(instrumental music) - I never had to go out and do some research on what people would be wearing, to go to, in a town this size, I grew up with it.

I didn't have to ask myself anything.

I knew.

I grew up with an encyclopedic knowledge of the kind of society this is, and so I could draw on it, and I knew it.

That's why I used it.

(electronic music and clicking of typewriter) - Eudora Welty is one of America's most distinguished writers working today in our time.

She lives in Jackson, Mississippi, where she was born, where she got her early education, and where she has always chosen to live and do her writing.

Her first collection of short stories appeared in 1941.

It was a collection called  A Curtain of Green, and soon thereafter, her second book was a Mississippi fairy tale.

It was called   The Robber Bridegroom.

Thereafter, she wrote more short stories, several novels, and in the early 1970s, one of her novels,   The Optimist's Daughter, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Since that time, she has written another novel called  Losing Battles, and her most recent work, which will appear very shortly, is a book that is somewhat autobiographical.

It is called   One Writer's Beginnings, and in it, she tells about the influences on her life and on her writing and her methods of working.

She talks a great deal about her family.

How are you?

- [Eudora] Fine, thank you, Tom.

- It's good to see you and it's good to be here in this very lovely yard at your home in Jackson.

- Thank you.

- You heard me mention your most recent work, One Writer's Beginnings.

In that book, you talk about members of your family a great deal.

You mention that your father was an avid photographer.

That is an interest you inherited, because later in the 1930s, you worked for the WPA, the Works Progress Administration, and took a number of photographs which have appeared in a book of yours called  One Time, One Place.

I would like for you to tell a little bit about the influence that your father's photographs have had on the book you just completed, and I imagine the joy you felt in going through those photographs.

- You're right about the joy.

A lot of it was a matter of getting acquainted with some things.

I didn't know that the photographs could have helped me, but I went back to the photographs after I'd written the book, because they asked me at Harvard University Press is bringing it out, and they said they would like to have some family photographs to appear in it, and I went, of course I have seen these pictures lots of times, but I went back to look at them, and it was so strange.

It was like a verification of some evidence I'd given.

You know, through my memory that were there, and they could have helped me much more if I had the wits to go back and look.

- Tell me a little bit about what you enjoyed reading when you were of school age, and before you answer that, I want to remind you, you and I once in a conversation we were talking about the Jackson librarian who would be rather strict about what she allowed children to check out at the library.

- [Eudora] Absolutely.

- And you told me once that your mother sent a note to her, saying, "Please let Eudora check out "any book she wants to read."

- [Eudora] She did.

- Good for Mrs. Welty.

What sorts of things did you like to read?

- [Eudora] I wanted to read everything.

You know, there was a children's department.

- Yes.

- And there was no point in sticking to that.

And my mother's idea was that nothing could do me any harm.

If I didn't understand it, all right.

If I did... She did make one exception.

The Elsie Dinsmore books were not to be allowed.

(Tom laughs) Because they were so sentimental.

- [Tom] So sentimental and sticky sweet, and that's interesting because I imagine in most homes where there was a daughter growing up, they were standbys.

- They probably were.

Mother said Elsie had to practice the piano so many long hours at her father's wish, that she finally fainted and fell off the piano stool, and my mother said, I know you.

You'd be practicing and you'd, the first thing we'd know, you'd fall of the piano.

- [Tom] You might have done that to get out of practicing.

Maybe Elsie, no Elsie didn't do that to get out of practicing.

Elsie was... - I never did read 'em.

(laughs) - [Tom] Well, I haven't either.

- I blame my mother.

- What sorts of things did you like to do, and what were your activities when you were a teenager?

- Well, when I was a teenager, we were all pretty young as teenagers.

We don't do what teenagers do now.

We had parties where you played games mostly, and ice cream and cake to eat.

And we had great receptions when we were graduating.

Did you come in on that?

- [Tom] Oh, yes.

I went to receptions.

- My high school reception was held right here on this yard.

The house wasn't finished yet, but we had it outdoors in the afternoon.

We had a punch table right about where I'm sitting now.

And this was just sort of cleared away to build a house in.

- Well these were receptions where boy and girl students went.

- [Eudora] Yes.

- But then... - [Eudora] But then we had evening parties of course.

And we had parties at Shadowlawn, do you remember?

- Yes.

- Out on the Terry Road.

Sort of teas.

We were great on teas.

But my class in high school was the one that came the year they added the extra grade onto the high school.

