A Writer's Eye Part 16

110. The Russell review was deleted from the setting copy of The Eye of the Story presumably to shorten the book and because Welty's essay on Green was already included. See Marrs 58, 62.

111. Welty reviewed Last Tales by Isak Dinesen, NYTBR 3 November 1957: 5.

112. A comparison of the carbon typescript with the published review shows ten substantive differences. Johannesson and Welty used the word "pervasive" to describe Dinesen's theme; the NYTBR printed "persuasion" in error (Johannesson v; MDAH WC18, Marrs 69; NYTBR 17 December 1961: 6).

113. The following paragraph was deleted from the carbon typescript for the NYTBR publication: "He relates her work at once, and surely this is sound, to the stage. Miss Dinesen is indeed an old hand at theatricality; one might feel still more of a relations.h.i.+p with the film than with the stage itself. She uses the methods of film, its freedom to move into past and future, and at a remove; its lighting, its landscape and skies; she uses its kind of dream and fantasy, humor and shock, its kind of transitions, its telescoping and extending of time, its flashbacks and stories within the story." (MDAH WC18, Marrs 69).

114. The words "beyond what he is able to convey about himself" in the typescript are deleted for the NYTBR review. The words are also penciled in on Welty's photocopy of the published review (MDAH WC18, Marrs 69).

115. Reviewed by Welty, Tomorrow (May 1945): 6970.

116. Six novels, two novellas, eight story collections including South (1950) reviewed by Welty (Sat.u.r.day Review 23 September 1950: 1617), two children's books, and four collections of nonfiction.

117. Corrected from "wound" in NYTBR. A carbon typescript and a photocopy of a typescript show numerous holograph changes made in blue ink (not confirmed as Welty's hand) that are not reflected in the NYTBR (MDAH WC18, Marrs 69).

118. The printed review includes two dozen substantive differences from the carbon typescript including mention that a chapter from the book would be collected in an Isak Dinesen memorial anthology (see note 95 for Last Tales and MDAH WC18, Marrs 6970). Welty reviewed Dinesen's Last Tales (NYTBR 3 November 1957: 5) and another critical study, Eric Johannesson, The World of Isak Dinesen (NYTBR 17 December 1961: 6).

119. Seven Gothic Tales (London: Putnam, 1934), Out of Africa (London: Putnam, Page 264 1937), Winter's Tales (New York: Random House, 1942), The Angelic Avengers (London: Putnam, 1946), Last Tales (New York: Random House, 1957), Anecdotes of Destiny (New York: Random House, 1958), Shadows on the Gra.s.s (New York: Random House, 1960), Ehrengard (New York: Random House, 1963).

120. The following words are deleted from the typescript: "it may all be one long metaphor about her work" (MDAH WC18, Marrs 6970).

121. Referring to the G.o.ds of a medieval people of northern and eastern Europe.

122. Narrator of The Arabian Nights' Entertainment who told stories to delay her death by the Sultan.

123. Isam Noguchi (19041988), U.S. sculptor and architectural designer.

124. At some point after appreciating each other's art, Graham and Welty became acquainted. In a tribute to Welty, Graham said, "Years ago my Company and I performed in Jackson. We were very nervous because we heard that Eudora Welty was in the audience. It puts you on edge knowing an eye, let alone a heart, like that is out front." Shenandoah 20 (Spring 1969): 36.

125. See Welty's story "Circe," Collected Stories 53137.

126. Lehman Engel, a Jackson friend of Welty's, composed the music for "Ceremonials" (1932), "Ekstasis" (1933), "Transitions" (1934), "Marching Song" (1935), and "Imperial Gesture'' (1935). Welty mentions Martha Graham, "Ceremonials," and "Ekstasis" several times in her newspaper review of Engel's career, "Jackson Composer Has Full Year Program," Jackson State Tribune 19 June 1933: 2.

127. The fourth review, of No Flying in the House by Betty Brock, was printed three weeks later (NYTBR 16 August 1970: 22). Welty's reviews are printed beneath the t.i.tle of each book. The reviewer note mentions Welty's children's book, The Shoe Bird (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964).

128. The Little Man (New York: Knopf, 1966).

129. Welty's review is one of three reviews grouped under the headline "For Young Readers." Her name appears at the conclusion of her review.

130. Ill.u.s.trated by Wallace Tripp. Welty normally includes a short statement about the ill.u.s.trations; perhaps it was cut from the brief review. There is no extant typescript of the review.

