There . Guest well, theres always been, as is typical in all families, a sibling competition there. Alice was a very conservative woman, and about 17 years older than her younger sister, and as a result, she saw herself as surrogate parent, and nell was always extroverted and a little bohemian in her opinions and her appearance, and alice, for all of her life, served as the buffer between her younger sister and the world that was hungry to know more about her. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. Now, on your screen, is a live picture of the Old Supreme Court chamber in the Mississippi State capitol. Booktv is in jackson this weekend, covering the first annual mississippi book festival and well be back in just a couple of minutes with more live coverage. [inaudible conversations] one day late in the 2000s i was looking at this library and i asked myself, how did all this music actually get here . How is this actually possible . And i began to investigate this. I found the most astonishing thing. Almost all the files i had could be traced back to just three people. One of the guys was a guy named karl brannenberg, brillianted german inventor and spent his life investigating the properties of the human ear and how to actually delete frequencies that were inautomobile to it, and in this way he came up withsomething we now call the mp3 encoat cher has the able to put the information on a compact disk and shrink it by 90 with very little loss in audio quality. He was totally unable to monetize this invention help ways lock out of the marketplace, and in desperation, in 1995, he post evidence it for free public download to his web site. Within a couple years the pirates got ahold of it and he made hundreds of millions of dollars from intellectual propertylining but the irony is the whole fortune was built on the greatest with a of Copyright Infringement the world has ever seen. The second guy was named doug morris, a powerful Music Executive in the mid90s for time warner, and he started to realize the future of pop music was rap. So he set out to sign all the major labels, tupak shakur, dr. Dre, all the famous names from the past, snoop dogg, and this music was very controversial, bill bennett, who had been reaganings drug czar, didnt like it, and he went after them. They bought shares in time warner and showed up at the shareholder meet examination protestes, demanding that the executives of the company read the rap lyrics aloud. Insideless to say the executives refused to do so, and within a couple of months morris was fired. But he picked himself up and dust evidence himself off and began one the great second acts of the American Music business, signing the same rappers again and cornering the market in 2000 he signed the largest Recording Industry contract anyone had said and made over 2 million him was preside over an empire in decline because of a third guy, the most fascinating guy. Del glover, compact disk manufacturing facility worker at the Kings Mountain plan here in north carolina. He worked the packaging line so all of the desks would come in a virgin state past him every day. The plant put out about a million discs in a single day. And because of all of universals best signings that were happening all of the music walt at his fingertips. He devised a method to smuggle it out, and through a cabal of similar leakers he joined online, scott probably 2,000 disks out of the plant over seven years, rich ripped them to mp3 and and within hours music would be found and could be found on ipods round the globe billion within a couple days. So if you had music one your hard drive and werent sure where it came from, probably literally came through this guys hands. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. More live coverage. This is a panel of authors talking about the life and career of novelist, essayist and photographer, and native daughter of jackson, eudora welty. Booktvs live coverage on cspan. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We again would like to welcome you to the mississippi book festival and you are here in the eudora welty letters, flowers, love, and the latest Scholarship Panel sport by the mississippi arts commission. Were live on booktv so we ask everyone to please silence your cell phones at this moment. If you have your cell please silence it. We remind you that we will allow questions and an answer period. You will come to the microphone once our moderator gets to that point and youll stand here at the lectern. Our moderator for this panel is Peggy Whitman prenshaw, the Milsaps College humanity scholar in residence and the retired chair of southern studies at lsu a mississippi graduate and a ph. D recipient from the university of texas. She is an author. Ladies and gentlemen, Peggy Whitman prenshaw, moderator. Thank you so much. [applause] thank you. Im so pleased to be part of this celebration of books. It is an opening adventure for us in mississippi, and we are delighted to see the good turnout. Our recent books we will be discussing cover a wide range of subjects. As you heard, our title is letters, flowers, love, of welty, and current literary scholarship. Let me introduce you to our panelists who will speak briefly about their books, and then well have some time for questions. If you would, just hold applause until i have introduced all of them, and then we will be happy to celebrate their being here. Meanwhile there are letters, the corporations is coedited by Suzanne Marrs and tom nolan. Suzanne is the Welty Foundation scholar in