Susan Seamon 2008-07-28

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Collected Short Stories of Eudora Welty: a delicious book, perfect for reading during the hot months of summer.

Billy Lombardo 2008-03-06

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If you think, after reading one of Eudora Welty's short stories, that you have a pretty good idea of what that story is about, I would urge you to read it at least a second time before committing to your opinion about it. After reading each of the first three stories I read from this collection, it was pretty clear that I had struck upon a brilliant writer, but it was only after re-reading each of them, that I began to realize just how brilliant a writer she was. "Why I Live at the P.O." is a first person account of a woman known only as Sister, who rants for eleven pages about her family's mistreatment of her. You'll get caught up in the swirl of energy Welty creates, but it may take a second reading to get at the story beneath the story. The same is true for "A Memory," a five-page retrospective narrative with a dreamy and sweet veneer. Just below the skin of the story, though, is another, less sweet story. In her own words, when Welty writes, she tries to "enter into the mind, heart, and skin" of her characters. In "Where is the Voice Coming From," Welty gets inside the body of the killer of Medgar Evers, the civil rights leader. When she learned about his murder, she immediately felt, "with overwhelming directness: Whoever the murderer is, I know him: not his identity, but his coming about, in this time and place." She continues, "...about that character's point of view, I felt, through my shock and revolt, I could make no mistake." If you're interested in great short fiction and the craft beneath it, don't neglect Eudora Welty.

Eric Maroney 2007-10-01

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This bulky collection of stories, like most which span a writer's life, have patches of unevenness throughout (and my edition goes to 622 pages). The consistent theme of Welty's prose is that the south is definitely a world apart. There are the odd nick-names, the long shadow of racism, and the sense of defeat and enclosure of the post-Civil War South. It is an odd testament of a people and a culture; a part of America but also separated from it; this sense of being at one with the nation but also severed from it makes for interesting, although sometimes tiring, reading.

Peter G. Neofotis 2007-08-29

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Eudora Welty is certainly a master of the short story form and not because she defines it. Rather, she questions it with stories that work wonderfully without plot devices, structure, "political statements," and sometimes, even, reality.

Through such wonderful stories as, "Why I live at the P.O., The Whistle, The Wide Net, A Still Moment, Livvia, Shower of Gold, Ladies in Spring, and Circe," she illuminates common moments which shed light on the way we think and live.

James L. Vickery 2007-08-04

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You will run out of highlighter ink reading this one, because there are so many passages you will surely want to reread and savor later.

This grand matriarch of Southern Writer Tradition was first discovered, praised and published by luminaries such as Robert Penn Warren when he was coeditor of The Southern Review, Edward Weeks when he was editor of The Atlantic Monthly, and Mary Louise Aswell, when she was fiction editor of Harper's Bazaar.

This collection of stories is truly worthy to be called a classic. It is sometimes tedious reading, because the stories and characters are complex. After a number of false starts over a period of years, I finally resolved to give this scholarly work the focused time and attention it deserves, and feel richly rewarded for the effort.

Ms. Welty joins the ranks of great writers who prove to us that a great writer does not have to live the experience to effectively write about it. She leaps with ease between characters as diverse as Aaron Burr, a deaf black servant boy, a traveling salesmen, eccentric Southern matrons, and countless others. She portrays them in all of their complexities as if she had lived the experiences of each. Her descriptions of scenes and settings are equally as lucid and believable as if she had first hand knowledge of each. This rare and precious gift is best described in her own words, "I have been told, both in approval and accusation, that I seem to love all of my characters. What I do in writing of any character is to try to enter into the mind, heart, and skin of a human being who is not myself. Whether this happens to be a man or a woman, old or young, with skin black or white, the primary challenge lies in making the jump itself. It is the act of a writer's imagination that I set most high."