“For her life, any life, she had to believe, was nothing but the continuity of its love.”
The Optimist’s Daughter written by Eudora Welty
(And included on Welty’s headstone in Jackson, Mississippi)
Pulitzer Prize winning writer Eudora Welty (1909-2001) was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. She earned an English degree from the University of Wisconsin, studied advertising at Columbia in New York City, before working for a radio station in Jackson and as a WPA photographer in Mississippi. Her literary career formally began in 1936 when Death of a Traveling Salesman was published, which incase you’re wondering was written about 15 years before Arthur Miller’s landmark play Death of a Salesman.
“He pulled the brake. But it did not hold, though he put all his strength into it. The car, tipped toward the edge, rolled a little. Without doubt, it was going over the bank.
He got out quietly, as though some mischief had been done him and he had his dignity to remember. He lifted his bag and sample case out, set them down, and stood back and watched the car roll over the edge. He heard something – not the crash he was listening for, but a slow, unuproarious crackle. Rather distastefully he went to look over, and he saw that his car had fallen into a tangle of immense grapevines as thick as his arm, which caught it and held it, rocked it like a grotesque child in a dark cradle, and then, as he watched, concerned somehow that he was not still inside it, released it gently to the ground. ”
Eudora Welty
Death of a Traveling Salesman
More shorts stories, essays and novels followed and she was soon able to write full time. She was on staff with the New York TImes her writings led to speaking engagements at Harvard University and abroad. From 1960 until her death in 2001 she lived in Jackson, and her family home which I photographed on Monday is now known as the Eudora Welty House (virtual tour with link). The house has been called, “one of the most intact literary houses in America in terms of its authenticity. Its exterior, interior, and furnishings are as they were in 1986 when Welty made the decision to bequeath her home to the State of Mississippi: paintings, photographs, objects d’art, linens, furniture, draperies, rugs, and, above all, thousands of books in their original places. With virtually every wall lined with books, it is evident that this family of readers valued the written word.”
It is in that Tudor Revival home, across the street from Belhaven College, is where Welty wrote The Optimist’s Daughter, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1973. A friend of my who went to Belhaven in the 80s said it was not unusual to see Welty outside her home and around town.
According to the The Eudora Welty Foundation they fund “a Eudora Welty Scholar; develops teaching resources that will expand appreciation of Eudora’s writing and photography; supports study of her work; assists in preserving Eudora’s home and garden; and hosts seminars, competitions, and festivals for young writers, established authors, and the public.”
The first book I ever read of Welty’s was One Writer’s Beginning which I just learned is available in audio in Wetly’s own voice. Lastly, several of her stories were made into films and TV movies including most recently the short film The Purple Hat (2010) written and directed by Gregory Doucette.
P.S. It is not known what Jackson (if any) was the inspiration for the Johnny Cash and June Carter song Jackson, but I did find this interesting bit of info from Billy Edd Wheeler, one of the writers of Jackson who just happened to also Yale’s School of Drama as a playwriting student:
“Jackson came to me when I read the script for Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” (I was too broke to see the play on Broadway). You know, the way the man and woman go at each other. When I played it for Jerry, he said “Your first verses suck,” or words to that effect. “Throw them away and start the song with your last verse, ‘We got married in a fever, hotter than a pepper sprout.'” When I protested to Jerry that I couldn’t start the song with the climax, he said, “Oh, yes you can.” So I rewrote the song and thanks to Jerry’s editing and help, it worked. I recorded the song on my first Kapp Records album, with Joan Sommer, an old friend from Berea, Kentucky, singing the woman’s part. Johnny Cash learned the song from that album, “A New Bag Of Songs”, produced by Jerry and Mike.
Billy Edd Wheeler (who wrote Jackson) with Jerry Leiber
Spectropop
Here’s the song Jackson recorded for The Johnny Cash Show, a program that U2’s Bono has said was an early inspiration for him: