What There Is to Say We Have Said: The Correspondence of Eudora Welty and William Maxwell - Paperback

by Suzanne Marrs (Author)

Eavesdrop on one of the most celebrated literary friendships in American letters

"An epistolary feast for literary fans [and] a confidence booster for aspiring writers everywhere. A-" --Entertainment Weekly

"If friendship is an art, this volume is its masterpiece." --Lee Smith

"A remarkable testimony to friendship, literature, and an abiding love of life." --Richmond Times-Dispatch

What There Is to Say We Have Said bears witness to Welty and Maxwell's more than fifty years of friendship and their lives as writers and readers. It serves as a chronicle of their literary world, their talk of Katherine Anne Porter, Salinger, Dinesen, Updike, Percy, Cheever, and more. Through more than three hundred letters, Marrs brings us the story of a true, deep friendship and an homage to the forgotten art of letter writing.

"A vivid picture of twentieth-century intellectual life and a record of a remarkable friendship... Glorious." --Houston Chronicle

"Full of great tidbits about The New Yorker back in the day ... Charming." --The New Yorker

"These letters evoke a lost world when events moved a bit more slowly, and friends could take the time to be both eloquently witty and generous with each other, and letters were unobtrusively artful about daily life. Welty and Maxwell are like two birds of the same species, calling to each other across the distances." --Charles Baxter

Front Jacket

A complex improvisation, carried on for years, by two artists for whom nothing in the realm of literature or feeling was remote. --Alec Wilkinson For over fifty years, Eudora Welty and William Maxwell, two of our most admired writers, penned letters to each other. They shared their worries about work and family, literary opinions and scuttlebutt, moments of despair and hilarity. Living half a continent apart, they nourished and maintained their friendship through correspondence." What There Is to Say We Have Said "bears witness to Welty and Maxwell's editorial relationships -- both in his capacity as her "New Yorker "editor and in their collegial back and forth on their work. It also serves as a chronicle of the literary world of the time; read talk of James Thurber, William Shawn, Katherine Anne Porter, J. D. Salinger, Isak Dinesen, William Faulkner, John Updike, Virginia Woolf, Walker Percy, Ford Madox Ford, John Cheever, and many more. It is a treasure trove of reading recommendations. Here, Suzanne Marrs -- Welty's biographer and friend -- offers an unprecedented window into two intertwined lives. Through careful collection of more than three hundred letters as well as her own insightful introductions, she has created a record of a remarkable friendship, an illuminating look at artists in community, and a lyrical homage to the forgotten art of letter writing.

Back Jacket

Eavesdrop on one of the most celebrated literary friendships in American letters that of Eudora Welty and William Maxwell
"An epistolary feast for literary fans [and] a confidence booster for aspiring writers everywhere. A " Entertainment Weekly
"If friendship is an art, this volume is its masterpiece." Lee Smith
"A remarkable testimony to friendship, literature, and an abiding love of life." Richmond Times-Dispatch
What There Is to Say We Have Said bears witness to Welty and Maxwell s more than fifty years of friendship and their lives as writers and readers. It serves as a chronicle of their literary world, their talk of Katherine Anne Porter, Salinger, Dinesen, Updike, Percy, Cheever, and more. Through more than three hundred letters, Marrs brings us the story of a true, deep friendship and an homage to the forgotten art of letter writing.
"A vivid picture of twentieth-century intellectual life and a record of a remarkable friendship... Glorious." Houston Chronicle
"Full of great tidbits about The New Yorker back in the day ... Charming." The New Yorker
"These letters evoke a lost world when events moved a bit more slowly, and friends could take the time to be both eloquently witty and generous with each other, and letters were unobtrusively artful about daily life. Welty and Maxwell are like two birds of the same species, calling to each other across the distances." Charles Baxter
SUZANNE MARRS is the author of Eudora Welty: A Biography and One Writer s Imagination: The Fiction of Eudora Welty and is a recipient of the Phoenix Award for Distinguished Welty Scholarship.
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Author Biography

SUZANNE MARRS is the author of Eudora Welty: A Biography and One Writer's Imagination: The Fiction of Eudora Welty and a recipient of the Phoenix Award for Distinguished Welty Scholarship. She is a professor of English at Millsaps College.