Sara’s Reviews > What There Is to Say We Have Said: The Correspondence of Eudora Welty and William Maxwell > Status Update

Welty presented Maxwell with his Howell's medal and said of So Long, See You Tomorrow: "There is nothing between us and the realization that without love and without death we should never have come into the presence of human mystery at all." Profound.

Speaking of a photograph of Willa Cather, Maxwell says, "Steichen could never photograph the inside of an artist; only their fan mail."

I loved that!

"I'm trying to put together a book of short stories, and finding it difficult. So many of them are either stuck fast in the copy of the New Yorker they appeared in, or in a period that isn't like now. I keep wishing that somebody (myself for instance) had only said, "Couldn't you try harder?" A few are all right. But only a few. And what bothers me is that I didn't see this at the time."

Continued in next update.

I am tickled that Maxwell seemed to think Losing Battles an exceptional work. I personally think it is Welty at her best.

It makes me very sad to think of these two brilliant minds and vital persons as gone. I know they live on in their writings, but I should like to think of them out there still teasing one another, visiting one another, sharing their marvelous thoughts and feelings.

Moving slowly through these letters, but have stopped twice to read the authors' novels and once for a short story. Both are brilliant writers.

I keep needing to stop the letters and read the works! Beginning The Chateau by Maxwell now and stopped to read Welty's civil-rights era story. Their letters are, of course, often make reference to their respective works.

I love the ease of their friendship and the way they share their lives across so many miles through the letters. I think we have robbed ourselves of something precious by making our communications so tech-driven.

I hate that the art of correspondence has been lost to us. Their letters are so wonderful and tell so much about them as people and the lives they lead. There will nothing left of anything so genuine in our generation. You wouldn't even want to read our emails.

I read the introduction and got side tracked. Real reading to begin only today.