131. See note 57 for Westward Ha!.

132. Reviewed by Welty, NYTBR 12 October 1958: 4, 14. Reviews of The Most of S. J. Perelman and Baby, It's Cold Inside are combined and slightly revised (deletion of repet.i.tion and additional quotations) in Eye 23540.

133. The Galton Case (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959), The Chill (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964).

134. Underground Man put Kenneth Millar (aka Ross Macdonald) on the cover of Time with an eleven-column review by editor Raymond Sokolov who quoted Welty's review ("The Art of Murder," 22 Mar. 1971: 10102). Welty's a.n.a.lysis of Mac- Page 265 donald's talent in the subgenre of detective fiction in her review is often cited in academic criticism of Macdonald's writing. See, for example, Bernard A. Schopen, Ross Macdonald (Boston: Twayne, 1990) 20.

135. In 1970, Welty told NYTBR editor Walter Clemons, "I've read all his books, I think. I once wrote Ross Macdonald a fan letter but I never mailed it. I was afraid he'd think iticky" (Prenshaw 32). Macdonald read the interview and wrote to Welty, for he had been reading all her books. The following year, NYTBR editor John Leonard asked Welty for a page-one review of The Underground Man, and in the fall, he organized an "accidental" meeting for Welty and Macdonald in the elevator of the Algonquin Hotel (Leonard, ''I Care Who Killed Roger Ackroyd," Esquire August 1975: 6061, 120). Welty's review is collected in Eye (25160) in a revised and expanded version.

136. The Good Soldier (New York: Knopf, 1951), Parade's End (New York: Knopf, 1950).

137. Welty was among the young writers whom Ford tried to help. Katherine Anne Porter introduced Welty's stories to Ford, and he tried (unsuccessfully) to find a British publisher for A Curtain of Green in 1938 and 1939. See correspondence from Ford (MDAH WC29, Marrs 164).

138. The review was reprinted in the Jackson Daily News with an Editor's Note: "Robert Benchley once said 'if you can't give a friend a good review, who can you?' The New York Times recently asked Eudora Welty to review an old friend's book: Words With Music (Macmillan, $ 7.95), by her fellow-Jacksonian and friend from childhood, Lehman Engel. . . ." ("Welty Reviews Engel's Book" 18 June 1972: 6F).

139. Neither Welty nor Engel mentions that Welty's 1954 novella The Ponder Heart was adapted for Broadway by Jerome Chodorov and Joseph Fields, although the reviewer tag notes that the adaptation "enjoyed a successful run" (NYTBR 28 May 1972: 7).

140. Clive Barnes, theater critic for the New York Times in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s.

141. A Pa.s.sage to India (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1924).

142. E. M. Forster: A Life 2 vols. (London: Secher and Warburg, 197778).

143. The Navels of Jane Austen, ed. R. W. Chapman, 6 vols. (Oxford: Oxford U P, 193369).

144. Maurice (New York: Norton, 1971).

145. NYTBR editors Nash K. Burger and John Leonard convinced Welty to review Dillard's book. Welty was reluctant because she had met Dillard previously at a conference (Burger, letter to the editor, 1991; Welty, interview with the editor, 1993). Pilgrim at Tinker Creek won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction.

146. In 1971 Welty published her 1930s photographs, One Time, One Place: Mississippi in the Depression, A Snapshot Alb.u.m (New York: Random House), although this is not noted in the reviewer tag.

Page 266 147. The Triumph of Will (1935) and Olympiad (1938), n.a.z.i propaganda film epics of noted artistic merit.

148. Eugene Atget (18571927), French photographer.

149. The People of Moscow, Seen by Henri Cartier-Bresson (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1955).

150. NYTBR printed "composition," but "compet.i.tion" is penciled on Welty's photocopy of the published review and is used here (MDAH WC23, Marrs 194).

151. On her copy of the NYTBR review, Welty wrote "Use my original copy instead of this" (MDAH WC23, Marrs 195). The review in The Eye of the Story (269-76) includes six additional paragraphs, a different organization in three places, and numerous minor variations from the NYTBR piece (See also MDAH WC16, Marrs 59, 62).

152. Bowen and Welty met in 1949 in Ireland and began a lifelong friends.h.i.+p. See Peggy Whitman Prenshaw "The Antiphonies of Eudora Welty's One Writer's Beginnings and Elizabeth Bowen's Pictures and Conversations" in Welty: A Life in Literature, ed. Albert J. Devlin (Jackson: U P of Mississippi, 1987): 22537.

