Occasions: Selected Writings

by Eudora Welty, Pearl Amelia McHaney (Editor)

Occasions is a celebration of the short works of one of America’s most beloved writers. To mark the centennial of Eudora Welty’s birth, Pearl Amelia McHaney collected more than sixty pieces by Welty (1909–2001) that were largely unknown and had not been reprinted since their first appearances in magazines, journals, newsletters, and newspapers.

The gathering includes one of Welty’s earliest stories, “Acrobats in the Park”; a self-analysis of her art printed in the Twenty Photographs portfolio; a recipe for Aunt Beck’s Chicken Pie served up in the novel Losing Battles ; and a parody of Edmund Wilson’s scurrilous New Yorker review of one of William Faulkner’s late novels. These occasional essays, tributes, stories, and comments will delight readers and reveal more of the genius of a favorite author deeply engaged with her people and their customs.

In these pieces Welty put pen to paper for just electing honorable officials, selling war bonds, and promoting reading and the arts. Her sophistication and insight resonate in tributes to Isak Dinesen, Flannery O’Connor, and Walker Percy; in reviews of sculpture, painting, dance, and photography; and in her candid remarks about her Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, The Optimist’s Daughter . Her sly humor emerges in "Women!! Make Turban in Own Home!," a delightful parody of projects suggested in Popular Mechanics . Written between the 1930s and the 1990s, these fictions, essays, commemorations, reviews, and salutes reveal the sparkling imagination of a celebrated writer who continues her hold on a wide audience through these selections.

368 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2009

About the author

Eudora Alice Welty was an award-winning American author who wrote short stories and novels about the American South. Her book The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973 and she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among numerous awards. She was the first living author to have her works published by the Library of America.

Welty was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and lived a significant portion of her life in the city's Belhaven neighborhood, where her home has been preserved. She was educated at the Mississippi State College for Women (now called Mississippi University for Women), the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Columbia Business School. While at Columbia University, where she was the captain of the women's polo team, Welty was a regular at Romany Marie's café in 1930.

During the 1930s, Welty worked as a photographer for the Works Progress Administration, a job that sent her all over the state of Mississippi photographing people from all economic and social classes. Collections of her photographs are One Time, One Place and Photographs.

Welty's true love was literature, not photography, and she soon devoted her energy to writing fiction. Her first short story, "Death of a Traveling Salesman," appeared in 1936. Her work attracted the attention of Katherine Anne Porter, who became a mentor to her and wrote the foreword to Welty's first collection of short stories, A Curtain of Green, in 1941. The book immediately established Welty as one of American literature's leading lights and featured the legendary and oft-anthologized stories "Why I Live at the P.O.," "Petrified Man," and "A Worn Path." Her novel, The Optimist's Daughter, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973.

In 1992, Welty was awarded the Rea Award for the Short Story for her lifetime contributions to the American short story, and was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, founded in 1987. In her later life, she lived near Belhaven College in Jackson, Mississippi, where, despite her fame, she was still a common sight among the people of her hometown.
Eudora Welty died of pneumonia in Jackson, Mississippi, at the age of 92, and is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Jackson.

Excerpted and adopted from Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Diane Barnes]

Eudora Welty is such a treasure. I have loved her fiction. These pieces are essays on various subjects including her childhood in Jackson. There are also 4 of her very early short stories. I really want to get my hands on a biography of her now.

[Kaitlyn]

Eudora Welty’s writing is brimming with lightheartedness, empathy, compassion, and love. She values interpersonal relationships and beautifully illustrates the value of life’s simple pleasures. I now understand why she is such a treasure not only in Mississippi, but also in American literature.

[Hawley]

I haven't read the whole book. But by page 35, I felt like I was reading stories best suited to just killing time, sipping sweet tea on the porch in dripping humidity and simply to ease the chore of sitting in silence yet again on a broiling day. As in, it MIGHT be better for entertainment than nothing at all?

I simply don't get the charms of it? I do like the words the author uses, which somehow make me want to like the overall story. But when I actually read, there seems to be so little story that I am left a bit perplexed, wondering what I've missed or if there just wasn't anything there. Perhaps it's a southern woman's passivity or indirectness that I get from this and yet, don't understand? I'm not sure.

So far, these stories seem more to insinuate or allude to potential action than actually tell the tale of it.

Why do I feel so guilty or confused for not enjoying reading this? I think Eudora Welty sounds like a fascinating person and author, but so far, in these short stories, I am regrettably and utterly uncompelled.

[Emma]

Read this collection to review for The Hollins Critic.