residence at millsaps college, and tom nolan is a wide by published free lance writer, professor marrs is the author of one writers imagination, the fiction of eudora welty. Also written the major biography of welty, and she has edited an earlier collection of letters entitled what there is to say we have said. The correspond of welty and william maxwell. Tom nolan has written for many magazines including Rolling Stone and plow shares and has reviewed crime fiction for the wall street journal. His 1999 book, ross macdonald, biography, won aired. His reece boon is arty shaw, king of the clarinet. Julia ikeingberger is the professor of literature at the college of charleston. She is the author of profits of recognition, ideology, and the individual in novels by ralph ellisson, tony morris morrison, her most recent book, published by the University Press of mississippi is an edition of weltys letters during the years 1940 to 49 in which the author writes blood gardening. The book is entitled tell about night flowers. Sally wolff king has taught literary classes for over 30 years and at present teaches courses a companies, literature and medicine at the emory school of medicine. She has pushed five book publish evidence five published five books. Her recent book, this current book, which she will discuss today, and i should say is informed by a very long friendship with eudora welty, is entitled a dark rose love in Eudora Weltys stories and novels. And so lets begin. Suzanne and tom, kick it off for us. All right. Well, in 1970, ross macdonald, whose real name was kenneth mill ar, initiateed a correspondence with eudora welty, she was a serious writer who claimed a Pulitzer Prize for the on to mists daughter would exchange over 345 letters in the next 13 years. Our book meanwhile there are letters is a collection of this correspondence and here are some things you can expect to find. Their first thing youll find in the pains of our book is some outstanding writing from welty and macdonald. Though the letters were often spontaneously written, they were written by prose masters and this massery is evidence. In weltys letters youll discover a wry wit at work. On un3, 197 un3, 1971, yet told millar of a bus trip she took from new york city to ohio on what was called a luxury special. Here are her words i could hardly believe my eyes when the spread a red carped over the asphalted at the Port Authority bus terminal on eighth avenue for us to walk over. And when we were welcomed aboard by hostess wearing a red cape and a hill box hat she looked like some little roxie usherette, summoned back from movie land. Two weeks later she described the purpose of the bus journey. She was receiving an Honorary Degree from denison college. At dennison they had graduation in a stadium, and a dog came along to the platform when the got their diplomas, a nice dog. Came more than once itch think he got four degrees. One in music. Here in the State Capitol i cant resist one more example. This is an example, has a political nature, dates from september 1973 when welty was in washington on official business. Oh, god. I had to meet president nixon. We, the council on the arts, were all taken over to the oval office, in the rain, and made to go in a line to shake hands with him. I felt a bad hypocrite to touch him. I, who had never missed a session of watergate. We were given souvenirs from trays as we went out, pins, nixons signature on same, and a pen with the president ial seal on it, and cuff linkses with seal. Theyd been loading down my suitcase. In the oval office, there was a perfectly smooth bare desk and on a little table beside it a tape recorder. Yes, there was. [laughter] nobody was given that souvenir. Kens letterses were chartiized less by humor than an elegant flare for metaphor. His if you had hardened your prose any longer in the smithies of your wrath you might have destroyed him complete live with its vibration. His response to having eudoras book the eye of the temperature dedicated to him, the gift you proposed to give me is the kind of thing that might happen once in a lifetime if a man is lucky, like being knighted by a queen. Not with a sword but with a human hand, and caused him every time he thinks of it to laugh with pleasure. Love and friend children surely the best thing in life and may it seems to me now persist beyond life as we want them, to like the light of a star, so immeasurably distant that it cant be dated and questions of past and future are irrelevant. She would wrestle her long time agent, never saw mere pure or direct light in a man. With n addition to being beautifully written the letters tell the story of the gradual yet devastating course of alzheimers disease, devastating to ken millar, who was stricken, and to our dough a welty who tried to assist him in his ordeal. This letter ken to miss welty in august of 1976. Dear eudora. I wouldnt have written you about my memory problem if i hadnt known that you would in any case notice the difference with words and concern. But im glad i did write you. Part of the problem is the sense of isolation, cause or result. A sense which simply evaporates when im in contact with you. Your letters were so beautiful in their feeling and understanding, and your dream about dreaming a dream for me, so super naturally right, that i think there is no end to your loving intelligence, your intelligent love. I think the memory is not a separate faculty but some which the mind is meant to do. Variation and warmth, which sustains a Movement Like the gulf streams in its