NYT: A Shrine to Southern Literature, Slightly Frayed

[DeepModem Mom]

A delightful article, start to finish!

A Shrine to Southern Literature, Slightly Frayed
By ROGER MUDD
Published: May 4, 2006


(Kate Medley for The New York Times)
Eudora Welty lived and worked in a house her parents built.

....Though it was where Eudora Welty did virtually all of her writing, the house never took on a fancy literary name like High Tor or Twin Oaks. She called it "Tudor style with some timbering, you know, à la Shakespeare." It was always simply and affectionately known as 1119 Pinehurst (Jackson, Mississippi). Visitors knew when they rang the bell that they were going into a loved and lived-in home, not a shrine.

This past weekend, Eudora's house was opened to the public after a restoration underwritten by the Eudora Welty Foundation (I am a member of its National Advisory Board) and the State of Mississippi, to which she had deeded it in 1986. The 80-year-old wiring has been replaced, the plumbing upgraded and the windows rescreened with copper mesh. New wallboard, smoke detectors and central air-conditioning have been installed. The shifting foundation has been stabilized with poured concrete piles, after the contractor tunneled under the house to remove wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of the notoriously unstable yellow Yazoo clay that underpins the entire neighborhood....

***

It was in the upstairs bedroom, looking north across Pinehurst Street and beyond toward the Belhaven College campus, that Eudora did her writing....When she typed she was close enough to her windows that passers-by, if they knew to look up, could see one of America's finest writers at work — no ordinary treat. As her fame spread, more people knew to look up and more of them rang the bell with copies of her books for her to autograph. One early morning, she told me, "a jogger came by, bouncing up and down in his jogging suit," carrying a book for her to sign. She smiled, remembering the incongruity of the scene....

***

From the first meeting, our friendship was instantaneous. She was a news junkie, an avid consumer of TV news, particularly "The MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour," and a highly opinionated judge of politicians. In Jackson they still claim that in 1988 Eudora, after backing her '78 Oldsmobile out of the garage (which will soon become a visitors' theater), threw the local Republicans into a panic when they spotted her making several slow passes through town, sporting "Dukakis for President" bumper stickers....

***

The glossy brochures call it "one of the nation's most intact literary house museums." But calling it a museum is not fair because it is still a real home, a home alive with the memory of Eudora's presence and passions, of her connections to the world beyond her, of the almost endless stream of writers and artists who would not dare to go near Mississippi without calling on her....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/04/garden/04welty.html

[SmokingJacket]

1. Really lovely, thanks for that!

Made my morning....