For a one-of-a-kind perspective on the life of a literary legend, pick up Eudora Welty’s On William Faulkner, an appealing little collection of Welty’s writings on the master of Southern storytelling. The compilation includes photographs, essays, speeches and letters, providing lucid evaluations of the man as well as his work. Welty, who hailed from Jackson, Mississippi, possessed a unique understanding of Faulkner’s fiction, and it shows here in her critiques of classics like Intruder in the Dust and “The Bear.” Other highlights in the volume include a spot-on caricature of the author drawn by Welty herself, and a postcard she received from Faulkner, sent from Hollywood in 1943, complimenting her own fiction (“You are doing very fine. Is there any way that I can help you?”). Although the two were never close, Welty considered herself a “Yoknapatawphanatic” and entertained a reverence for the Nobel laureate, whom she once described as “our greatest living writer.” A must-have for fans of Southern literature, the book represents a rare confluence of two very different authors, both of whom called Mississippi home. Welty and Faulkner it doesn’t get much better than this.
Valiant Women is a vital and engrossing attempt to correct the record and rightfully celebrate the achievements of female veterans of World War II.