Until we came along, they had seven grades in public school, grammar school, and four, no three, yeah, and four in high school, making 11, and so they weren't gonna have a graduating class one year, but they picked out 30 students from North Jackson and 30 students from West Jackson and made a class of 60, and we were the graduating class of '25.

- Did you feel the necessity of working at other jobs until you began to make a living from writing?

- Indeed, and all throughout my writing career.

My father was wise enough to tell me when I said I wanted to be a writer, when I was still in college, he thought that would be fine, but I must find some way to earn a living.

I did not want to teach, so I went to Columbia School of Business, and studied business and advertising, to get a job.

That happened at the moment of the Great Depression.

- [Tom] (laughs) When a great many people... - Hardly anyone advertised.

So I came back to Jackson and got jobs in related things like newspapers and press.

- [Tom] I know that you worked at a local... - Publicity.

I forget.

I worked for WJDX at one time.

- [Tom] You worked for a local radio station, WJDX.

Did you also work for the local newspaper?

- I did some space rate things in the Daily News.

I did some things for the Commercial Appeal.

You know I worked for pennies and dollars.

That was all right in the Depression.

- [Tom] Surely, surely.

- Anything you could set your mind to, and then I also just got jobs.

- And at that time, during the 1930s, the years of the Depression, you were writing... - [Eudora] I was writing at the same time.

- And sending 'em off to the small magazines, so called small magazines, the university quarterlies, and things of that sort.

- [Eudora] And other things, too, who always sent 'em back.

(Tom laughs) But that was the way that I was trying to do two lives at once, and it fitted beautifully.

- Ah, you have prompted a question that I wanted to ask.

You sent them to other magazines, the more commercial magazines, that in those days existed and published a lot of fiction.

- [Eudora] Right.

- And they sent them back, so you have known the terrible feeling of opening an envelope and finding a rejection slip?

- [Eudora] Oh, constantly, constantly.

If I hadn't been so young and also I had the idea, which is probably correct, that they were probably right.

You know, that they would nearly always say we liked this, but it's not what it oughta be.

It's not quite.

Try again.

They were probably exactly right.

That's one way to find out.

- [Tom] But it was never so harsh that it killed your spirit and your courage to keep on writing.

- No, 'cause I think you don't know what you might've done, but I still feel I'd keep on writing if I'd never sold anything, but you can't say that, because you don't know.

- Did you share those moments with your family members, and did they encourage you to keep on writing?

- [Eudora] They encouraged me.

I didn't like to show them things.

- No, I think I would have run away and... - I shrank from...

The reason I sent them off really was it was someone to show them to that I didn't know, and who didn't know me.

It'd be completely impersonal.

And someone who was professionally looking for work, and would tell you if it was good or not.

It was like, handing things in to the teacher.

- [Tom] The teacher, right.

- Getting a grade.

- Do you follow a regular schedule of say, going to your typewriter at 8 o'clock in the morning and writing till noon, the way Trollope did, for instance?

What's?

- No, I never do it the way Trollope did.

I did write that story, as you described it.

It was about Fats Waller.

- [Tom] Yeah.

- But that was unique, because most stories I write are the result of a build up of personal experience, emotions or something and I, that are trying to find a form to appear in until I get some dramatic idea, in which I can translate my feelings into fictional characters and fictional situations that acts them out, like a play.

- [Tom] Uh-huh.

- So it's not me.

It's the character, or several characters.

I may be all the characters in some sense.

But that's a build up, as I say, and it may have been, I may have been brooding on something for a long time, and then it finds a form.

But this thing was one night.

I had no idea when I was listening to it I was gonna come home and do it.

I would've been appalled at myself.

I couldn't have done it, 'cause I don't even know anything about music.

But it was just the reaction to a personality, really.

- [Tom] Yeah.

- Or to the beat of the music.

I was familiar with his music, Fats Waller's music, though I never seen 'im.

- [Tom] But you came home, and you must've started about midnight.

- I did.

- [Tom] And written straight on through the night.

- And I knew that I couldn't, wasn't any sense trying to improve it the next day when I was back in my senses, because I didn't know enough to improve it, so I just left it, just as the way I do.

- [Tom] Well, it's a very powerful story.

- I like it too.

It was amazing to go through.

- Well to use a phrase that critics use about powerful things, it is a compulsively readable.

- [Eudora] Well thank you.

- I think it's almost impossible to start reading that, without going straight on through it.

- [Eudora] Really?

- And it's fairly short.

- Well, it was a compulsive writing.

- When the emotions do build up, and then you go and begin writing, to what extent do you revise, and tell me a little bit about how you revise.

