Even on her deathbed, Eudora Welty was a classic Southern lady. When her doctor asked if he could do anything for her, she replied, “No, but thank you so much for inviting me to the party.” As genteel as she was in life, however, in her short stories Welty created some of the strangest and most perverse characters in American fiction, and her work goes a long way toward defining Southern writing as a realm of the weird. It explores unhappy families, solitary oddballs, religion run amok, and smothering small towns–all with an eye that is affectionate and humorous, but as unforgiving as a photograph. This biography, by Welty scholar Suzanne Marrs, tries to explain how such a nice Southern lady could write such very peculiar things.
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