number of rapes is a lot of violence against women women are not heard women are wandering and at things that were right that we have to pick an adjective to describe are i think only writing is better than a southerner writing well just because the va speaking of of that whole issue of violence against one eye as michael you deal with that song and immoral a and both ran and eugene our really recon song leader rhetorical of those covalent song on one case our guest eugene gives at them and reckless than that

same and the cary grant month the other he wrote the golden apples and there are rapes in there now which are both were literally eagle and the rapes assaults and they're also rights that we might with quotation marks around because there isn't a figurative assaults and there's a whole multi family in a collection of stories of rapes taken from classical man as ss always reading some woman now appearing here in the in the shape of some other kind of phenomenon and will to use all that as well so but it isn't any animal iran that rate as i recall with a lot of mess and there was a legal for the men he could have been arrested for that exactly jane klain has fathered children all over mississippi in and comes back and assaults again his wife's nobody but there's a lovely story mr rabbit in which maybe it happens it can

claim comes back and maybe he rapes the young woman writer named maddy will maddy will sojourner trap you know and yet at the very end when he's sort of sweeping under trees she can get up close to him and look at him and then she walks up to the top of the hill and she is powerful she now has taken on the knowledge that he had and she sees all the world that the difference is very different from nathan lane in the swan i said clearly on let alone sing suspects it used to have young readers and i think always a young women i can't remember exactly to say that they're worn path is something that finally they understand and is not to say that understanding to use your title it is difficult

almost all readers to come to well to the first for the first time are surprised because they don't get what she might be saying there and critics all through the reading have wonderful what does she really mean here i think now people who have read and re read welty see other kinds of ideas her her later stories were charged with being obscure what is she getting out it's all description nowhere is the plot and she's not there isn't even plot as she is in character and that's where i think everyone eventually identifies uses writing she says as herself she's writing about the human heart she's writing about relationships she's writing about the assault of hope in one of her nineteen sixties stories and that's where we are trying to figure out we are where we are and where we can go in if you have to go along and and michael said that there are some famous were discovering about her they didn't know when they were i think maybe they should

have known that i think even eudora or appoint new or dead when she started there are stories published in what we would now call women's fashion magazines harper's so forth in them in the late forties and early fifties her she knew and the people of harpers who bought those stories for publication knew that their audiences mostly female and then they knew the stories about the special whatever special way of communicating with that audience they all knew that it says that we as critics tended to forget that over time an hour just remembered it again it's amazingly a much she is now written about i mean both of you have done books about ru michael to this a third in need but you know others are fascinated by her too you take two different approaches here unless talk from all about about why you have other

writers react the first time a rare i'm not sure that the first reaction is always green often the ultimate reaction been the first impression is important you on the other hand now says store the story in the bible and within the books or short story the short story of her works it's almost a complete work the complete works of eudora welty by michael hurley isn't for similar if you also and you also make a very pointed pearl just dress that is that later the critics were were tougher than they were early on the less let's talk about these two different views are

other thing if they tell one story they do say that there was a revolutionary aspect to her work that lies in state all this are the genesis of these two books is really quite different by our new that wealth his nineteenth birthday was coming up last april thirteenth and i wanted to om help people to recognize that to to give her really honor and so using keats's poem upon first looking into chapman's homework i thought of this idea of inviting some writers to comment upon first looking into door welty or in the cases you mentioned they might have seen anything when he first looked there oh when did the power of her imagination really strike them and i asked the writers because there's certainly a a different affinity there when a writer who's working with kraft sees this craft and someone else and knows that he or she can imitate that certificate for the death of new

fiction has to do your imitation but still felt as if welty were his or her teacher and so i thought first to just invite people that i had had the fortune to meet or whose work i knew was reflective of welch's fiction and world his work and i was hoping for nine people one for each decade and then i was a bit like an avalanche really to find these twenty two writers who would speak and i was very conscious of not having just southern writers although there is the majority so the writers but alice munro was suggested to me and so i braved inviting great canadian private lenders are on their absolute delighted people who couldn't contribute our we're sorry to decline it had things that they were too busy with ernest games for example and john updike said will he of course admired wealthy but what could he say possibly although he had written well and and happily about her

