The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty

In a time where I see 800+ page novels as common and editing has become a lost art, Eudora's short stories are truly counter cultural. She say more in 3-500 words than most writers can in 3-500 pages. Less is definitely more. I remember the first time I read one of her stories. I drove the next day to Jackson, MS and knocked on her door. She invited me in to talk. I'm sure we were a spectacle. She looked like a classic, Southern school marm and I was in ripped up jeans, punk t-shirt, combat boots and piercings. The whole of the Southern struggle and angst is wrapped up wonderfully inside these stories. Treat them with respect, and they'll envelope you like warm blankets on a cool night.

A master of the craft wrote this collection of short stories. In addition to being entertaining and captivating, Welty's short stories are models for others to follow. I like to occasionally dip into this volume.

(#37 in the 2005 Book Challenge)

No doubt, this is a metric ton of short stories. I like Ms. Welty quite a bit, although one thing that was rather alarming is that early on in this mammoth volume, I realized I love, oh, 90% of her early stories, when her writing is more straightforward, and then increasingly smaller percentages of her later stories (with the noted exception of the Maclean series). Which are still good, but not luuurve on my part per say.

Grade: A
Recommended: Very much, although you'd need to be very committed to the idea of Eudora Welty to read this straight through. Upon reflection, this might have been better if I read some, and then went back later to read others.

Finished Welty's first collection, A Curtain of Green and Other Stories, published in 1941. Highly recommended. My favorite stories include "Keela, the Outcast Indian Maiden," "A Curtain of Green," "Old Mr. Marblehall" and "Why I Live at the P.O." Of the 17 stories here the only one that doesn't seem to work is "Powerhouse"--perhaps because of all the dialogue rendered in dialect. Everything else has held up remarkably well.

Don't get me wrong - Welty is a top-notch writer. However, I find that so many of her characters, particularly in her short fiction, rub me the wrong way. While Flannery O'Connor creates similar characters (She calls them "grotesques."), she seems to have a gift for tempering their annoying qualities with a humor that Welty lacks (or that I just don't get).

The quintessential southern writer, Eudora Welty weaves words like a homespun tapestry, rough and gently beautiful at the same time. The texture and images are mesmerizing. This is a huge collection of short stories, ranging from 6 pages to about 50 pages each.

I found this collection to be a mixed bag. I loved some of the stories, disliked a few, and found some too long. I preferred the first set 'A Curtain of Green and Other Stories' and the last set 'The Bride of the Innisfallen and Other Stories'; in particular, I would recommend the stories "Why I Live at the P.O.", "Circe", "Kin", and "Lily Daw and the Three Ladies".