ocean. There is more warmth there now than there was, thanks to you, and less anxiety now that i have spoken not only to you but the psychologist who tested me and found me mentally normal in most respects, and milos of memory within the normal range. Im not a really grieving, you know. Nor have i any intention of not working. In fact i have been working, though, not yet on finished writing. I count my blessings, too. When my father was 60, he could neither talk nor work, but he could still write a little, and did. Eudoras response. Dear ken. Im glad you found you could write to me about it. Its so understandable that the sense of isolation would come with the memory problem, cause or result, would have been the worst of it. Your letter moved me so. I wanted to help as i always would, and your beautiful letter made me feel today that i had. You put yourself in my place even in your trouble, and knew this would comfort me, too. It was a letter full of such giving, of belief and trust in the feeling out of which id written to you. You made me feel i had made something easier. The thing is you do feel better now, and of course youre working. How could you not be writing . As you well know, and have shown in the memory, nothing is really lost. Its there somewhere, and that is so in just the common memory, not yours, which is not in any way at all common. As time gives its chance and your writing does what your writing can do, i believe your whole memory in all its phase is will light up for you when you wish it, as bright and endless as that other stream, the milky way. We are in that too. But nearer than that. I am taking both your hands to tell you, never feel isolated anymore. Passages like these suggest that you will encounter a love story in the course of reading meanwhile there are letters, and you will, though not a conventional one and not the story of a love affair. Kenneth millar was a married man who honored the institution of marriage, and he lived in Santa Barbara, california, while she called jackson, mississippi home. They were only in each others presence on sex separate occasions 0 six separate occasions of a week or so each. Nevertheless they loved each other with the love that transcended friendship. Witness these lines our dora to ken theres no friend for whose welfare, past, present, and future, i care more for whose dear life. Ken, january of 77 i cant tell you what a joy it was to feel that i live constantly in your world as you live in mine. Then in april 78 he reiterate it this thought your spirit lives in my mind and watches my life as i watch yours. Eudora responded in kind you live in my mind in the same way as i do in yours. Then later in 78 came this particularly memorable exchange. Dear udoor arrest shouldnt have written you when i was feeling depressed but i did so anyway. Perhaps in the thought i would sooner be known truly than favorably. But im afraid with the effect of depressing you. Im feeling much better for reasons that seem as obscure as the causes of depression. You did spell out one danger in my life, i hope not in yours, that one can be used up in the service of pain and trouble, not ones own. Well, im not used up. I hope i was able to lean on your strength without abating it and on your knowledge of trouble and its meanings, without deepening your own troubles. The best thing that can happen to man is to be known, and by a woman of your great kindness and light and depth. I think you read the situation and showed me a step towards change. Well, i seem to be looking forward rather happily to the future, and perhaps i shall learn to keep still when i stumble and bump myself. Love, ken. September 23, 1978. Dear ken we do want to be known truly, and i want to know truly. Im so glad that you feel you can lean on me. It is part of trusting. You mustnt worry or imagine that anybody but good could happen to me from our knowing each other, truly. The dark times as well as the bright. For you know also i do there is nothing destructive in it, only everything that moves the other way. Depressed or happy and serene, our spirits have traveled very near to each other, and i believe sustained each other. This will go on, dear ken. Our friendship blesses my life, and i wish life could be longer for it. Much love, yours, eudora. As you can see the correspondence between eudora welt and Ross Mcdonald tells a compelling story not only of separateness and loss but also of love and joy and the confluence of two remarkable lives. We were privileged to collect and an know tate these letters and were disease lighted they will now reach a large delighted they will now reach a large readership. Thank you. [applause] thank you. I was also very privileged to create a book from letters that welty sent to two Close Friends in the 1940s. These letters show us something of the real eudora welty, disdistinct from the popular conception of miss welty, a genteel spinster, writing in the upstairs bedroom of her parents comfortable home. Attentive readers have always known this to be an incomplete picture of the writer and her art. Newly published correspondence is adding to our shared understanding of weltys life and artistic development. She wrote hundreds of letters to her russell, her late rare a little and friend, and John Robinson wimp she was romantically involved. They shared her love of gardening. When writing to them, welty reports regularly on the garden she and her mother maintained. But theres more than gardening information in these letters. Her discussion of watering her garden in 1941, for