Welty Reads, Part 2 - Click here for Part 1

Welty Reads, Part 2

(“A Worn Path” and “Why I Live at the P. O.”)

 

 

Host Gene Edwards’ opening comments

 

A Worn Path and Why I Live at the PO—perhaps two of Eudora Welty’s best known short stories. In 1975, thirty four years after their publication, Miss Welty read them for filmmaker Richard Moore. In fact, she read a total of six short stories. The films were stored securely at the National Endowment for the Arts, and “rediscovered” a few years after her death in 2001. It’s a pleasure to hear her voice again as we bring you A Worn Path and Why I Live at the PO.

 

 

Host Gene Edwards’ comments introducing “A Worn Path”

 

Welcome to part two of this special edition of Writers. I’m Gene Edwards. In a moment, we’ll continue hearing Eudora Welty read from her short stories. And as filmmaker Richard Moore says, that’s a richly rewarding experience.

Miss Welty was raised here in Jackson, in Mississippi, and received the classic, southern education. As with many of the young ladies of her day, she learned to paint, and perhaps that played a part in the development of her incredible eye for detail. Perhaps it also played a part in the beautiful way she framed this next story, A Worn Path.

Perhaps her photographs also contributed. During the 1930s with the hope of publishing a book, Miss Welty took pictures of Mississippi’s people. Many were African American, as is Phoenix Jackson, her elderly heroine here.

A Worn Path is one of Miss Welty’s most frequently anthologized stories, and it prompted student after student to ask, "Is Phoenix Jackson's grandson really dead?" Eventually, she wrote an essay in response. She said that she had not intended to suggest that the boy was dead, but, she further wrote, Phoenix Jackson's heroism would be the same whether her grandson were living or not. Phoenix travels along the well worn path of love. That’s the story's essence.

 

 

Host Gene Edwards’ comments introducing “Why I Live at the P. O.”

 

The name Phoenix is, of course, symbolic of that life-giving love, but Eudora Welty reminds us that the name is realistic, too. She once told an interviewer, "I wouldn't have used the word 'phoenix' in "A Worn Path" if it hadn't first come to me as an appropriate Mississippi name. I'd heard of old people named Phoenix; there's a Phoenix town. I thought it was legitimate as a symbol, because it is also true. I couldn't have called her 'Andromeda' or something like that, you know, in order to make her a symbol. It would take away her life."

And with her keen eye for humanity, Eudora Welty’s characters did seem to live on the page. This is true in the serious narrative story we’ve just heard, and it’s equally true in the story we’re about to hear—Why I Live at the PO.  A really funny tale.

Katherine Anne Porter called this story’s main character “a prime example of dementia praecox”—schizophrenia. But Eudora Welty found this to be a stretch. She felt that her story dealt with sibling rivalry, with the way people in small 1930s towns entertained themselves.  Without picture shows or other diversions, they simply dramatized their own lives. Sister, as the postmistress of the second smallest P.O. in the entire state of Mississippi, finds amusement in cooking, in taunting her sister Stella Rondo, in reading any post card that comes to the China Grove post office, and in talking. And talk she does, betraying her own insecurities and prejudices.

 

 

Host Gene Edwards’ final comments

 

An ironing board as inspiration. And what a treasure it inspired! We’d like to thank Richard Moore, the filmmaker, as well as the Mississippi Department of Archives and History and of course, the Eudora Welty House for allowing us to bring Miss Welty to you again. I’m Gene Edwards. Thank you for joining us.