BRIEF MENTIONS MICHAEL KREYLING curately described her preeminence. It is, Eudora Welly's Achievement of in fact, not the name but the position Order which is regrettable, since it places the Baton Rouge: Louisiana State writer and her work in a false light. University Press. Pp. 188. $20.00 For many years, Porter's critics adopted the attitude of knights defending a gallant lady and vying with each other in serving her. Her work was evaluated not with dis­ It has become almost traditional for crit­ crimination, but in terms of exaggerated ics of Eudora Welty to begin by invoking praise. She was compared with Dante (by the name of Katherine Anne Porter and Caroline Gordon), with Milton (by Glen- by citing the mutual admiration of the two way Wescott) and with Melville, Haw­ distinguished writers, as evidenced by the thorne, and Henry James (by Paul series of formal gestures they made to Rosenfeld). Not only was such adulation each other over the years. Porter wrote directed at her fiction, but her ubiquitous the introduction to Welty's first collection presence on the lecture circuit made her of stories. In gratitude Welty dedicated the object of personal devotion. She was her second book to her friend. Later Welty hailed for her wordly wisdom, magna­ wrote an appreciative critical essay on Por­ nimity, and political astuteness and cour­ ter's technique. Its title "The Eye of the age. Story" eventually became the title of Wel­ ty's collection of her essays and reviews. The appearance of Ship of Fools pro­ vided a change in the climate but did not For all that, the private reservations en­ restore perspective since, in literary criti­ tertained by the two writers about each cism as in politics, one kind of extremism other are more interesting than the public breeds anodier. With her production of a pronouncements. The efforts of Welty and best seller—the literary equivalent of mar­ her publisher to extract the introductory rying a shipping magnate—she was cen­ essay to A Curtain of Green and Other Stories sored for her political naïveté, her racism, from the procrastinating Porter were long and misanthropy. The result of bodi the and tortured, and when the essay was done extreme adulation and the extreme hostil­ Welty never quite understood it or figured ity was that fifty years of literary criticism out Porter's readings of her stories, as she failed to provide a clear and dispassionate admitted in an interview with the present view of her work as a whole and to place writer. Porter for her part was a severe it in the larger context of American liter­ critic of Welty, whom she thought an un­ ature. even writer. She disliked The Ponder Heart and deplored what she considered to be The state of Porter's critical affairs is the stylistic extravagances of Delta Wedding highly relevant to the career of Eudora and The Golden Apples. When she read The Welty who has replaced her friend as First Golden Apples she said that her friend was Lady. She is frequendy present on the drunk on language, that her technical vir­ platforms of University lecture halls and tuosity had gone into a dizzy spin and that convocation ceremonies. She is the recipi­ her personal showing off was as shameless ent of many honors and prizes and most as that of a circus performer. recendy of the President's Freedom Medal. Not surprisingly, die review by her friend If, however, their public exchanges of Robert Penn Warren in die New York Times compliments are misleading, there is still Book Review of diree recent books on Welty a usefulness in linking the two names. It carries the title "Under the Spell of Eu­ lies in the lesson to be learned by Welty dora." critics from the history of Porter criticism. Michael Kreyling's Eudora Welty's During her lifetime Porter was often Achievement of Order is one of the three. It described by journalists as "the First Lady is die first critical work to include Welty's of American Letters." While Porter herself later novels, Losing Battles and The Optimist's scorned the phrase for its vulgarity, it ac­ Daughter and it might, dierefore, be ex- Brief Mentions 61 pected to attempt an overall assessment of other in vulgarity, brutishness, and physi­ the subject and ta place the work in some cal ugliness. Repeatedly in Welty's fiction kind of critical context. That it fails to do married pairs and family groups are pre­ so is largely the result of the writer's ex­ sented as antithetical to artistic creation, treme veneration for his subject and his spiritually, and sensitivity. readiness to accept her own critical pre­ cepts at face value. His critical excesses