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Transcription: [00:07:46]
Eudora Welty.

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Miss Welty was born 100 years ago, two weeks ago. And she only passed away in 2001.

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I think, when I think about her body of work, it strikes me that if you had to

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have a pattern, or if you had to have a prototype for a successful writer, her life is it.

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She started writing at a very early age, she became successful early,

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and she stayed successful and productive her entire life.

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Along the way, getting a couple of big prizes and writing some work that,

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for- for a lack of better words, is really compassionate and sensitive,

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but, sympathetic, I think is the word I'm looking for, to the human spirit.

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'The Optimist's Daughter' is a story of a young lady Laurel who's an artist

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and she lives in Chicago and her mother is passed away, and

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she comes to Mississippi because her father is about to have eye surgery.

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Her father ends up being in the hospital until he passes.

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And the book is a constant battle between this daughter,

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and the father's new wife's family and the father's new wife.

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And, these people, the people who kind of married into the family,

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now, the wife, the new wife, Fay and her new family, they're just awful people.

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They talk, they talk about uh, things in the wrong place,

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they're gathered at the funeral, they've got a kid like that kid in "Shane".

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Shane, Shane, you remember this kid, you know who I'm talking about?

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And he's walking around with a couple of pistols on, and he's doing

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the pow-pow thing, and asking who the body is, and all that.

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He's just a menace of a child, awful, awful kid.

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It was at uh, what was the line from uh, 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof', no name monsters.

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This kid is typical of that sort of uh, that pattern child. Anyway,