other times they were just delighted to be a part of this of course i gave them no length that they have to do just a moment and was quite surprised that people and red wealthy mostly resisting some of them are really resisting barry hannah for example early smith sang will walk and this lady from jackson mississippi had to say to me you know liz lemon so those was winter woes year all that and inevitably in the middle of the interview talking to her about eudora welty not about yourself largely because she insisted on it but you begin with ocean in a way the whole litany of truly great literary figures and it's quite amazing how their reflections which were totally independent of one another reflect and work back and forth finding the connections and someone will mention something of a somnambulist in the next person's talking about the somnolent alligators and robert hay ride roman with them while of theo meant

to barry hannah or to clyde edgerton for example and it's just really amazing to me so was it an absolute joy for me i had nothing to do with the book except the finest great publisher who would risk reducing a book in five months and get it out in time for her birthday in and it's been very well received everybody's happy sending it to other people for forgive steel your will to show lone right now so the euros and then i was able to take her copy for her birthday and she was quite delighted until we read through the list of names and she told stories about each one of those people how happy she was to be said happy birthday to buy them and michael you work or talk about the concept of understanding it or wealthy and an enemy just as ticket taking home were were taking each peak piece of her work strikes me as an

important way to understand the pros without that you don't get a sense of transition our evolution you don't get a sense of their historical evolution of this literary reputation and you don't get a sense of them have the evolution of his talent and if you really read the early stories you think this is a very facile quick rye air who can supply a sort of a stereotype of what the south as like colorful figures who are eccentric may be crazy small town life and although the sort of thing that we could probably do in our sleep and then that suddenly early welty in those early collections of short stories but when i started to work on during graduate school i realize that there was something else going on in a literary sense that was much much deeper than that superficial and then and i thought i got i thought i was the only person on the western the only made it

we have to have a kind of you know priority hubris like that a bigger write a dissertation because otherwise you know why spend a couple years of her life writing this or don't think you're the only ones going to bring the the news that everybody needs to know and i've been trying to do that announces of the third book is to seven still trying to fulfill that proved to myself that i wrote else that i get and every time i try to do it there's something more and get what you get more this time are i realize now that dinner reading these is a man you miss about half of the top then really really i mean i had been brought up short and panels in public venues but people who have a quote this guy named michel knowing who had been a disputed done to announce of the story that was clearly inferior and utterly unethical it's not up not about me i go back and read the story and you know sure enough i

missed a whole pages i wrote what must have gone unconscious while i was reading and so you just have to go back and try again all the music store i was reading delta wedding yet re reading delta wedding outside of a musical inner rhymes i can carry a tune and also i can even hum of you know begin the beginning and i went back to re read delta waiting out and i was making the notes that a lover of america edition so i had to stop at every time somebody in the novel owns a tuner mentions the tile the song and i had to go and find a song and play the song and suddenly i realized i was reading a book that as the soundtrack that if i had an imagination like wealthy who wrote it unlike some other people could read it i could hear the soundtrack and like any good movie the soundtrack was enhancing the meaning and hanson the meaning what's going on with the words on the page and so there is a new novel that i thought i knew this novel now isn't up it's another novel and well you say that the end of a wedding she makes

a literary political point and then you on the port diana drilling until i did that you included any reasonable to react and just very briefly for and burst with stories and they were the earliest ones she gave us what we're really a new use of an evening gown realize about the south and for this she used not as prose prose of walker's the world a reality but increasingly she's turned away for middle class and you say that a five man that partisan insane which is most mobile to myth and celebrated legend and in general do a narcissistic southern french city and for this or prose has risen more and more on to tell a much or what the hell that means more and more on tiptoe but you wrote a tell me tell me like literally

take the rap for that i think what he was too tall for diana nyad throwing one and won her husband wanted was a kind of social realist and then she was writing that in the forties and she wanted southern riders to save these southern politicians are bad the southern legal situations are bad these things should be changed i'm going to use the books to change them and that's what donald trump is all about and well he was certainly in an ally what is in sympathy with the desire for change but she was just not going to use the literature to do it at least not overtly sure and so she had to be a wealthy had to deal with that kind of that weight of interpretation and for southerners the forties the sixties through to the sixteen you know the first question is you know what's your position on civil rights but and that was the first question i ask an immigrant novel that's been basically what trolling is

doing better today well it is the top twenty asking judges to let one subject what about in her betrayal of a black white racist racial so you can answer that better than anybody ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch rivera the freedom rider well i was i am i think really isn't is always inescapably of the most poignant way to tell a story and i think now it was either and she was their long time before i mean and that i think it i think it's a commentary on iran as an industry as a reader i always look for that bag and i'm sure they are for not just as a reader can but as a mayor your eyes you and far more than you miss the message

