A Writer's Eye Part 14

Du Bois, William Pene. Otto and the Magic Potatoes. Illus. by the author. New York: Viking Press, 1970.

Engel, Lehman. Words With Music. New York: Macmillan, 1972.

Faulkner, William. Intruder in the Dust. New York: Random House, 1948.

. Selected Letters of William Faulkner, ed. Joseph Blotner. New York: Random House, 1977.

Page 246 Forster, E. M. The Life to Come and Other Short Stories. New York: W. W. Norton, 1973.

. Marianne Thornton: Domestic Biography. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1956.

Fredenthal, David, and Richard Wilc.o.x. Of Men and Battle. New York: Howell, Soskin, 1944.

Gilbert, Enrique Gil. Trans. Dudley Poore. Our Daily Bread. New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1943.

Guareschi, Giovanni. Don Camillo and His Flock. New York: Pellegrini & Cudahy, 1952.

Guterman, Norbert. Russian Fairy Tales. Illus. Alexander Alexeieff. New York: Pantheon, 1945.

Hale, Nancy. Between the Dark and the Daylight. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1943.

Hamilton, Patrick. The West Pier. Garden City, N. J.: Doubleday, 1952.

Harris, Bernice Kelly. Sweet Beulah Land. New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1943.

Heard, H. F. The Great Fog and Other Weird Tales. New York: Vanguard Press, 1944.

Jenkins, Dorothy H., and Helen Van Pelt Wilson. Enjoy Your House Plants. New York: M. Barrows, 1944.

Johannesson, Eric O. The World of Isak Dinesen. Seattle: U of Washington P, 1961.

Kstner, Erich. The Little Man and the Big Thief. Illus. by Stanley Mack. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970.

Kertesz, Andre. J, Aime Paris. New York: Grossman/Viking Press, 1974.

Kroll, Harry Harrison. Waters Over the Dam. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1944.

Langbaum, Robert. The Gayety of Vision: A Study of Isak Dinesen's Art. New York: Random House, 1965.

Leatherman, LeRoy. Martha Graham: Portrait of the Lady as an Artist. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967.

Macaulay, Rose. The World My Wilderness. Boston: Little, Brown, 1950.

Macdonald, Ross. The Underground Man. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971.

Macken, Walter. The Green Hills and Other Stories. New York: Macmillan, 1956.

McDermott, Francis, ed. The Western Journals of Washington Irving. Norman, Okla.: U of Oklahoma P, 1944.

Mizener, Arthur. The Saddest Story: A Biography of Ford Madox Ford. New York and Cleveland: World Publishing Co., 1971.

Morris, Edita. Three Who Loved. New York: Viking Press, 1945.

Oxford Companion to Children's Literature, eds. Humphrey Carpenter and Mari Prichard. New York: Oxford U P, 1984.

Perelman, S. J. Baby, It's Cold Inside. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1970.

. Crazy Like a Fox. New York: Random House, 1944.

. The Most of S. J. Perelman. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1958.

Page 247 . Westward Ha! Around the World in 80 Cliches. Illus. by Al Hirschfeld. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1948.

Perrault, Charles. French Fairy Tales. Illus. Gustave Dore. New York: Didier, 1945.

Peters, Fritz. The World Next Door. New York: Farrar Straus, 1949.

Porter, Katherine Anne. The Never-Ending Wrong. Boston: Atlantic-Little, Brown, 1977.

Pritchett, V. S. Selected Stories. New York: Random House, 1978.

Riefenstahl, Leni. The Last of the Nuba. New York: Harper & Row, 1974.

Russell, John. Henry Green: Nine Novels and an Unpacked Bag. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers U P, 1961.

Salinger, J. D. Nine Stories. Boston: Little, Brown, 1953.

Sansom, William. Fireman Flower and Other Stories. New York: Vanguard, 1945.

. South. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1950.

. The Stories of William Sansom. Boston: Little, Brown, 1963.