example, is particularly poetic. She writes every evening, when the sun is going down, and it is cool enough to water the garden, and it is all quiet except for the locusts and great waves of sound, and i stand still in one place for a long time, putting water on the plants, i feel something new. That is all i can say. As if my will went out of me, as if i had a stubbornness and it was melting. I feel without ceasing every change in the garden itself. The changes of light as the atmosphere grows darker and the springing up of the wind and the rhythm of the locusts and the colors of certain flowers that become very moving. They all seem to be a part of some happiness or unhappiness, and unhappiness that something is lost or left unknown or undone perhaps, and no longer simple in their own beautiful but outward way. I suppose there is a great deal of feeling in the world now. And some of it is in my garden. In many letters you can follow weltys mind as she improvises, laughs at herself, and clearly enjoys telling a good story. So in this one im going read, she is responding to russell, who told her that a publisher, double day, was interested in her writing to them about a book she might create of short stories that were all set in the naches trace. She writes such fine news has me terribly excited and i hope i wrote the proper letter. They dont want it i will still do and it maybe you can sell it to somebody else. No use trying to sell some that wouldnt be good enough not to be written no matter what. Thats such a bad sentence i will stop. Good luck and let me hear. Its just like spring here and all the bubble bulbs in the gardennen up 12inches and then switches to the subject of a guard teen ya plant she sent to russell he placed it in his kitchen where he said he hoped wide be nourished by the smell of cooking. So she said to him, my gar deep ya gardenia is stubborn, today, the other night a lady was sitting next to an what ross coughing and she said, have cough drop, he ate one and stopped coughing. When she got home she found hour cough drop package intact and one that was opened containedded vitamin b1 tablets for plants0. Cower course he was a stranger and she never heard whether he died. Bloomed somewhere, or what. But one thing is sure next coughed a single time after anymore than a plant in a pot. Her doctor was very learned and said it would all be perfectly all right. These letters are also wonderful for the way they chart weltys writing life during the 1940s, one of her most productive decade. Gardening is sometimes a coded language for weltys artistic development, when she is talking about stories that she is writing or revising, welty sometimes speaks in horticultural terms. The she wrote to russell i feel ive let younap story and the little gar deany which will not bloom. I asked the old man that runs the greenhouse and she said, wait, wait, i knew that, but it was supposed to bloom in winter. I may yet. In fact the gardenia did finally bloom, and russell did find a National Publisher for weltys fiction, and this is a story that michael tells very well in his book, author and agent. Weltys letters included accounts of their gardening and love of travel and amazing accounts of dreams she had about flowers, and comments on her fiction, and as she grew as an artist, wentys stories took her longer and longer to complete and they developed in ways that surprised the writer herself. In this way, being a writer, for welty was similar to being a garden. Her duty was to allow the plant or the story to unfold and become itself. Rather than attempting to control the thing that was growing before her eyes. The gardner and the writer helped it long, waiting to see what it will turn into. The other story in this book is of a relationship with John Robinson, who was overseas serving in world war ii when maintain of the letters were written. Weltys letters to him often presented gardens and nature as an antidote to destructive novembers war and as an emblem of the future she hoped to share with robinson when he returned. One letter chev wrote him sitting in the garden in october of 1944, said john, take care. You have to be all right. Thats all i know. But i wish you were here on this day, so hard. Smelling the sweet air right here in deep breaths and your eyes on the camellias doing so well. By spring of 1945 he wary europe was ending and welty wrote to robinson expressing her hopes for peats for the world and for him. Yesterday when i was writing to you in the park a weed in the grass was so shining and tall and green and blowing there in the wind, dancing, it looked beautiful to me, and tears came in my eyes, and last night i dreamed it was on your hill where you could see it. I didnt dream you did, just hoped still. Only many it was repeated all along the hill, blowing and bending freely the same, the same beautiful thing, again and again. Following the war, Robinson Welty did not exactly live happily ever after, they did remain friends. At first the problem seemed to be that robinson was recovering from his wartime experiences. He was often on the move, living primarily on the west coast, and weltys letters to him suggest that she was trying to connect herself through the letters and also through super charged moments communing with nature. This is a letter from november 1946 the most beautiful night sky. Weltys work at that time and later i discovered that he had been teaching her work at least the middle 1960s. He also introduced ms. Weltys work to william b dilling hamm who also is my mentor and