[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 103 (Monday, July 23, 2001)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1399]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       IN MEMORY OF EUDORA WELTY

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. GENE TAYLOR

                             of mississippi

                    in the house of representatives

                         Monday, July 23, 2001

  Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Mr. Speaker, I join my colleagues from 
Mississippi in expressing deep appreciation and admiration for one of 
the most gifted literary figures of our state and nation, Eudora Welty, 
whom we lost this afternoon following a lifetime of contribution to her 
art. Although recognized and celebrated throughout her career, Welty 
had a gracious and genteel demeanor. She spoke frequently to students 
of literature and lovers of writing, encouraging them to develop an 
ability to listen and to carefully observe before trying to understand 
or tell a story.
  Born in 1909, Welty was a life-long resident of Jackson, Mississippi, 
where she grew up in a close-knit extended family. She claimed to have 
been sheltered and protected from outside forces of all sorts. She 
attended Mississippi State College for Women, the University of 
Wisconsin in Madison, and Columbia University in New York. She returned 
to Mississippi during the Great Depression. She held various jobs, 
including publicist for the Works Progress Administration and a number 
of lecturing and teaching posts. She also had a love for photography, 
and took many pictures during that era that were later displayed and 
published.
  Photography had a profound influence on her mode of writing, teaching 
her that life does not hold still and inspiring her to try to capture 
its transience in words. Notoriously taciturn about her life, Welty 
carefully controlled her public persona. She firmly insisted that her 
work was not political, and did not discuss social or cultural issues 
in her work outside those endemic to immediate community and family. 
She traced her upbringing and mediated upon the forces, both familial 
and situational, that shaped her as a writer and as a person.
  Welty's novels include The Robber Bridegroom (1942), Delta Wedding 
(1946), The Ponder Heart (1954), Losing Battles (1970), and The 
Optimist's Daughter (1972). Her short story collections include A 
Curtain of Green (1941), The Wide Net and Other Stories (1943), The 
Golden Apples (1949), and The Bride of the Innisfallen and Other 
Stories (1955). She also wrote the non-fiction works The Eye of the 
Story (1978), and One Writer's Beginnings (1984).
  Welty's works seem not to reflect so much an attempt to write the 
great American novel, but rather the act of simply telling a story and 
having the readers connect with its characters. These beautifully 
written works offer not only a panorama of Welty's extraordinary 
vision, but they also give a sense of, as she said herself, ``watching 
a negative develop, slowly coming clear before your eyes.``

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