[MUSIC] Eudora Welty had no dearer friend and older friend, than Cleoth Brooks. A literary critic who was one of the first to write about William Faulkner. Cleanth and his dear friend Robert Penn Warren co-founded The Southern Review at Louisiana State University, and they were the first to publish short stories by Eudora Welty, five or six. And from that time on, Eudora and Cleanth were dear, dear friends. Cleanth and Eudora spoke together about the nature of southern writing, and why some writers really don't need to study in a literary. Write in class. They simply need to write day after day, hour after hour, and stick to their craft. They also talk about Southern literature and the power of it, but what we see most poignantly here. Is a deep respect and affection, between two life-long friends who were wedded through their mutual love of literature. >> I keep forgetting how old I am but I had, I've had some students ask me. Somebody said, Ms. Welty, do you always write stories about olden times? [LAUGH]. >> And I said, well, the stories you're talking about, I wrote, you know, back in the forties, or something. That's because I was writing when those things were happening. [LAUGH]. >> I wasn't writing about mysterious hidden past. It was the present when I was writing about it. And so, it was real, and belonged in the story. And now, the present. Reflects other things, >> Sure. >> but that's what happens in the world and the time and you have to reflect that too. >> Sure. Yeah. >> I, I do think that it's important to, understand the reality, >> Yeah. >> but not to >> Yeah. >> obliterate >> Sure. >> what's gone before. In the interest of saying that nothing is real but the present. I don't know what you think about this, Cleanth, maybe it's not, maybe it doesn't bother other people the way it does me, but one of the things in modern short stories that I read, is an inability to get out of the present tense of the first person. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. >> And to me that is a very, it's a symptom of what we've been talking about. >> That's a very shrewd insight. A very shrewd observation. Put it me expand it just a minute. The whole touch the whole pressure of the modern literature. Is toward the lyric, the I, the person. The epic, you dealt with a national hero. The drama, you're putting yourself into letting those characters speak for themselves out of the situation. But if you're really obsessed with yourself, and just yourself. It's all lyrics. It's what I feel. It's what I want to confess. It's what I think. Well, obviously, there is a great lyric poetry, if we want it. >> Hm. >> But if you tried to turn drama, epic, realism, everything into lyric, not what reality is but what I make of reality. The way it seems to me, confessional poetry by the yard and endless free verse. I think it gets awfully boring for one thing. [INAUDIBLE] >> It sure does. And also I think it's a trap. >> It is a trap. >> It's a trap for the for a talent. >> I'm just speaking now as a reader of what I see published. I think they were just two things that happened at the same time independently of each other because I think visually. But I wasn't helped in my writing by what I took a photograph of, but I think the same thing that made me put it in my story made me photograph something. I mean, both times I was appreciating what was out there. >> Do you remember the first letter you wrote to us in the Southern Review? >> I ought to. >> Well, I remember it very well. I submitted this story which was awfully good, and in which you made the point that you've almost equally interested and maybe said equally interested in photography. You didn't really know which you wanted to do. >> I can tell you why I did that. >> Why? >> Because I had been trying, you know, to sell my stories for a long time >> Yeah. >> And taking them to New York and so on. And, I, I'm bad about history but I think this is, I know this is what I did when I. I though if I could also give them a book I'd made of some photographs it might lure them. >> huh. >> I submitted them together. You know they didn't belong together I said. I though if they liked the pictures they'd say. Well, what about it? We might even print your story. [LAUGH] [LAUGH]. >> That never worked. So maybe I was- >> maybe I was trying to do the same thing. >> This was very early in the game. >> I know it was early in the game. If it hadn't been for Clay Hampton and Ray White >> No, even shut my ears. You would've been found by anybody who wasn't that blind. >> No, no. But it. >> Well, we lucky. We were the lucky ones. >> I was lucky. They. >> We were the lucky ones. >> I still can't believe it. >> This wonderful stuff comes sailing in out of the night. >> These. They ushered me into the world, and shepherded me as I went. But it took me about two years, to. It took me and my literary agent, who sent things around. I came into a good agent, in the meantime, who saw my stories in the Southern Review. And thought he would like to represent me, and try to get books and, I mean, stories in national magazines like The Atlantic, or something. And that took him two years to do that. before, once The Atlantic Monthly took two stories, then it was okay. I mean, then, then a book publisher agreed to publish them. You know, everything. In those days, it's true isn't it that you're, a short story writer. A Southern short story writer and a female southern short story writer was about the last thing any anybody would have ever considered. >> They didn't want collections of short stories. >> They did not. >> The way with you they were attracted by the short stories the next word was please write a short song. >> Write a novel. >> Yeah. >> We like the short story and maybe we can publish it second if you send a novelist with Katherine Ann. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> we you know we spent our life fighting. >> Yeah. "Writer will tell the truth but tell it with a slant" -Emily Dickinson. >> Oh yeah. I didn't, I didn't hear the last one. >> Oh, oh they the thing that Shakespeare said "By indirection. is find directions out." >> That, that is the best. >> Long game of [INAUDIBLE] here's the ball you want to get close. The enemy ball is here. You can't do it directly. >> That's right. >> If you can throw a curve, come in behind. >> Right. >> That was what it seems to me, the writer's >> I think so. Like the propagandist. >> No. >> Or the Social Scientist and hit directly the truth. He's gotta- >> He's got to- >> Get that information, suggestion. >> Because like, Henry Green said the same thing about the, the oblique. >> Yeah, the oblique. >> It's the way, the way to go to the truth about something is obliquely. You know, so that, well, that's true, I mean, as an artist. When you're representing someone, you can't- >> You've been throwing those beautiful curves. >> I wasn't speaking as an artist, I meant, as an artist, that's what you would know to begin with, wouldn't you? Nobody has to tell you. >> Oh, I surely end up by doing a propaganda novel. Yeah. >> You've got it all worked out ahead of time. You don't know who the characters are, you don't even have to know. you know that you must make this point. So bang, you go for it and your character are wooden puppets. >> Well. Clint, one good thing of, a very convenient thing about the picture is that all propaganda novels could be written on a computer. Nobody would have to do it. Kill it, together. You know, okay. It would be ready by next week. [LAUGH] And plenty of copies. Well anyway, not to be. But the real novel, the kind we are talking about could never be duplicated even much less written by, >> Exactly. >> Personally but also in, in the act of writing, I mean the, the existence of, of your friends is, what you find such meaning in, It's hard to conceive of living and working without it, you know, it's just an essential, an essential part of, of your life. But I think that would it, goes without saying, I think, you know. I'm lucky to have come along at a time when there was so many people just work I love I suppose every writer does, and you normally gravitate to the ones that are congenial.
