Combining the sharp gaze of a photographer, the diagnostics of a country doctor, and the craft of a master storyteller, Eudora Welty carved out a spot in canonical literature and rejuvenated our notions of realism by instilling her fictions with myth and interiority, the outs and ins of consciousness. Her plots are meditative, careful, almost soundless, an anecdote to our rush-rush world. Her characters are deeply drawn, a cluster of conflicting gestures and attitudes. To experience her work at its fullest, we’ll read four of her novels (one, a novel in connected stories). These trace her art from fairy tale to social realism, from an unquestioned racialist imagination to a deeper understanding of the human capacity for violence and love, all while rejecting the public sphere and privileging intensely private space, that spot where small-town life can be overwhelmed by gossip but where it also finds its more profound solace.

 The Reading Schedule:

9/25/2024        THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM (1942)

10/2/2024        DELTA WEDDING (1946), chapters I - IV

10/9/2024        DELTA WEDDING (1946), chapter V - VII

10/16/2024      THE PONDER HEART (1954)

10/23/2024      THE GOLDEN APPLES (1949), “Shower Of Gold” and “June Recital”

10/30/2024      THE GOLDEN APPLES (1949), “Sir Rabbit,” “Moon Lake,” and “The Whole World Knows”

11/6/2024        THE GOLDEN APPLES (1949), “Music From Spain” and “The Wanderers”

11/13/2024      THE OPTIMIST’S DAUGHTER (1972)

This series is funded by Mass Humanities and the Mass Cultural Council.