       |
 |
I heard One Writer’s Beginnings reviewed on Diane Rehm and went out of my way to stop at Barnes and Noble on my way home to pick up a copy. I had heard a recording on the show of Welty reading this scene from her novel, The Optimist’s Daughter: This was the confluence of the waters, the Ohio and the Mississippi. They were looking down from a great elevation and all they saw was at the point of coming together, the bare trees marching in from the horizon, the rivers moving into one, and as he touched her arm she looked up with him and saw the long, ragged, pencil-faint line of birds within the crystal of the zenith, flying in a V of their own, following the same course down. All they could see was the sky, water, birds, light and confluence. It was the whole morning world. And they themselves were a part of that confluence. Their own joint act of faith had brought them here at the very moment and matched its occurrence, and proceeded as it proceeded. Direction itself was made beautiful, momentous. They were riding as one with it right up front. It’s our turn! She thought exultantly. And we’re going to live forever. (p. 103 One Writer’s Beginnings) That attention to detail, that philosophical reflection, those soaring and beautiful words. How did she do that! That’s what I wanted to know, why I bought the book, to hear in her own words how a writer begins and then continues. The book itself is the collection of three lectures that Eudora Welty gave in April of 1983, at Harvard University to inaugurate the William E. Massey lecture series. The lectures are entitled Listening, Learning to See and Finding a Voice. More memoir then specifically “how to” her tidbits of sage advice come ensconced in context. Listening hearkens back to her childhood in the early 1900’s. Learning to See has more to do with discovering her parent’s lives and thus how her own life had been influenced by their experiences, their hopes, their goals. Finding a Voice takes us to her college years and her first full-time job working for the government’s Works Progress Administration as a junior publicity agent, which meant she traveled across Mississippi, writing news stories for county papers and taking pictures. The photography may have sharpened her attention to detail, but she preferred words to snapping pictures. They were better than photographs as a way to hold “transient life in words” because “there is so much more of life that only words can convey.” I’ll conclude with a quote that gives great hope to those of us who fear we have not experienced enough of life to write with the emotional depth she does: As you have seen, I am a writer who came of a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within. (p. 104) <back to list |
||||||
