Book Review: One Writer's Garden: Eudora Welty's Home Place by Susan Haltom and Jane Roy Brown

One Writer's Garden: Eudora Welty's Home Place by Susan Haltom and Jane Roy Brown
Published by: University of Mississippi Press
Published on: September 1, 2011
Page Count: 304
Genre: Biography
My Reading Format: PDF downloaded from NetGalley
Available Formats: Hardcover

My Review:


In the preface, authors Susan Haltom and Jane Roy Brown mention that Henry Mitchell at the Washington Post called Welty a "rose gardener, realist, storyteller of the South." I'm familiar with many of Welty's stories, and since my visit earlier this year to her home in Jackson, Mississippi, I've seen the garden in person, and it's beautiful. I come from a family of folks with green thumbs and nice yards, and I hope that I'll have a yard myself one day. So far I've only managed to live in neighborhoods where the homeowners' association maintains everything, and right now that is fine with me. However, I have an appreciation for pretty yards that can be admired from porches and enjoyed all year long. Haltom and Brown maintain that as Welty worked she was inspired by what she was seeing outside her windows.

Haltom and Brown spend some of the book talking about places in Welty's work where she writes about landscapes and gardens, and if what she was writing about was taken specifically from what she was seeing in her own yard as she wrote that particular story. I found this particularly interesting. The book also focused on Welty's biographical information, some of which was new to me (particularly her romantic relationships). And, this book would be a great read for the gardener who wants to incorporate plants from the first half of the 20th century into their yard or know more about the history of garden clubs in the United States. The authors included detailed information about what Welty and her mother planted and when, which could be extremely helpful to some readers. 

My recommendation is to read this book if you're interested in any of the areas I've listed above. The book covers a lot of ground and does it well. The beautiful photographs included are expected for a garden book, but they are still wonderful.

New Orleans' Literary Scene

Recently my husband and I celebrated our anniversary with a long weekend in New Orleans, and I'm not sure whether I was more excited about the food I was planning to eat or seeing the city where many great writers have penned their famous works. We spent three and a half days mostly in the French Quarter and I tracked down all the places I could find with literary significance. Here they are:

Hotel Monteleone has been visited by many important writers (see photo above for list). It's a beautiful hotel, and if you sit in the Carousel Bar near the window overlooking Royal Street, the people watching is top-notch.

Here I am on the St. Charles Avenue Streetcar. I was so excited thinking about Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire that I could barely contain myself.

William Faulkner lived in this townhouse just off Jackson Square in his early years as a writer. He wrote Mosquitoes and Soldier's Pay while he stayed here. As bookstores go, this one is pretty small, but so filled with great stuff you hardly even notice. I bought three books here that I'll likely be writing about after I've read them later.

This home on Bourbon Street was occupied at different times by both Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams. Now it's owned by Cokie Roberts' mother, Lindy Boggs, a politician and activist.

This home on St. Peter Street is where Williams wrote A Streetcar Named Desire.

And finally, this is Galatoire's, a French restaurant on Bourbon Street frequented by Tennessee Williams. Also, Stella took Blanche here in A Streetcar Named Desire. We ate here and the food was good, but many of the places we ate were much better than good.

My self-guided tour of New Orleans was satisfactory, but it was merely a substitute for a real one I'd tried to line up. There is just one literary tour in town and though the woman who gives them is supposed to be fantastic, she doesn't return phone calls and even hangs up on people calling at an inconvenient time for her (she has, apparently, never heard of voicemail). My suggestion to New Orleans is that someone else needs to give her some competition. New Orleans is far too important to American literature to only have one person telling all the good stuff. OK, the gripe session is over now.

Eudora Welty Exhibit

Last week I went to the Atlanta History Center to check out the Eudora Welty exhibit that's moving on May 8. Eudora Welty: Exposures and Reflections was a room full of her beautiful, telling photography taken all across Mississippi during the Great Depression while Welty was employed by the Works Progress Administration. I remembered many of the photographs from seeing them during a memoir class in graduate school when I read Welty's wonderful One Writer's Beginnings. The timing of this exhibit was great for me since only a month ago or so I was touring her Jackson, Mississippi, home and driving all over her hometown. It's a great exhibit and I'm glad I got the chance to see it. If you're in the Atlanta area and can make it before it moves on in three weeks, go.

Where One Writer Began

Eudora Welty once wrote, "Location is the ground conductor of all the currents of emotion and belief and moral conviction that charge out from the story in its course." Last week I spent four days in Mississippi with my parents and one of the highlights for me was seeing Welty's home in Jackson. I mentioned recently that I loved One Writer's Beginnings when I read it in graduate school. Even though it's been several years since reading her memoir, much of it came back to me upon visiting her hometown.

