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 actuaos [inaudible conversations] one day i asked myself how did they get here in the first place . How is this possible . To investigate and found the most astonishing thing. To be traced back to three people. One was brandenburg who had spent his life investigating the properties of the human ear steadying frequencies that were inaudible. And he came up with the md three encoder to shrink the compact disc by 90 percent. But he could not monetize the invention and was locked out and in desperation 1995 he posted it as a free public down the road to a his website within a couple of years the pirates got a hold of it he made hundreds of millions of dollars from intellectual property but the of misfortune his fortune was built on the greatest Copyright Infringement the role had ever seen. The second was a powerful of Music Executive at time warner to realize the future of music was a wrap so they started to sign the major labels from the 90s all other famous names from the past and it was very controversial. They buy shares in time warner and sharing up showing a to shareholder meetings but they would read the rap lyrics out loud and needless to say the executive refused to do so then was fired after a couple of months. He dusted himself off and one of the great second acts citing the save rappers once again to corner the market then he signed the largest contract ever seen and made 200 million over the next 10 years but while presiding over an empire in decline because of the third that was the most fascinating of all. A compact disk manufacturing facility worker. He worked a packaging line. Here go through a million desks in a single day. All the music was literally at his fingertips they decide devised a method to smuggle it out he probably got 2,000 out over the course of seven years and would put them to the mp3 and up loaded to this secret site within hours it would be on the peer to peer server and could be found on the lipoid around the globe for a couple of days. Youre not sure where it came from there probably came through his hands. 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