The girl of "A Memory" is also experi­ include the comparison of The Robber encing first love, a non-physical idealized Bridegroom with The Blithedale Romance and attraction for a classmate who is described The Great Gatsby; The Optimist's Daughter as masculine. The climax of the story oc­ with To the Lighthouse; ana the very uneven curs when the classmate starts suddenly to Losing Battles with War and Peace, The Tem­ bleed from the nose. The girl is so shocked pest and the novels of Jane Austen. His by the sight of the blood that she falls into transports recall exactly the outbursts which a dead faint. The story is an account of greeted Porter's Pale Horse, Pale Rider col­ the terrifying threat to a young girl's world lection in 1938. and her values by the approach of mature sexuality, the physical necessities of her In his "Afterword," Kreyling explains own body, and the prospect of becoming Welty's suspicion of certain critical meth­ an adult member of a family group. Porter ods: "Literary analytics/' in her view, is well understood the power of this story not the most advantageous approach for when she described her own personal her reader because it sacrifices the expe­ preference for "this particular kind of story, rience of discovering the 'thing made' to where the external act and the internal the convenience of having it presented by voiceless life of the human imagination a previous reader who has tagged and almost meet and mingle on the mysterious judged each part" (p. 175). Her defensive- threshold between dream and waking, one ness at the prospect of thematic and tech­ reality refusing to admit or confirm the nical analysis is entirely understandable. It existence of the other, yet both conspiring is less understandable that her critic should, toward the same end" (The Collected Essays as Kreyling does, echo her words: "Ana­ and Occasional Writings of Katherine Anne lytical or argumentative criticism—any ap­ Porter [New York: Delacorte Press, 1970], proach that is dogmatic—seems p. 289). inappropriate to her work. It is not that Welty's prose is muddled or murky (the In some of her later novels, like Losing argument that her style is obscure is easily Battles and The Optimist's Daughter, Welty countered), and not that the readers are worked towards a dramatic rather than a muddled and murky either. But the fic­ poetic mode of presenting her theme. tion, taken as individual works or as a These works seem to me less successful corpus, is so integral that taking it piece and less powerful than such richly poetic by piece, moment by moment, cannot du­ treatments as The Golden Apples and Delta plicate the sense of wholeness one contin­ Wedding. It is, however, difficult to assess ues to enjoy in reading it" (p. XV). Losing Battles which is a potentially fine novel badly in need of editorial pruning. For a writer as allusive and indirect as Welty, it is particularly important to iden­ The point to be made is that while tify the recurrent themes that inform all Kreyling's book contains a great deal of her work. It seems to me that analysis indubitably useful material, particularly in might well begin with "A Memory" (1937), his explanations of the mythic patterns in a short story which encapsulates the cen­ Welty's work, it suffers from his disincli­ tral theme that appears later in more com­ nation to take a firm grasp of her main plex ways, and which thus stands in the themes. Related to this is his unwillingness same relationship to Welty's entire oeuvre to discuss the weaknesses as well as the as does "Ethan Brand" to Hawthorne's, strengths of Welty's art. Certainly Welty's "Theft" to Katherine Anne Porter's, and work is technically brilliant, beautifully po­ "A Clean Well-Lighted Place" to Heming­ etic, and charming. But does she ever, one way's. wonders, get beyond presenting a series of adolescents looking in disgust at the adult In "A Memory," the field marks are world. Is her ability to create a fairy-tale clearly set out, the polarities of Welty's world not simply at the Service of present­ world fixed. On the one hand is the soli­ ing a sort of Child's Christmas in Missis­ tary girl who is an artist of sorts. On the sippi? These are the kinds of critical other is a family whose members rival each problems that Katherine Anne Porter, for 62 The Intemational Fiction Review, 9, No. 1 (1982) example, was aware of and Kreyling's fail­ Tayama inaugurated that trend in 1907 ure to engage himself in a rigorously crit­ with Futon ("The Quilt")—the story which ical spirit with his subject compromises his brought him lasting success and which ap­ work.