153. The Death of the Heart (1938), The Little Girls (1964), Eva Trout (1968).

154. Patrick White (19121990), Australian novelist, winner of the 1973 n.o.bel Prize.

155. Lady Ottoline's Alb.u.m, ed. Carolyn G. Heilbrun (New York: Knopf, 1976), a collection of Lady Ottoline Murrell's photographs, is given a brief review above a portion of Welty's review of Letters (NYTBR 14 November 1976: 12).

156. Perhaps Welty refers to the letter written April 17, 1916 (Letters 8990).

157. In a brief remark under "Author's Authors" (NYTBR 5 December 1976: 4, 1025), Welty names both the Letters and Mrs. Dalloway's Party: A Short Story Sequence by Virginia Woolf, ed. Stella McNichol (London: Hogarth Press, 1973) as interesting books she has read recently (102).

158. The review in The Eye of the Story includes a few variants from the NYTBR and additional quotations from the letters from Welty's typescript. Here, for example, she restores, "(There are a few brief explanatory notes to introduce some of the correspondents, and a good index, which will help you to find your place.)" (Eye 213 and 21718 for additional letters quoted and MDAH WC16, Marrs 57, 61.) 159. Cartoonist Willie Gropper and journalist Paxton Hibben are among the protesters that Welty listed in her typescript (MDAH WC18, Marrs 70).

160. Lola Ridge (18711941) was a poet, whose novel Firehead (1929) was said to have been inspired by the Sacco-Vanzetti case.

161. In Katherine Anne Porter: A Life (London: Jonathon Cape, 1982), Joan Givner, points out that Welty is the only reviewer who notes the thematic link between Porter's fiction and her memoir of the Sacco-Vanzetti executions (193).

162. The majority were published first in the New Yorker, to which White started contributing in 1925, the year of its founding.

Page 267 163. In the 1920s, Welty published a drawing and two poems in St. Nicholas (18731940), a monthly magazine for young readers (Polk 409).

164. In Coleridge's "Kubla Khan."

165. Prior to writing the review, Welty commented, "V. S. Pritchett's work has never stopped flowing from an original spring. In its abundancethe brilliant and unpredictable stories, the beautiful volumes of autobiography, the vigorous criticism, generous biographieshe seems to have written with the wisdom of experience and the freshness of youth. His relish of books and life is still undiminished" ("Writers' Writers" NYTBR 4 December 1977: 74). In a 1978 interview, also prior to receiving Selected Stories for review, Welty said that she regretted never writing about "P. G. Wodehouse, V. S. Pritchett, Edward Lear" (Prenshaw 231). See Welty's review of The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature (NYTBR 19 August 1981: 17) for her defense of Lear as a humorist.

166. Welty and Bowen became personally acquainted in 1949, although Bowen had reviewed Welty's first novel, Delta Wedding, two years earlier (The Tatler and Bystander 6 Aug. 1947: 18283).

167. Collected Stories of Eudora Welty (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1980) published the previous year (1981), is noted beneath the review.

168. Iona and Peter Opie edited several books of children's folklore including Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (1951) and Oxford Book of Children's Verse (1973).

169. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (London: Macmillan, 1865).

170. Welty praised The Catcher in the Rye in her review of Salinger's Nine Stories (NYTBR 5 April 1953: 4).

171. See Welty's review of Charlotte's Web (NYTBR 19 October 1952: 49 and in Eye 20306).

172. See notes 104 for Granite and Rainbow and 165 for Selected Stories by V. S. Pritchett.

173. Welty owned and read from the ten volumes of Our Wonder World (Chicago: Geo. L. Schuman, 1914); see One Writer's Beginnings (Cambridge: Harvard U P, 1984) 89 and "A Sweet Devouring" (Eye 27985) for descriptions of her childhood reading.

BOOKS BY EUDORA WELTY.

A Curtain of Green and Other Stories 1941.

The Robber Bridegroom 1942.

The Wide Net and Other Stories 1943 Delta Wedding 1946.

The Golden Apples 1949 The Ponder Heart 1954.

The Bride of Innisfallen and Other Stories 1955 The Shoe Bird 1964.

Losing Battles 1970 One Time, One Place 1971.

The Optimist's Daughter 1972 The Eye of the Story: Selected Essays and Reviews 1978 The Collected Stories 1980.

One Writer's Beginnings 1984.

Photographs 1989.