- I revise a lot, because I like to write a first draft that is headlong, you know, when I'm full of what I'm trying to say.

And if possible, and it used to be possible, with shorter stories, to do it all in one sitting.

- [Tom] Uh-huh.

- I can't do that with longer stories.

- [Tom] No.

- But then I revise toward what I'm aiming at.

You know, I see that I've got excess stuff in there.

You know, or I've gone off on false trails, perhaps an inner sense, you know, that leads you to the wrong place.

The thing is to sheer away all these things, and I often do it with scissors physically to the manuscript, and also I try transposing things that way.

I often give away everything in the beginning.

I'll just save it for the end.

- [Tom] Oh, I see.

- Cut it off, tack it on.

Not that simple, but, you know.

- [Tom] You actually take scissors and cut out a paragraph here and a paragraph there.

- It's quick to do that.

- [Tom] I thought you meant that you edited down by throwing away some paragraphs, but... - I don't throw them away.

- When you rearrange things... - I don't really throw 'em away.

(Tom laughs) I turn 'em upside down and put 'em under a saucer.

I hoard 'em till I think I'm through.

- And then... - But then I rearrange, and then I pin everything together.

It comes from working on a newspaper, you know, where everything is a script.

- Yeah, yeah, when you make up a newspaper page.

- Mm-hmm.

And so you can look at a story in a long script, like wall paper.

- When you cut out a paragraph and transpose it to someplace else, does that not damage the path your story is to take?

- No, it makes it better, because if you put the most important thing first, which you tend to do, you know it belongs in there, but you have to find out the stage at which it comes.

- [Tom] I see, I see.

- Just like taking a trip.

You know, you're going to Canton and Memphis and Chicago and New Orleans, but you have to, well, it's not that simple, is what I mean, but you, the chronology and so on has to be very careful, and the structure has to be much more explicit and severe than the first draft.

- [Tom] Yeah.

- So what you're doing is getting it more what it oughta be, or you think of a way, even think of a way you could do this better, by having an encounter at a different time, or, you know, than where you have it now.

Like, let these characters meet after the reader already knows that such and such a thing exists.

- [Tom] Yes, yes.

- So then the meeting is more significant.

And that's the pleasure of writing.

Of course, some people have so much more sense about writing, about what they're doing, that they wouldn't have to go through these things.

- [Tom] No, but I should think that would give you increased pleasure in your work... - [Eudora] Oh, right.

- Because for one thing, it sort of gives you surprises.

- [Eudora] It really does.

- As it gives the reader.

- [Eudora] It's wonderful.

I really love it.

I really love that.

It's like telling yourself a story, and correcting yourself at the same time.

- [Tom] Yeah, I can see you're working and saying, now, who would ever have thought that Uncle Daniel would do that at this point in the story?

And... - I'm not recommending it to any of you in the audience who want to be writers.

I don't mean that that's a method.

It's just what happened in my case.

Everyone has to find his own way.

- [Tom] Among your friends who are writers, has any one of them ever said that he or she uses that same method, with the scissors?

- I've never heard anyone, but I've never asked anybody.

- [Tom] No.

- I don't dare ask.

- No, that's your secret.

I have heard you talk about the need for a writer to have a definite point of view, when he or she sets out to begin writing.

I've never heard you talk about a style.

You don't seem to think of your style as being the Welty style... - [Eudora] No.

- And that infects all of your stories, or affects all of your stories.

- As a short story writer, I feel that style belongs to the particular story it's in.

For instance, the one we were just talking about, "Powerhouse"... - [Tom] Uh-huh.

- I was writing that from the point of view perhaps of an audience listening to a jazz player.

That would not apply to any other story that I've written, that I can think of, but I think the point of view comes to ya as one with the idea of the story, because it's like the source or the origin.

It stems from a point of view.

- You don't use a word processor.

- [Eudora] I don't even know what one is.

- You use an old-fashioned typewriter.

- [Eudora] Yes, I do.

I always have.

- Have you made a concession to modern-day living by using an electric typewriter, or is it a manual?

- It oughta be a manual, but I bought an electric typewriter because my hand, one of my hands was bothering me, and the doctor told me I should not type all day on a manual.

I miss it.

I hate my electric typewriter.

It has the upper hand over me.

You know, some things it does things by itself.

- [Tom] It does.

I seem to make far more mistakes... - I do too.

- [Tom] On an electric typewriter than I do on a manual.

- I, and then it waits on you.

There's a little motor going.

- [Tom] Yeah.

- And so you can't think, because it's going (makes buzzing sound).