he is at emory. He taught along with partner and other authors in 19th century for 40 years. So in this situation i came to read and understand miss weltys work and i was captivated by it and so i chose to write my phd thesis about her work. She came to university to receive an Honorary Degree in 1982, theres a lovely photograph in the book of her in her academic robe at emory. I was in the audience and observed her getting the degree. There is a faculty party at watkins home that night and i was invited and faculty members were swirling around miss welty, as you you can imagine many of them were talking to her that i found one minute when no one was speaking with her, i went up to her to say hello. She graciously smiled and invited me to sit beside her on the couch. That is when i met her for the first time, that night i asked her what her favorite southern name was and it took me a while to memorize this but your ego. Ruby fisher valentine. And the last name is floyd. Miss welty did use part of that name, ruby fisher and one of her stories. I was so charmed by that response and i asked her for another favorite southern name and this time she said elder brother come to tell you all your friends are dead and gone. The first maybe you think its funny but the more you think about it its not funny. So she gave me and i asked what that name commemorated and she said someone she knew was actually told that after the civil war. That all of his friends were dead and gone. So both of those names are very important, they do different thing, one is, you can make the slap that we enjoy it, the other is serious and commemorates a serious occasion. Both of those speak to the southern tension for naming. So i asked miss welty for an interview, i had questions and i was writing my dissertation about her and i wanted to know more. She said to give her a call, so i did that and i asked if i could come to jackson to meet with her. She said i hope they will be another occasion. And so it sounded great, it was beautiful, i hope they will be another occasion, it was charming, it was gracious, it was cordial but it was, no. So i give that to you as a gift in honor of miss welty. Its the perfect steel magnolia, no. So i had to wait a good while for that other occasion to arrive, and i did have a little help from doctor johnstone who was an emory cardiologist and poet. He wrote a letter to miss patty car black and asked her to help facilitate my first meeting in jackson with miss welty. So that did occur and we began a friendship that lasted until her death. So the book is a combination of my reflections of mine have a known miss welty and also some thoughts of her work over time. I know her mother was a rose grower and she was a rose grower, my mother is a rose grower, so i began to think about the commonality there and when i would leave to come here from my home in arkansas my mother would cut a big bouquet of fresh roses out of her own rose garden to send here with me on my trip to visit miss welty. I would present them and miss welty would break out into a beautiful smile. There is a picture in our book of the three of us, my mother, miss welty, and me. So we are connected partly by the rose growing tradition, miss welty did write about roses a lot. I figured out at some point there is a rose in a lot of the stories, not every story, but a lot of them. I started i started to look at the rose as an image to try to figure out what it meant to her and the title, a dark rose is that my thinking about her personality, the dichotomy of her personality, which included there was a light, fun, comic quality to her fictional voice but also by contrast a haunting, tragic, and sad, and somber one too. So i think the dark rose is a complex image that represents the author. I took a look at how miss welty pretrade herself in her stories and i believe she did that on a few occasions, so i commented on that to, i hope youll take a look at the book at some point. Thank you. [applause]. Dont we all wish we could write letters like that . We do have some time for questions from the audience, if you make your way to the podium i think we could take them. In the meantime im really interested in how the department of archives and history came into possession of so many of the welty letters and are they to be digitized . You have had whats your view . Eudora welty saved her letters that she received, she received them in very good order and nice little filing boxes and so there are a lot of letters she received that she preserved and gave to the department of archives and history. Many of her friends put stipulations in their wills that when they died, their letters to eudora would come back to her. So she had the letters from Dermot Russell, and her letters to Dermot Russell both in her possession. She had the letters that kid miller had center and the letter she had sent to him because those were returned to him. She didnt not make copies of those she gave them all to the department of archives and history. In fact, when michael grayling came and wanted to work on his book of the author and agents about Dermot Russell, eudora brought all of the original letters down in a garbage bag and sent them home with him. And he said he checked that bag. Thats why were so fortunate in the archives to have this rich treasure trove of materials. Im looking out there we are going to digitize these are we not . This is where scale he said special collection, eventually. Ideally if someone wants to make a grant to the department of archives and history we could