The woman my e-mail client is named after ...
July 23, 2001 11:30 AM   Subscribe

The woman my e-mail client is named after ... has passed away. R.I.P. Eudora Welty.
posted by allaboutgeorge (13 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Beautiful woman, beautiful writing. "Why I Live at the P.O." was the first thing I read by her and I immediately went and bought a collection of her short stories. She also took WPA photos.
posted by girlhacker at 11:42 AM on July 23, 2001


The Golden Apples is my favorite among her books. I also enjoyed One Writer's Beginnings a great deal.
posted by anapestic at 11:47 AM on July 23, 2001


If you've never heard Miss Welty reading Why I Live at the PO you've missed one of the funniest things ever recorded. She hung out at my school when she was about 60, and she was the coolest.
posted by gwyon at 11:50 AM on July 23, 2001


Enterprise Times: Eudora is a unique name for an e-mail package. Where did it come from?

Steve Dorner (Creator of Eudora):
There's a story I first read in college that I'll always remember entitled "Why I Live At the P.O.," written by a wonderful American writer, Eudora Welty.

This story inspired my original slogan, "Bringing the P.O. to Where You Live," because instead of living at the post office, Eudora brings the post office to you. So I named the program in honor of Ms. Welty.
posted by waxpancake at 11:56 AM on July 23, 2001


"One Writer's Beginnings" is a very special book for any writer to find. I've always identified with this quote:

"Since being read to and after, when I began reading to myself, there has never been a line read that I didn't hear. As my eyes followed the sentence, a voice was saying it silently to me. It isn't my mother's voice, or the voice of any person I can identify, certainly not my own. ... It is to me the voice of the story or the poem itself."
posted by GaelFC at 12:07 PM on July 23, 2001


My favorite story about Ms. Welty comes from one of my friends who went to school in Mississippi. To hear her tell it, my friend met the writer and the two ended up going out bar-hopping together...this being when Ms. Welty was up in her 70s, I believe. Sounds like a fun woman on top of being a great writer.
posted by ChrisTN at 12:36 PM on July 23, 2001


Ms Welty sounds like a very interesting person.

Sadly, I know very little about her except the reference from the Simpsons. (scroll to just below the end of Act Two.)

Does anyone know the reasoning behind the part of the script that references her? I'm not trying to be disrespectful, but I am curious.
posted by melissa at 1:40 PM on July 23, 2001


I was given "One Writer's Beginnings" by a mentor in grad school when I had several relatives die in an airplane accident. I've never read it, thinking it'd bring up too many painful memories, so I don't really know the relevance, if there is any. Maybe it's time to open the covers, now ten years later.
posted by MrMoonPie at 2:48 PM on July 23, 2001


Eudora Welty has my eternal gratitude and admiration; a remarkably perceptive woman who (as a critic) was among the first to recognize that Ross Macdonald was an unparalleled master of the detective fiction genre. Standing on the shoulders of Hammett and Chandler, Macdonald elevated that category to an astoundingly literate and relevant level. People like Eudora Welty (and William Goldman, of "Butch Cassidy" fame, btw) confered legitimacy on Macdonald, who had hitherto been consigned to the back of the pulp fiction rack along with countless tomes of sensationalistic 50's and 60's paperback tripe. Welty possessed cutting insight, gentle wisdom and scholarship born of genuine love for literature; qualities somewhat lacking in her current counterparts.
posted by RavinDave at 3:19 PM on July 23, 2001


<moment of silence>
posted by christina at 4:41 PM on July 23, 2001


"A Worn Path" was the first Eudora Welty story I read, and it's a piece I just never seem to have forgotten about. She was definitely memorable.
posted by soundslikequiet at 6:57 PM on July 23, 2001


...
posted by acridrabbit at 8:47 PM on July 23, 2001


the nyt obituary is rather nice, and contains some very good quotes.
posted by rabi at 12:46 PM on July 24, 2001


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