(Tom laughs) But anyway, it's a typewriter.

- [Tom] But, I didn't mean to get sidetracked onto the question of your choice of typewriter, just if you will just talk a little bit about how you get an idea and how you proceed to put it down on paper.

- Well, I don't start to write any story, I mean I don't write every day, for instance.

I don't write at all unless I have a story to write, and I've always thought about that a good long while before it's taken the right form, as I was telling you earlier.

But then I like to start work, always start early in the morning when the brain is clearest, in my case, and it used to be I could work all day long without a stop, except to eat, but now I can't.

I get tired in the afternoon.

- [Tom] Early in the morning, you say.

What is early to you?

Do you start at sun up?

Or do you start at 9 o'clock, or?

- As soon as I've had some coffee.

Usually in the summertime, I start quite early, 7 or 8 o'clock, you know, when it, it has to be light.

I would think anything you wrote in the dark might be suspect (laughs).

I can't write at night.

I'm tired, and that's when I read or like to see my friends and talk.

And so I keep writing, every day usually until I get the story done, without taking days off.

I mean, it doesn't occur to me to do that.

I think if I were tired I'd think for the good of the story I'd lay off a day.

- So, but you do accomplish a first draft and then begin the revisions from there.

- [Eudora] And then begin the revisions.

You can do that more leisurely.

And I love to do that, because it's not pressing on you then.

You know, to write it, write it, the way it is on a first draft.

- Yeah.

- [Eudora] It knows it's down on paper.

So you can work at it, and sometimes stories take me a month or more, and sometimes I can write one in two or three days, just depends on the story.

- Or if it's "Powerhouse," in two or three hours.

- [Eudora] Or "Powerhouse" in two or three hours.

- You mentioned earlier when we were talking that you indicated you had forgotten which book appeared first,   The Optimist‘s Daughter or  Losing Battles, and you said, oh, I forget the order of those books because I was working on both of them at the same time.

Does that happen often, where you are...?

- [Eudora] No, no.

It almost never does.

It happened then because of the circumstances.

I was not able to get the time free to work on  Losing Battles.

- I see.

- [Eudora] And so, what I did was make notes and notes and notes, and instead of going back and revising things, I just put everything into a tin box, because I couldn't go back until after I finished   The Optimist's Daughter, which I wrote rather fast, although I waited a year to publish it, and retyped it, which I think did some, gave it some benefit.

- When you are retyping, do you revise?

- [Eudora] I can't help it.

- Yeah.

- [Eudora] Any time I retype, I think it's a failing, 'cause you oughta know when it's right.

- Of course,  The   Optimist's Daughter is a considerably shorter novel than  Losing Battles... - [Eudora] Yes, very different.

In fact, I still think of it as a long story, 'cause it almost does run straight through in a... - [Tom] You mean  The   Optimist's Daughter.

It does indeed, and of course it appeared as we said earlier, in one issue... - In one issue... - [Tom] Of the magazine.

- I wrote it the way I write a short story.

- [Tom] But I think the question that had occurred to me, when you are in the process of working on one book, like  One   Writer's Beginnings, which you have been working on for some time now, while you are working on that, do ideas occur to you that have no place in the book you are currently working on, and you make a note and set them aside, and think, I'll write this later?

- You're perfectly right.

But I don't know if it would happen in the case of a story.

Fiction is my natural form.

It kept trying to push through this piece of non-fiction I was doing, but had it been a story, I don't think another story could have pushed in.

- [Tom] I see.

- I don't know, but I've never had that happen, that one story pushed in on another one that I can think of.

- [Tom] Well then even though you say you don't feel compelled to write every day, you do seem to have a kind of motivating directness.

You want to move forward within one story.

- I do, I do.

And it does stay with you all the time you're not writing, in all kinds of things.

When you're going to the Jitney 14, and parks, you see somebody walking across the parking lot, a stranger, probably, or maybe not, and you think that's the walk my character has.

Now what does it look like?

(Tom laughs) You know it's always with you.

Everything refers to what you're writing.

And that's fun, that's... - Here is a question that I think will be of interest to the audience.

Are there any characters in your stories or in your novels that you consider have characteristics of your own?

That you think of as yourself?

- Maybe, well probably they have mental or imaginations like mine.

I think I often do have a character that stands for the person who wants to investigate something or to learn about it, experience.

That would probably speak to my wish to understand experience, but I'm not writing as me, a person would answer to my description of anything.

A point of view, I guess you could say, would be mine, but not as a character.