get started right quick. Questions. Yes please come forward, yes right there. This question is for whoever wants to answer it. People dont really write letters anymore, i was wondering how you felt about social media, do you feel like the same communication is just happening in a different way or do you feel like we have lost a valuable valuable artform . I think we have lost something, i do think its important to remember that letters is what there was for welty especially in the early part of her life. The telephone was very expensive, people might send telegrams more often than they would talk on the phone. So this was all of her expressions for a friend would be poured out into think she would mail and as a result there some wonderful letters, many wonderful letters. I think because we dont have to do that anymore, that expression go somewhere, in some ways there may be more of it because you can send someone a picture, you can send someone a recording, but it is similar by comparison. I dont know how we are going to track the lives of artists who are living today and who are communicating in that way, what you think suzanne question mark. Some people are saving their emails and selling them. I wish some have not saved emails. When i can say i dont think anyone would have ever wanted my emails. To me email email is just an efficient way of conveying a little bit of information, i dont dont spend a lot of time worrying about the beauty of the written word. It does seem that welty cannot help herself when she sat down to the typewriter to this sheet of paper and was addressing a particular friend. She really could not refrain from a lovely little present for that present for that person. Thats part of what writing a letter did mean to all of us when we had only letters, you are sending a little greeting, little bit, little bit of your love, a little bit of your life to that person and she did that perhaps better than anyone, i think. I. I dont think she could refrain from doing that in person. Thats what i heard yes. Its a beautifully formed and wonderfully expressive, and the same as ken Miller Mcdonald he was silent a lot but when he did week it wasnt beautifully composed raises that some people found a little daunting that they couldnt match that. And i like looking at her handwriting and of course we would not have that if she communicated only by email. I like looking at her type letters personally. I do think theyve all become rather experts. We heard earlier about harper lee how much more we would know if there had been letters there. It is a great gift for this writer who is so accomplished in her fiction, has also this wonderful legacy to leave us in these personal expressions is so much more reliable as a package into the personality and the character of the person then interviews. Ive had some experience with interviews and what many people dont think about is they dont think an interview is that such a rack of expression. These are often heavily edited, they are put together in various segments , often rewritten after the fact sometimes by the author who is being interviewed and required that kind of second going over. Its the letters, i think think that are the most i direct. Other questions from the audience . Some of you may know that welty was not from a family located in mississippi, her parents were both from outofstate, and so on like many who had extended family nearby, her family, larger family was available again through letters. What do we know about weltys sense of it, that being something of an outsider, maybe not, but her connection with a larger family and her sense of what family is. I think she did have a really strong sense of family with friends here in town. With friends like charlotte capers, and morrison, patti patty black, jane reed petty who saw her all the time and who are family really in that sense. I even think of myself as a part of that extended family, but we are going to have some actual family letters. Will i wondered about those. That will be in 2021 and theyll be open then they have been sealed for 20 years after eudoras death. Yes im looking for to those very much, i think you are right peggy, weltys parents and her own particular family upbringing gave her sense of being connected to a wider world and i think her parents both saw that with her own personality and the fact that heres little eudora growing up, very far from both her parents families so the world is bigger to her because of that. I think that added to her perspective from a very young age. She made these trips to west virginia, and to ohio, those were journeys that were adventures and she wrote about them. We have a question. I know there are some wonderful stories of how these sister letters were found, maybe you will share a few of those with us, the ones about John Robertson letters and Kenneth Millers letters in this swim house, or the pool house question mark. My understanding of the robinson letters was that they were in a trunk under the Robertson Family home where they are moving out of that home, i believe. In any case, he had left them at home in a trunk and his nephew Michael Robinson brought them over to welty also in a garbage bag. I think they came together, john and michael the letters belong. Yet theyre very interested that welty get get the letters back, clearly he was all over the world as you can see in these letters and he kept them very clearly. I think time to tell the story of these letters to miller. Well the Santa Barbara book man had purchased all of mcdonalds