for women i had the ticket having missed the message for juilliard you maybe both you say mothers and daughters because that's a relationship she deals with an interesting way i think for that the poverty that was mississippi early on well they had a wonderful answer an interview that she was talking about her photographs taken in the nineteen thirties she's in mississippi was poor before the depression got here so that was nothing new to her certainly and then to the question in the sixties in response to the midnight calls and the demands that she use her public power to speak against the racism that was so rampant especially in the deep south she wrote as brilliant as they must the novelist crusade again starting her story or her essay with a question which immediately draws you involve you the truth a great tactic craft of the writer and her answer is no the novelist is not a crusader the crusader she does is beautiful comparison between said

editorialist to be a crusader anna fiction writer says that the editorial us has to speak to the moment he's standing on a soapbox he needs to win people to his point of view that's his entire intention it's very organized rhetorically straightforward this is my point come over and join me as she says the fiction writer it's all a mystery and it's all about passion and it lasts through time and you can enter at any moment and it's about the human heart in conflict with itself and somebody else said that yet but a fiction writer is not supposed to to win people over and then she asked the wonderful question in this essay she is does that mean that as a writer i have no integrity meaning i have no political position says of course not on my personal opinion it's not my writers opinion i'm a different person went to it when you know i think of it and michael asked me the question will go on and on and the food i think maybe a better response is to say that the true

i only added looks with the reality of the camera and reflects that in the writing make recent crusade without the author's intentions it's almost like the television camera during the horses so it's when i'm in the television captured what she saw and wrote about men and the poignancy of reality the poignancy of the scenes depicted either by your wealth and writing are a television camera that sees dogs on children cattle prods on demonstrators in and fire hoses turning people upset them i mean she's writing about different scenes but this scene she writes about for me told a story and contributing their own unique way without maintenance and the site but she knew and in a sense the news that summer tv image of the

department have an immediate sort of reality imagery in her story where is the voice coming from the story the assassination based on the assassination of america's that's because the assassin gets the idea to do it by watching television exactly and is that it's the images of the integration of southern institutions that drives the assassin to do the act and it's a really interesting story that about not only racism but about the way in which racism gets into people's hair is it's also a story if you really think about it this crusading learning to master that main character than the man who is speaking here wants to get his picture on the television camera and in fact he he misses out entirely because it all comes back to me evers the character that insurance only for a moment her education and the city ethnicity got women

her education medicine and wisconsin just sort of thing mano about it was an enlightening discovery period of discovery how much her workers but epa ordered ministry close quote had to do was what later which is developing car and i don't know when she was working for the dead the piazza publicity jr publicity agent really just going to see what road was now completed from farm to market or what airline strip was done she was taking these photographs and just for herself and what she learned there was to practice seeing be able to notice and again she's really looking at the people that experience took her to all corners as she said way up into session eagle county in the northeast corner and to the delta and to the river tooker everywhere mississippi so she was able to see the place that she was working and that certainly you was a part of her

formative experience because she saw people other than herself going to wisconsin was wonderful she was far too sophisticated for and the cw perhaps at that time those were the delta girls and she goes so far and can look back and see him plus there's she learns how to read although she always admires <unk> a painter and when you see the ability to say what i think so i went to wisconsin in the big ten i think he's going to the north and getting to know i'm a much more cosmopolitan aaronson literary view minnesota setting i think that really is better off as a modern artist fleshy went to chicago every chance she got from madison and so went to the art institute there's saw the bigger city she had been other places before her father had taken her to san francisco had taken or mexico so she knew that there was another world and that she liked what she saw one what a wonderful life and i'm ready to use must be

for you know but you don't live long after they had to learn english that's good for us i don't think he cares a bit raw but we're lucky where there was the gift receivers in that definitely and howie you know we've changed our view of what she said and how she said it how the future reader again will change again one when the demography are the interests of the reading public change russia she was still still be there or work of still be there i'm sure i'm convinced that within it'll be you know we'll find something more in there that she knew that the rest of his humor for the rest of the state and i think it'll still big newspaper yes things that we now think of her as writing about subversive lee will be obvious and will miss some of the older things that she was writing about that seemed really isn't in mississippi and in the nineteen thirties and nineteen forties i think that reason will keep reading her is because she's writing about the human character and that's right

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