I may be there, but in very many disguises, or I may be there as six or eight characters all divided up.

- There had to be influences that you have derived from living and growing up in Mississippi.

- It was valuable to me, because I never had to question anything.

I never had to go out and do some research on what people would be wearing to go to, in a town this size doing things.

I grew up with it.

I didn't have to ask myself anything.

I knew.

I grew up with an encyclopedic knowledge of the kind of society this is, and so I could draw on it, and I knew it.

That's why I used it.

And I think that's invaluable, where you don't have to worry to get things right.

You know how people talk, and you know their meanings.

You know what they are saying, and what is behind what they're saying.

"Stella-Rondo is exactly "12 months to the day younger than I am, "and for that reason, she's spoiled.

"She's always had anything in the world "she wanted, and then she'd throw it away.

"Papa-Daddy gave her "this gorgeous Add-a-Pearl necklace "when she was eight years old.

"She threw it away playing baseball "when she was nine, with only two pearls.

"So as soon as she got married "and moved away from home, "the first thing she did was separate!

"From Mr. Whitaker!

"This photographer with the popeyes "she said she trusted.

"Came home from one of those towns "up in Illinois, and to our complete surprise "brought this child of two.

"Mama said she liked to made her "drop dead for a second.

"'Here you had this marvelous blonde child "and never so much as wrote "your mother a word about it,' says Mama.

"'I'm thoroughly ashamed of you,' "but of course she wasn't.

"Stella-Rondo just calmly takes off this hat, "I wish you could see it.

"She says, 'Why, Mama, Shirley-T.'s adopted, "I can prove it.'

"'How?'

says Mama, but all I says was, 'H'm!'

"There I was over the hot stove "trying to stretch two chickens "over five people "and a completely unexpected child "into the bargain, without a moment's notice.

"'What do you mean, "H'm!"?

says Stella-Rondo, "and Mama says, 'I heard that, Sister.'

"I said that oh, I didn't mean a thing, "only that whoever Shirley-T. was, "she was the spit-image of Papa-Daddy "if he'd cut off his beard, "which of course he'd never do in the world.

"Papa-Daddy's Mama's papa and sulks.

"Stella-Rondo got furious.

"She said, 'Sister, I don't need to tell you "you got a lot of nerve and always did have "and I'll thank you to make no future reference "to my adopted child whatsoever.'

"'Very well,' I said.

"'Very well, very well.

"Of course I noticed at once "she looks like Mr. Whitaker's side too.

"That frown.

"She looks like a cross "between Mr. Whitaker and Papa-Daddy.'

"'Well all I can say is she isn't.'

"'She looks exactly like Shirley Temple to me,' "says Mama, "but Shirley-T. just ran away from her.

"So the first thing Stella-Rondo did "at the table was turn Papa-Daddy against me.

"'Papa-Daddy,' she says.

"He was trying to cut up his meat.

"'Papa-Daddy!'

"I was taken completely by surprise.

"Papa-Daddy is about a million years old "and's got this long-long beard.

"'Papa-Daddy, Sister says she fails to understand "why you don't cut off your beard.'

"So Papa-Daddy l-a-y-s down his knife and fork!

"He's real rich.

"Mama says he is, he says he isn't.

"So he says, 'Have I heard correctly?

"You don't understand "why I don't cut off my beard?'

"'Why,' I says, 'Papa-Daddy, "of course I understand.

"I did not say any such thing, the idea!'

"He says, 'Hussy!'

"I says, 'You know I wouldn't any more "want you to cut off your beard "than the man in the moon.

"It was the farthest thing from my mind!

"Stella-Rondo sat there and made that up "while she was eating breast of chicken.'

"But he says, 'So the postmistress "fails to understand "why I don't cut off my beard.

"Which job I got you through my influence "with the government.

"'Bird's nest'- is that what you call it?'

"Not that it isn't the next to smallest P.O.

"in the entire state of Mississippi.

"I says, 'Oh, Papa-Daddy,' I says, "'I didn't say any such of a thing, "I never dreamed it was a bird's nest.

"I have always been grateful "though this is the next to smallest P.O.

"in the state of Mississippi, "and I do not enjoy being referred to "as a hussy by my own grandfather.'

"But Stella-Rondo says, "'Yes, you did say it too.

"Anybody in the world could have heard you, "that had ears.'"

I learned all these things that later were so valuable to me as a story writer, through just being alive and listening and nothing, the kind of things that are never explained to a person.

You just have to know them, or find 'em out for yourself.

I listened.

I certainly did.

That's where we learn so much.