The One and Only Eudora

Little known about author Eudora Welty '29, who died in July, is that she enjoyed a brief career at UW-Madison. Perhaps "enjoyed" isn't the right word. As Kelly Cherry, the Eudora Welty Professor Emerita of English and Evjue-Bascom Professor Emerita in the Humanities, shares below, Madison may not have lingered long in Welty's heart:

On July 23, the world - not just America - lost one of its great writers. Eudora Welty was ninety-two. Most of a lifetime ago, she had come up from Mississippi to UW-Madison to finish her BA in the English department. She was not, unfortunately, happy in Madison: she found the climate and the people cold, she said; and she shot off to Chicago every weekend she could manage.

She was soft-voiced, perhaps shy and certainly unassuming, with a lovely drawl, but also lively, curious, and observant. She liked bourbon, potato chips, gossip, and good times. She loved New York City, where she was briefly in business school, and meeting the then-happening writers and, later, keeping up with younger writers wherever they were. She loved her garden. She loved birds. She loved photography. She loved reading. She loved writing.

She was no more a regional writer than fellow Mississippian William Faulkner (who, early in her career, wrote her to say, "You're doing all right,"a letter she treasured and kept near her desk), I.B. Singer, or Thomas Hardy. Because she also loved her characters, she erased herself from the page, making sure they were never dependent on her for their meaning or vitality. Free as free will, they will go on - and on - living without her, beyond her.

Reading about them, we, the world's readers, are gifted to go beyond ourselves.

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