Saxon, Lyle, Edward Dreyer, and Robert Tallent, eds. Gumbo Ya-Ya, A Collection of Louisiana Folk Tales. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1946.

Shipton, Clifford K. Roger Conant, A Founder of Ma.s.sachusetts. Cambridge, Ma.s.s.: Harvard U P, 1945.

Steedman, Marguerite. But You'll Be Back. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1942.

Stewart, George R. Names on the Land: A Historical Account of Place-Names in the United States. New York: Random House, 1945.

Summers, Hollis. City Limit. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1948.

Undset, Sigrid. True and Untrue and Other Norse Tales. Illus. Frederick T. Chapman. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945.

Wagenknecht, Edward, ed. Six Novels of the Supernatural. New York: Viking Press, 1944.

Warner, Sylvia Townsend. A Garland of Straw. New York: Viking Press, 1943.

Wescott, Glenway. Apartment in Athens. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1945.

West, Jessamyn. The Witch Diggers. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1951.

White, E. B. Charlotte's Web. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952.

. Essays of E. B. White. New York: Harper & Row, 1977.

White, Patrick. The c.o.c.katoos. New York: Viking Press, 1975.

Whitehead, Henry S. Jumbee and Other Uncanny Tales. Sauk City, Wis.: Arkham House, 1944.

Woolf, Virginia. Granite and Rainbow. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1958.

. A Haunted House and Other Short Stories. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1944.

. The Letters of Virginia Woolf Volume II 19121922. Eds. Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976.

Page 249 Appendix B

Books Reviews Included in:

The Eye of the Story: Selected Essays and Reviews

Bowen, Elizabeth. Pictures and Conversations. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975. 26976.

Dinesen, Isak. Last Tales. New York: Random House, 1957. 26163.

Faulkner, William. Intruder in the Dust. New York: Random House, 1948. 20711.

. Selected Letters of William Faulkner, ed. Joseph Blotner. New York: Random House, 1977. 21220.

Forster, E. M. The Life to Come and Other Short Stories. New York: W. W. Norton, 1973. 22734.

. Marianne Thornton: Domestic Biography. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1956. 22126.

Macdonald, Ross. The Underground Man. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971. 25160.

McDermott, Francis, ed. The Western Journals of Washington Irving. Norman, Okla.: U of Oklahoma P, 1944. 17781.

Mizener, Arthur. The Saddest Story: A Biography of Ford Madox Ford. New York and Cleveland: World Publishing Co., 1971. 24150.

Perelman, S. J. Baby, It's Cold Inside. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1970. 23840.

. The Most of S. J. Perelman. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1958. 23438.

Stewart, George R. Names on the Land: A Historical Account of Place-Naming in the United States. New York: Random House, 1945. 18289.

White, E. B. Charlotte's Web. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952. 20306.

White, Patrick. The c.o.c.katoos. New York: Viking Press, 1975. 26468.

Woolf, Virginia. Granite and Rainbow. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1958. 19092.

. The Letters of Virginia Woolf Volume II 19121922. Eds. Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976. 193202.

Page 251

Notes.

1. The 19 September 1942 Sat.u.r.day Review of Literature was a special "Deep South" issue edited by David Cohn of Greenville, Mississippi, containing pieces by Cleanth Brooks, Robert Penn Warren, Phil Stone, Howard Odum, and others. For a discussion of the issue see Introduction.

2. Peter Breughel, the Elder, Flemish painter of the sixteenth century. Welty is perhaps reminded of Breughel's Children's Games (1560), one of many crowded panoramic landscapes. See also note 76 for The Witch Diggers. Painting was among Welty's subjects at Mississippi State College for Women (192527), and she often uses painterly language to describe a writer's style.

3. Symbols, Welty says, "must come about organically, out of the story" (Peggy Whitman Prenshaw, Conversations with Eudora Welty, Jackson: U P Mississippi, 1984, 84). Of the symbols in her own writing, she says, "They occur naturally; they are organic. If they're a part of the story, they come readily to hand when you want them, and as often as you want them, and you use them with a proper sense of proportion, and with as light a touch as possible" (Prenshaw 52). The Harris review is only Welty's second, but she clearly identifies the particular weaknesses in the writing.

