She had an uncannily keen ear, and she tended to write quickly in bursts of energetic prose that required little or no revision. Welty knew that she was writing “something new,” and she didn’t expect success to come without a struggle. At roughly the time she was boring Miller stiff-necked, editors of The Atlantic Monthly were worriedly censoring Welty’s inspired black-jazz improvisation, “Powerhouse,” and trying to explain to the genteel Southern-lady author why her story could not conclude with the lyrics to “Hold Tight, I Want Some Seafood, Mama” (“Fooly racky sacky want some seafood, Mama!”). Although she had published only a handful of stories, Welty already flaunted a distinct and not unshocking literary manner: deadly honest, ruthlessly funny, and as subversive of complacent American normalcy as that of any jaundiced expatriate. But, if Welty had reason to dismiss this wandering libertine as “the most boring businessman you can imagine,” the contrast she offered to her own writing was hardly less extreme. The only shocking aspect of Miller’s behavior, though, turned out to be his stupendous lack of interest in Southern history: he refused to take off his hat on a picnic at the local ruined plantation, and his apathy reached the point where he wouldn’t turn his head to look out the car window. I’m always on time, and I don’t get drunk or hole up in a motel with my lover.” Illustration by Riccardo Vecchio Welty explained her popularity as a lecturer: “I’m so well behaved. In the extensive touring plans that Welty had devised for her exotic visitor, she arranged for at least two male chaperons to accompany her wherever they went. Welty’s greeting was not only gracious but bold, since her mother refused to let Miller into the house-not because of his books but because of the letter, in which he’d offered to put Welty in touch with “an unfailing pornographic market” for her talents. For three days, she drove Miller around the sights and surrounds of her native Jackson, Mississippi, the city where, at thirty-one, she lived with her widowed mother in a large Tudor-style house that her father had built. Despite the alarmingly forward letter of introduction that Miller had sent her some time before, Welty-unfailingly courteous-received him as an honored guest. He described the village in the wilderness as “a mean place, a rendezvous for gamblers and vagabonds” in “Life of Audubon.”įirst editions of “The Wide Net and Other Stories” are scarce in good condition and dust jackets are usually marred, in a charming way, by faded pink print on the spine.When Henry Miller set off to discover America, in October, 1940, there were several outstanding natives whom he was hoping to meet: Margaret Mitchell, Zora Neale Hurston, Walt Disney, Ernest Hemingway, and a little-known writer named Eudora Welty. Audubon even stopped in Jackson on May 1, 1823. There, his wife set up a profitable teaching practice for a short time. Further south in Louisiana, he rested in the long-gone Bayou Sara - one of the largest shipping ports between New Orleans and Natchez before 1860. While recording the birds of the deep South, Audubon visited Natchez where he painted $5 charcoal portraits to support his travels. Three real-life characters converge on the Natchez Trace in “A Still Moment.” Itinerant preacher Lorenzo Dow in search of souls, James Murrell, a storied outlaw of the Trace, whose mission through crime was to “destroy the present,” and John James Audubon, the great recorder of American birds in their natural habitats, meet beside “a great forked tree” and are transfixed by a snow-white heron.Īs Dow, Murrell and Audubon were in awe of the bird, so Welty must have been captivated by Audubon’s descriptions of travel and painting up and down the Trace and the Mississippi River during the early 1800s. You, as a reader of books, can do your share in the desperate battle to protect those liberties. As a further reminder of the time, the 1943 first edition of “The Wide Net and Other Stories” bears an advertisement for war bonds: “This book, like all books, is a symbol of liberty and the freedom for which we fight. In 1941, the Royal Netherlands Military Flying School was located at Hawkins Field in Jackson.
While Eudora Welty composed “A Still Moment,” one of eight stories in “The Wide Net,” the noise of World War II surrounded her. Welty to watch for: “The Wide Net and Other Stories” by Eudora Welty, Harcourt, Brace & Co.
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