Wow. That was dark.

So, after I dug myself out of the yard and hosed off, I started reading a collection of Eudora Welty stories I'd gotten months ago.

(I'm also reading an early collection of Kelly Link's, "Stranger Things Happen." I've been having very genteel, very disturbed dreams lately. I'll drone on about Ms. Link, one of my literary heroes, another time. But real quick: go to the Small Beer Press site (http://smallbeerpress.com/books/2001/07/01/stranger-things-happen/), download the collection for free (!) and read "Water Off a Black Dog's Back" first. I get thrills just thinking about it.)

The first Eudora Welty story I read was a few years ago, "A Worn Path." Old Phoenix Jackson trudges along a worn path from country into town on an errand. She encounters obstacles and annoyances and borderline unpleasantness on the way, but taking the journey with her lets us spend a little time getting to know this woman, both from her thoughts and reactions, and from her expectations of others. That kind of steadfast strength and devotion is inspiring, especially considering the effort it takes her. And she never wavers, even when her frailty would make someone less set on the path question her purpose, and even when we wonder toward the end if the purpose for her journey even exists anymore, in a practical sense.

I think a lot of people read the story in school, but I'd never come across it. I'd love to include a link to a video of an interview with Ms. Welty in 1994 about this story--she sounds just like I'd imagined she would--but this site won't display the links I've attached. Harrumph. Here's the address: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2fh37fzsOg.

I just read another of hers, "The Key." A train station full of waiting passengers, everyone keeping to themselves in one way or another. A young man drops a key accidentally, the sounds of which startles everyone. When the key slides up in front of an older, worn man sitting next to his equally weary wife, the story takes on a poignancy difficult to watch.

The thing that jumps out at me about Ms. Welty and other southern writers (the ones whose stuff I've read a little of, anyway--Flannery O'Connor, William Faulkner, Carson McCullers, Harper Lee, Dorothy Allison, Cormac McCarthy) is the ugliness. Beautiful writing, clean and strongly visual. Ugly characters in an unbending world, even when the surface is civil enough and pleasantries are exchanged.

I know everyone probably knows this stuff already, has read the same stories and noticed the same thing. But I like thinking about this contradiction, about how viciousness can be bone deep and not break the skin.

A quick look at the Wikipedia site got me this list of contemporary southern writers:

Among today's prominent southern writers are Tim Gautreaux, William Gay, Padgett Powell, Pat Conroy, Fannie Flagg, Randall Kenan, Ernest Gaines, John Grisham, Mary Hood, Lee Smith, Tom Robbins, Tom Wolfe, Wendell Berry, Cormac McCarthy, Ron Rash, Chris Offutt, Anne Rice, Edward P. Jones, Barbara Kingsolver, Margaret Maron,, R.B. Morris, Anne Tyler, Larry Brown, Allan Gurganus, Clyde Edgerton, Daniel Wallace, Kaye Gibbons, Winston Groom, Lewis Nordan, Richard Ford, Ferrol Sams, Natasha Trethewey, and Olympia Vernon.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_literature)

Do I already have way too many books waiting for me to read them? Yeah. I don't care. I'm piling on.