Here is the home she lived in from age 16 until she dies in 2001 at age 92. Much like Carl Sandburg's home in Flat Rock, NC, Welty's home has been left just as she had it in the 1980s when she was doing lots of writing and traveling. It's sunny with large, comfortable, functional rooms and ordinary, every day furniture. It looks like the kind of house anyone could live in. What I enjoyed most about the house were the books she had everywhere and her typewriter upstairs in her bedroom. I also loved that she spread her manuscripts out on the dining room table so she could view the piece as a whole, and often physically cut and pasted parts of pages together to rearrange the order of her stories.

As we were wrapping up with our tour guide, we had the pleasure of meeting the former director of the home and Welty's niece, who favors her aunt for sure.

This was the first time I have visited Jackson, and I particularly liked two downtown landmarks that are associated with Welty. First, the Lamar Life building (below with the clock tower) was her father's insurance company. After reading One Writer's Beginnings, I know Welty associated clocks and time with her father, so it was wonderful to see that his building boasted a clock. 

As a child, Welty often roller skated to the library from her childhood home near downtown Jackson. In her path was the Capitol Building, and she usually skated right through the lobby.

Just before leaving town, we drove to her childhood home (it looks like it's a private residence today). I tried to snap a good picture but this is all I could get. The house is just down the street from an elementary school that was letting out. There were parents' cars and buses everywhere, and a police officer told us to move on. 

All of this helped put Welty in perspective for me. I think it's time to do some rereading!

Eudora Welty Exhibit

One of my favorite classes in graduate school was the memoir. In it, for the first time I read One Writer's Beginnings by Eudora Welty, which I loved. I was also exposed to Welty's photography. As a government employee, she traveled the South during the Depression photographing country folks in Mississippi, her home state. They are beautiful, if sometimes haunting, photographs. I'm so excited that an exhibit of her photography work is opening at the Atlanta History Center this weekend, running through May 8. I can't wait to check it out.

Celebrating Women's History Month

Last month, I listed suggested reading to celebrate African American History Month. I'm a little behind in getting this posted, but in celebration of March being Women's History Month, here is some recommended reading that celebrates the female experience:

Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman
Anne Bradstreet poetry
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs
A Lost Lady, O Pioneers!, and My Antonia, all by Willa Cather
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
The Road to Coorain by Jill Ker Conway
Unbowed by Wangari Maathai
Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope by Shirin Ebadi
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (You didn't really think I'd leave this one out, did you?)
The Last Girls by Lee Smith
The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells
Atonement by Ian McEwan
The Stone Diaries by Joyce Carol Oates
Anne Sexton poetry
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
One Writer's Beginnings by Eudora Welty
Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons
An American Childhood by Annie Dillard

Vote for your favorite National Book Award winner

The National Book Foundation has chosen 77 books over the past 60 years to win the prestigious National Book Award. To celebrate the organization’s 60th birthday, you can vote online for your favorite National Book Award winner from six finalists. The choices are:

John Cheever, The Stories of John Cheever
Ralph Ellison, The Invisible Man
William Faulkner, Collected Stories
Flannery O’Connor, The Complete Stories
Thomas Pynchon, Gravity Rainbow
Eudora Welty, The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty

To vote, click here before October 21.

To learn more about the National Book Foundation and its National Book Award, visit their web site.

Celebrating Banned Books Week

The American Library Association is celebrating Banned Books Week from September 26 to October 3. Most of my favorite books have either been banned or challenged at some time somewhere in the United States. Some of my banned book favorites include:

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (my all-time favorite)
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor
Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe
O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
My Antonia by Willa Cather

To learn more about Banned Books Week and to see a full list of challenged and banned classics, visit the ALA web site.

Which banned book is your favorite?

Upcoming Atlanta Book Events

There are two upcoming book events in the Atlanta area worth checking out.

The Decatur Book Festival is September 4-6 on historic Decatur Square. Over 150 authors will read and sign books. For a full schedule of authors and activities (including food, wine, demonstrations and live music), visit the festival’s web site.

Sir Harold Evans will deliver the event’s keynote speech Friday, Sept. 4 at 8 p.m. at Presser Hall on the Agnes Scott College campus. To purchase tickets for the speech, visit the web site.

Mary Chapin Carpenter, Caroline Herring, Kate Campbell and Claire Holley will celebrate author Eudora Welty and the 100th anniversary of her birth with a performance Saturday, Sept. 5 at 8 p.m. in Presser Hall. Tickets to the event can be purchased by calling Agnes Scott College at 404-471-6430.

The Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center will host its annual book sale from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on September 9. All proceeds will benefit the Kenan Research Center and its programs. Admission to the sale is free. Visit the Atlanta History Center web site for more information.