4. Welty's first collection, A Curtain of Green (1941), contained 17 stories; her later collections had only seven or eight stories each.

5. Between the Dark and the Daylight was Hale's fifth book, all edited by Maxwell Perkins for Scribner's. Her third novel, The Prodigal Women (1942) had been a financial and critical success.

6. This is the earliest of Welty's reviews for which an extant typescript is preserved in the Welty Collection at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. For a full description of the collection see Suzanne Marrs, The Welty Collection (Jackson: U P Mississippi, 1989). Hereafter cited, for example, as MDAH WC18, Marrs 68. The fourteen editorial changes from Welty's typescript are mostly deletions to Page 252 tighten and shorten the review. The translator's name is moved from the first paragraph to the headnote. The following paragraph preceding Welty's concluding sentence was cut to fit the review onto the page with three others under the t.i.tle "The Latest Works of Fiction": "At first glance the exotic quality of the book may make it alien to our dull demandsthink of our usual 'novel of the soil.' Lushness startles you, but it will reward you. The women are like fruits, flowers, jaguars, and yet from the moment of their arrival at the settlement that has been made ready for them, when 'from under the parasols in the middle of the boat came the incessant chatter of women: laughter delicate as the singing of birds, little chirps and cries, dreamy talk,' they are wholly of the common humanity too. There is no dim, farsighted quality in the men or in their plan. Their hope is bound up in the immediacy of perception, and the power of their bodies to directly respond. The vigor and thrust of this book are fundamental things" (MDAH WC18, Marrs 68).

7. In her first paragraph, Welty uses her favorite words, love, pa.s.sion, and power to summarize the essence of the novel. For a discussion of the words, imagination, love, communication, and pa.s.sion in selected nonfiction by Welty see Michael Kreyling, "Words into Criticism: Eudora Welty's Essays and Reviews," Eudora Welty: Critical Essays, ed. Peggy Whitman Prenshaw (Jackson: U P of Mississippi, 1979) 41122.

8. The following paragraph was cut from the typescript for the published review: "This novel is presented almost completely to the eyelike a dance. We see action instant, unhesitating, forthright, graceful, without wordsfar too quick and complete for wordsbefore a backdrop ever-present and completely clear and vivid. There are the serious, decorative princ.i.p.als, the suffering comic figure of the old mother wandering on and off, the chorus of gauchos when the stage is darkened and a little red fire glows out, the dramatic, symbolic figure of the stallion towering over all" (MDAH WC18, Marrs 68).

9. A carbon typescript, apparently an early version, includes a third paragraph and a continuation of the second-to-last paragraph that are not in the published review. Much of the information in these excised portions is included elsewhere in the review, suggesting that the typescript may be an early version that was subsequently revised by Welty. The typescript includes six other descriptive phrases or quotations that are later deleted, probably by the NYTBR editor, including the following sentence at the end of the second-to-last paragraph: "The sights of festivals and processions, of ballets and coronations, of the elephants 'stuffing their mouths in a glad greedy way' or war-elephants whirling swords in the trunks in the sunset glowall is given us in a full light; we can see, and trustingly, in this book, to our heart's content" (MDAH WC18, Marrs 68).

10. The unfulfilled possibilities of the meeting of the king and the friar and their failure to profit from the opportunity must have reminded Welty of her story "A Still Moment" (1942) in which three historic characters, itinerant Methodist preacher Page 253 Lorenzo Dow, bandit James Murrell, and artist John Audubon, meet on another famous pathway, the Natchez Trace, for a brief and equally futile moment. There are further similarities between Collis's novel and Welty's story.

11. Welty is well aware of the power of fairy tales. She had just published The Robber Bridegroom (1942), a fantasy of folklore, fairy tale, and mythology on the Natchez Trace, and The Wide Net (1943), stories also set along the Natchez Trace filled with dream, illusion, folk and fairy lore.