Review by Booklist Review
Eudora Welty was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and has lived there for most of her life. Recently, during a presentation in Mississippi's Old State Capitol Building, where the state formally seceded from the Union in 1861, Welty was awarded the French Legion of Honor, which could be interpreted as recognition of the 87-year old author as a humane citizen of the world. The University Press of Mississippi is also honoring Welty with the publication of these two books, both of which will be of great interest to readers and beginning writers. In 1984 the University of Mississippi Press published Conversations with Eudora Welty, a volume that initiated the Press' Literary Conversations series of collected interviews with twentieth-century writers. The 1984 interviews covered the period from 1942 to 1983; More Conversations extends the record with interviews covering years since 1983. The interviews set the record straight on certain issues--her parents, friends, writers, childhood--and bend it more on others, particularly interpretations of her writing. Unlike contemporary writers who thrive on nakedly passing off their own lives as fiction, Welty depended on her imagination and tremendous power to empathize with others to create fiction. In these interviews, the reader is reminded of the cosmic aims of literature. One Time, One Place, out of print for more than a decade, was originally published in 1971 and is an exciting collection of photographs of Mississippians that Welty took in the 1930s, when she worked for the Works Progress Administration (WPA). This Silver Anniversary Edition contains a great foreword by William Maxwell that absolutely nails the importance of the book for many readers: "A writer's material derives nearly always from experience. Because of this job she came to know the state of Mississippi by heart and could never come to the end of what she might want to write about." Welty is the author of four collections of short stories, two novellas, three novels, a children's book, a book of photographs, and one collection of criticism. Bonnie Smothers
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
