eudora!

Look at what just arrived in the mail! Eudora Welty as Photographer, edited by Welty scholar Pearl Amelia McHaney, is hot off the University Press of Mississippi. For me, having grown up in the South, it would be difficult to recall high school and college courses without Welty on the syllabus. In particular, my very first college class at Washington and Lee had Prof. Heather Ross Miller at the helm. We had class in a room normally used for music and learned all about Flannery O’Connor, William Faulkner, Welty and a host of other southern authors while surrounded by pianos, guitars and clarinets resting on stands. Thinking about that class always reminds me that stories can be told in so many ways – whether via prose, musical notes, an artist's canvas or in this case, photography. The photos collected in this new book are fantastic – full of light and patterns – and can almost be seen as tangible extensions of Welty’s novels and short stories. The people and places she captured seem to have a literary quality all their own. It's wonderful.