When you were in High School, did you enjoy the reading that you did for your English classes? I find it strange that I consume reading matter like a starving man devours bread (not missing a single crumb) until you tell me I HAVE to read it. If you want me to analyze it, then all the joy of reading is gone.
My preferences back then were books by Mark Twain, Edgar Allen Poe, Ambrose Bierce, and O. Henry —all of them dead white guys. However, my English teacher raved about a female author by the name of Eudora Welty. We had to read “Death of a Traveling Salesman.” In those teenage years, I was more intent on getting the interest of the boy across the aisle than in getting the gist of the story. I was not impressed.
Our teacher made us read “Why I Live at the P.O.” I think I wrote a note on the side of the page that said something like, “Snore.” If I wanted to know about a dysfunctional family, I didn’t have to look very far.
Most of Eudora Welty’s work seemed to be character studies, but I didn’t want to read that kind of writing. I wanted an author to provide me with an action-packed plot; I wanted to shake with laughter (or fear); I wanted cheap thrills. I didn’t want to have to think!
I wish that my first experience with Welty had been her autobiography, One Writer’s Beginnings, but that was another thirteen years away from being published. I found a copy of it at the local thrift store, and on a whim decided to see what she had to say. It was the best twenty-five cents I have ever spent! If you can find a copy of it, I urge you to beg, borrow or steal. She totally addressed my “storyteller’s soul.”
How could I not fall in love with a writer who described her first experience of really “seeing” the moon this way?:
The word “moon” came into my mouth as though fed to me out of a silver spoon. Held in my mouth the moon became a word. It had the roundness of a Concord grape Grandpa took off his vine and gave me to suck out of its skin and swallow whole.
Could I not admire a writer who told about an experience on her grandfather’s farm with these words?:
Barefooted on the slick brick walk I rushed to where I could breathe in the cool breath from the interior of the springhouse. On a cold bubbling spring, covered dishes and crocks and pitcher of butter and milk and so on floated in a circle in the mild whirlpool, like horses on a merry-go-round, in the water that smelled of the mint that grew close by.
What storyteller wouldn’t relate to this passage?:
Ever since I was first read to, then started reading to myself, there has never been a line read that I didn’t hear. As my eyes followed the sentence, a voice was saying it silently to me. It isn’t my mother’s voice, or the voice of any person I can identify, certainly not my own. It is human, but inward, and it is inwardly that I listen to it. It is to me the voice of the story or the poem itself. The cadence, whatever it is that asks you to believe, the feeling that resides in the printed word, reaches me through the reader-voice.
No wonder my English teacher raved! Now, I have to go back and find all of her short stories and novels and give her a second chance. I wish I had learned more about her when I was in high school.
Seriously, if you can find it, you should give this book a read. Aside from the power of her words, that woman had an interesting life. She gives us a glimpse into a past about which many of us have never heard.
So, tell me, have you ever re-discovered an author whom you once thought was over-rated? I need to know who that might be, so I can give them a second chance, too!
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{ 7 comments }
Just put this on hold at my library. Thanks for the recommendation. If you say it’s good it must be!
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I think you will like it. The history she gives is just amazing and her words…OH! I seriously am amazed at how she can take you right there to the moment.
I can’t remember one thing I read in English class. Yikes. English was one of my favorite classes too. Dementia I tell you. That must be it.
Have a terrific day.
I remember things I read, but not so terribly fondly. Most of it bored me to tears. I was too immature to be reading it then.
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Only Poe’s poetry was on our reading list…but I had “discovered” him in the 4th grade. I read his stories, told them to my friends and became the most popular girl in 4th grade. I got invited to every single slumber party to tell ghost stories (they made me leave when I was done
)
Those are some powerful and evocative words. Must. Have. More.
Interesting that you were interested primarily in male author. My mother told me, a year or so ago, that she didn’t care for most female authors. It has been my mission since then to introduce her to some great ones. I’ll add this lovely woman, too!
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Male authors were what were in the books, silly girl. You know that. These days, I love female authors, too—but I’ll read anyone who has something to say in an entertaining way
Yup. Read her authobiography. I think you will enjoy.
I was a reader in School or maybe I should say a sleeper. I would stay up all night and read and sleep during school. My father stole all of the lightbulbs out of my room. I would make my bed look like I was sleeping in it, hide in the closet and read with a flashlite.
I have never heard of Eudora Welty, looks like I have some sleepless nights a head. Sheila
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If you can get her autobiography, it will make you sit down and read it straight through. Fortunately, it’s not a long book! I never had my Daddy steal the lightbulbs, but he sure did a lot of fussing!
. I can’t believe you were so devious.:wink:.
I read Eudora a long time ago and liked her, but I can’t remember what the stories were. This autobio sounds great and I’ll check the library for it. My daughter wants to be a writer, and she loves the moon, so she’ll have to read it…although a lot of stuff I’ve reread now that I’m older makes a lot more sense, so maybe she should wait. Stuff like The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and A Room of One’s Own, by Virginia Woolf didn’t make a whole lot of sense in my teens, but now, oh boy, do they ever.
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Oh, you aren’t kidding that many of those stories make more sense. I think some writing almost demands that we have a bit of “maturity” to understand it. But, some of it has different “levels” of meaning. I don’t know Gilman. I’ll look for her. Thanks!
“Memory lives not in initial possession, but in the hands pardoned and freed and the heart that can empty and fill again in the patterns restored by dream.” — The Optimist’s Daughter, Eudora Welty.
The only work of hers I have read. HAD to read it in college. This quote has stuck with me ever since. I really liked the book and all the other ones my prof MADE us read. I too love to read something but don’t like being told to read it or write on it in a particular way. My prof made it more interesting though, you had to read it but you could write on any element you wanted. First time I realized I could write the way I think and not in some blueprint promoted by someone else.
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