Eudora welty the wide net
To be sure, some of Welty's fiction might be said to offer a kind of companionable read, but much of her fiction challenges readers in peculiar and disturbing ways and imposes on them an obligation to make sense of the implications that reside in those texts. But, declarations of affection for readers notwithstanding, Welty's fiction often belies her avowed closeness to readership and reveals instead an entirely different and problematic paradigm for discovery. She notes that "looking at short stories as readers and writers together should be a companionable thing" (85), a process in which both parties participate, a friendly dialogue in which the ultimate goal is textual understanding and meaning. "There is sure to be somewhere the reader, who is a user himself of imagination and thought, who knows, perhaps, as much about the need of communication as the writer" (106). "At the other end of the writing is the reader," she says. Untangling The Wide Net: by Rebecca Chalmers Eudora Welty has written extensively about the responsibility that writers have to be mindful of and to establish connections with their readers. The Southern Literary Journal University of North Carolina Press
Perhaps more than other collections, The Wide Net contains stories that demand a genuinely difficult "There is sure to be somewhere the reader, who is a user himself of imagination and thought, who knows, perhaps, as much about the need of communication as the writer" (106). Eudora Welty: Stories, Essays, & Memoirs (Loa 102): A Curtain of Green / The Wide Net / The Golden Apples / The Bride of Innisfallen / Selected Essay. 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 somewhat charming way, by faded pink print on the spine.Untangling The Wide Net: Welty and Readership Untangling The Wide Net: Welty and Readership
Audubon even stopped in Jackson on when the capital was only a year old. 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-where his wife set up a profitable teaching practice for a short time. 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 murder and 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 Eudora 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. The classic short story collection of Southern life by the Pulitzer Prizewinning author of The Optimist’s Daughter. “This book, like all books, is a symbol of liberty and the freedom for which we fight. Read 'The Wide Net and Other Stories' by Eudora Welty available from Rakuten Kobo. As a further reminder of the time, the 1943 first edition of The Wide Net and Other Stories bears an advertisement for war bonds: 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. The Wide Net and Other Stories by Eudora Welty