FYI
Why is it named Eudora?
Steve Dorner, one of the Eudora authors, explained the name's origin: "When I was looking for
a name for my new Post Office Protocol mail program, I thought immediately of the title of a
short story I'd read years before: 'Why I Live at the P.O.' So I named the program after the
author of the story, Eudora Welty."
Author Eudora Welty Dies at 92
Updated: Tue, Jul 24 3:47 AM EDT
By JASON STRAZIUSO, Associated Press Writer
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - It was Eudora Welty's eyes that writer Toni
Morrison most vividly recalled when the two authors met decades
ago.
"She had these little round, piercing eyes that kept moving in her
head. She saw everything," Morrison said Monday. "What amazed
me was how comfortable everybody was under her gaze."
Through Welty's eyes, the South came to life in such books as
"The Ponder Heart," "Losing Battles" and "The Optimist's
Daughter," for which she won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973.
Morrison joined a chorus of admirers in paying tribute to Welty,
who died Monday at Baptist Medical Center after battling
pneumonia. She was 92.
"It goes without question that she was one of the greatest literary
figures that this state - that this country for that matter - has ever produced," said former Mississippi
Gov. William Winters, a friend for 50 years.
Unlike fellow Mississippian William Faulkner, Welty did not imagine her people as tragic figures living
out the curse of a sinful past. For her, the present was drama enough, a time for gossip and family
squabbles, for private journeys and mysterious passions.
Her characters included the likes of Clytie, a frustrated spinster who drowns herself in a rain barrel; Lilly
Daw, a feeble-minded girl who falls in love with a xylophone player; Miss Teacake Magee, who sings at
her own wedding; and a couple of deaf-mutes who suffer indignities.
She was also praised for "One Time, One Place," a collection of her heart-wrenching photographs of
Depression-era Mississippi that showed the pride she saw among even the poorest people.
"If I drove down the street riding with Eudora Welty she would notice things that I let go by," said
Suzanne Marrs, a Welty scholar at Millsaps College in Jackson and family friend.
She once called herself "a natural observer, and to me the details tell everything. One detail can tell more
than any descriptive passage in general, you know. That's the way my eye sees, so I just use it."
Welty's works include "Delta Wedding" in 1946 and "Losing Battles" in 1971. "The Ponder Heart" and
"The Robber Bridegroom" were made into Broadway plays. Her personal favorite was the 1949 collection
"The Golden Apples," interrelated stories set in the fictional town of Morgana, Miss.
In 1998, the Library of America published a two-volume compilation of her works, the first time an entire
edition had been devoted to a living writer.
"She was extraordinary," said author and critic Elizabeth Hardwick. "She had her own voice and her own
tone and her own subject matter. There was no one quite like her in American literature."
Welty was born on April 13, 1909, in Jackson, where she lived most her life. She attended Mississippi
University for Women, later graduating from the University of Wisconsin and doing postgraduate work
at Columbia University in New York.
Early in her career, Welty worked for newspapers and radio stations and served as publicity agent for
President Franklin Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration, the agency formed to provide work for
people in Depression-era America.
Welty's first story collection, "A Curtain of Green," was published in 1941 and contained some of her
most beloved work, including "A Worn Path" and "Why I Live at the P.O." Years later, the latter story
about a post office worker inspired the developer of the Eudora e-mail program to name it for her.
Her first novel, "The Robber Bridegroom," appeared in 1942. During World War II, Welty wrote reviews
on battlefield reports for The New York Times Book Review. She used the pseudonym "Michael
Ravenna" - an editor had complained a Southern woman, despite literary talents, was not an authority on
the war.
Although the shooting of civil rights leader Medgar Evers in 1963 inspired Welty's haunting story
"Where is the Voice Coming From?" the author was criticized in the 1960s for not writing stories about
racial injustice.
"I think I've always written stories about that," she said in later years. "Not as propaganda, but I've
written stories about human injustice as much as I've written about anything. ... I was looking at it in the
human, not the political, vision, and I was sticking to that."
Welty never married and dedicated her life to her work. She lived in the Jackson home that her father
built in the 1920s, where she continued writing.
In recent years, she made few public appearances. In May 1998, the Mississippi University for Women
gave her its first honorary degree, but she did not attend the ceremony.
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