papers after his death from his wife margaret, he had accumulated everything he had found and ken was one of those people who saved everything and every scrap of paper just had a word on it he would save it. It was preserved and eventually found its way into his archive which ralph was accumulating. He had everything he thought that ken possessed and that manner of papers was pretty massive. The house was sold, maggie moved out to a place of her own, ralph happened to be driving by and the house was about to be occupied by new people and he saw some workmen out by this little pool shed, by the pool, just a little shack and they were about to tear down. He thought g, maybe i should look in there, sos he did and he went in and he found all these letters from eudora welty wrapped in a ribbon i think, they were cap separately there, save perhaps away from prying eyes. But somehow someone put them there. Ralph took those, discovered what they were and return them to miss welty. It was a really nice thing to do, he came to your door and said i found these letters, what shall i do with them question mark and she said i would really like to have them back. He brought them back, she almost destroyed a number of her own letters, thats the other interesting thing that in her lifetime she wouldve been a little horrified that people were reading these letters that she consider private letters. In fact wasnt it the dormant russell correspondence that she was considered destroying it she spoke to reynolds and to kenneth and also advised her please do not does roi them. Even though their privates you now they could be of great value at some point and please just keep them. And she did destroyed john robbins lawyer letters. And then i think she was considering when Dermot Russell brought her the whole correspondence she thought maybe i dont want anybody else to read these. They also can finster not to destroy the letter sheiks change with Kenneth Miller. Ironically eudora was a great reader reader of letters, she loved reading letters. When she and ron sharp put together the norton book of friendship they included letters, she said the letter is a way of being admitted into someones friendship. When you read those letters, you feel admitted into their friendship. I think thats what happens when you read the letters we have collected. You feel invited into that friendship. She changed, i think her view that personal exposure as she grew older, perhaps perhaps with the council of friends like miller and price. I remember she was so resisted of the idea of a biography, suzanne t remember . But i think she came to understand that it was not any sort of showing off or inappropriate exposure of these emotion. It was a record of a well lived life, a full life and so were really grateful to have such additional legacy of beautiful writing to accompany the stories and the novels that eudora welty has given us. We have this now and others to come that will be revealed and opened as they are dated to do so. It enlivens the legacy of writers from the south, from mississippi, to have these ongoing expressions from welty of how she was living this adventurous life. It was not a sheltered life as she said, it was instead a quite adventurous life. It enriches the lives of those who are privileged to read them, like any other work of art they are like poetry. Yes, yes, this question are letters literature . These are. Its also been a subject in our book that eudora welty and Kenneth Miller talk about a lot is the mystery story in literature and tom might like to address this but of course ross make donald and Kenneth Millers felt very strongly that the mystery deserved its readers, its significance and eudora welty felt the same way. She felt the mystery writer was the master of plot and that any writer could learn from the mystery writer and she felt that Kenneth Miller transcended the limits of what might have been seen as the limits of his genre and his work should be taken quite tersely. His goal, he wanted to fulfill the genre rather than transcendent, he wanted to bring detective novel back into the mainstream from which it had sprung. With people like dickens, and collins, and faulkner, who all showed what could be done with this genre by people who had enormous talents. Miss welty who some short stories what reprinted in mystery magazines and anthologies of literate mysteries. So they are on the same page. I think after ken miller died, Eudora Weltys attempts at fiction work were akin to writing mystery. Were privileged to have an unfinished story that she worked on for years attempting to deal with her relationship with can in fictional form and his illness. Even though it is unfinished, it is a beautiful thing to read, passages that will tear your heart out really and make your jaw dropped and tears come to your eyes. Would you say little bit more about their love relationship . People are asking . I would say they had a beautiful, elegant, transcendent, plutonic, loving relationship. As far as we are concerned and we are considered the opinion of their biographers, it was an expression of love, very lyrical expression of love onto nightly they love each other. They told each other in so many words, she told people, he told people, even though no doubt it did not take a physical form as it were, it is love nonetheless. We would all be privileged to receive such love. It is a great love story, wonderful love story and you must read it and enjoy the letters and the discussion that we have had. Thank you all so very much. [applause]