We call ourselves the Cereus Readers in honor of Jackson writer Eudora Welty and her friends who gathered for the annual blooming of the night-blooming cereus flower and called themselves “The Night-Blooming Cereus Club.” In this same spirit of friendship and fellowship, this new book club is launched.

The goal of the Cereus Readers is to introduce readers to the writing of Eudora Welty–her short stories, essays, and novels–and then to read books and authors she enjoyed herself or were influenced by her.

As an introduction to the writer we will start with my biography of Eudora Welty, A Daring Life, and pair it with Eudora’s essay “A Sweet Devouring,” found in her collection of essays The Eye of the Story. We will then read her Pulitzer prize-winning novella The Optimist’s Daughter followed by her collection of short stories The Golden Apples.

After reading these works by Welty, we will read authors and works she herself enjoyed: Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, Chekhov, and mysteries. Finally, we thought we would read authors who have acknowledged Welty as an influence and inspiration such as Ann Patchett, Anne Tyler, and Clyde Edgerton. It’s a bold undertaking, but we plan to be meeting for a while!

Here is the schedule for Cereus Readers:

Thursday, January 24: A Daring Life: A Biography of Eudora Welty & “A Sweet Devouring” from The Eye of the Story (led by Carolyn Brown)

Thursday, February 28: The Optimist’s Daughter (led by Jan Taylor)

Thursday, March 28: The Golden Apples, Part 1 (led by Lee Anne Bryan)

Thursday, April 25: The Golden Apples, Part 2 (led by Lee Anne Bryan)

Thursday, May 23:

Two short stories: “Where Is the Voice Coming from?” & “The Demonstrators”

An essay by Miss Welty: “Must the Novelist Crusade?”

Thursday, June 27:

We will be listening to a 1975 audio recording of Miss Welty reading selected short stories.

Thursday, July 25: The Ponder Heart

Thursday, August 22: The Robber Bridegroom

Thursday, September 26: Short Stories, “Asphodel” & “A Still Moment”

We meet at noon in the dot.com building adjacent to Banner Hall. Feel free to bring your lunch. All books are available at Lemuria, and be sure to ask for the “Cereus Reader” 10% discount when making your purchase for the book club. Please e-mail lisa if you plan on attending or if you have any questions: lisa at lemuriabooks dot com.

This is a reading group open to all level of readers–anyone interested in learning about Jackson’s most important writer. Eudora Welty considered Lemuria her bookstore, and we want to honor her by discussing her books and authors she loved–meeting in the store where she shopped and signed her books.

Carolyn

Willie Morris used to giggle and snort when he told the story of the first time he saw Miss Welty. He would always preface the telling with the set up.

THE SET UP: Willies’ maternal grandparents, Percy and Marion Weaks, lived at 1017 North Jefferson Street, just behind the Jitney 14 (now McDade’s) and when he would visit from Yazoo City, he would accompany his beloved Mamie on errands and journey into the wideness of the big city named for General Andrew “Ole Hickory” Jackson. Though Willie was born in Jackson, his family moved the 50 miles to the, “half hills, half delta” town of Yazoo when he was an infant. One day, he and his Grandmother Weaks were in the Jitney shopping and they spotted Eudora combing through the vegetable stall.

“Look Willie”, his grandmother said, “yonder’s Eudora Welty!”

“Mamie”, young Willie respectfully whispered, “is she that woman who makes up them stories in her mind?”

“Yep Willie, one and the same”.

“Well”, the wide-eyed Willie Weaks Morris promptly responded, “I intend to be a writer myself someday”.

And so he did.

Written by Malcolm White

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If you have story about Miss Welty that you would like to share on our blog, please e-mail them to lisa[at]lemuriabooks[dot]com.

Click here to learn about Carolyn Brown’s A Daring Life: A Biography of Eudora Welty

Click here to see all blogs in our Miss Welty series

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Lemuria’s celebration of Eudora Welty this fall has been nothing short of staggering: after the fantastic book signing/party held in celebration of the publication of my young adult biography, A Daring Life: A Biography of Eudora Welty, back in August, Joe, John, Lisa, Emily, Maggie, and all the great booksellers at Lemuria have continued to keep Eudora front and center with a series of wonderful new ads, posters and bookmarks that feature her image as well as her words. And every time I visit Lemuria, which is often, I see a fresh new arrangement of Welty titles and photographs, as well as my book, prominently displayed in the store.

Lemuria is taking this focus on Welty one step further, and announcing a new, monthly Eudora Welty Book Club. It will be called the “The Cereus Readers” in honor of Eudora and her friends who gathered for the annual blooming of the night-blooming cereus flower and called themselves “The Night-Blooming Cereus Club.” In this same spirit of friendship and fellowship, this new book club is launched.

As we all know, Eudora was a great reader. At the time of her death there were over 5,000 books in her house! And Lemuria was her bookstore. As we celebrate the publication of My Bookstore this week, a book that collects essays, stories, odes, and words of gratitude and praise for stores like Lemuria that offer pleasure, guidance, and support for writers like myself, we want to celebrate Eudora as well–in the store where she shopped and had so many memorable readings and signings–by reading her works as well as authors she loved and admired.

The first meeting of “The Cereus Readers” will be Thursday, January 24, 2013, at noon in Lemuria’s Dot.Com events building. I will facilitate the first book club, but will be sharing the responsibility of leading discussions with Lee Anne Bryan, Carla Wall, Jan Taylor, and Freda Spell–all extremely knowledgeable on Eudora Welty and her works.

I invite you to be part of “The Cereus Readers.” If you would like to be added to our e-mail list, please send a message to Lisa Newman at Lemuria Books: lisa[at]lemuriabooks[dot]com. She will send out an e-mail update as January nears with details of meeting dates and a reading list.

Carolyn Brown
A Daring Life: A Biography of Eudora Welty

I met Eudora Welty when I was 18, a struggling college student and budding bookseller (with maybe just an inkling of having found my true calling) and frankly didn’t know what to expect. When she immediately turned her warmth, the beautiful genuine clarity and lucidity of her gaze upon me and spoke to me in her comfortable, homey voice, her attentiveness charmed me for life and charmed me into wanting to be part of this world of authors and books forever. Even though I was a lowly clerk, she saw my passion for books and literature, and she treated me as an equal and never forgot my name or where we met in the years after.

Eudora Welty was the first writer I had ever met. I think meeting her validated my choice of what I hoped would be my profession – books and publishing.

There are many happy memories of times spent with Eudora in those years when I lived in Jackson and worked at Lemuria. But always the day to day, unexpected visits remain the dearest – picking up the phone and hearing her voice, seeing her coming into the door of the bookstore – in the wintertime always in her brown camel haired trench coat with a cream colored fluffy beret jauntily set upon her head….

As a bookseller, it was also my privilege to meet many other writers in the making. I’ll never forget the ones that came to the bookstore as if making a pilgrimage to Eudora. With tears in their eyes, many spoke of her as THE writer that had inspired them and made them want to become writers themselves. No one ever stood in the Hemingway section or for that matter any other section and said that to me.

In 2001, when Eudora died, I received a call from my mentor and dear friend John Evans. He asked me to consider coming home for her funeral. Recently, he had experienced the deaths of several beloved customers and also of Willie Morris. I called the airline and was on my way within a couple of hours.

I took along with me the Modern Library collection of those stories that I had purchased thirty years ago. For me it began a celebration and appreciation of her life and work that I think will be with me for the rest of my life.

Appreciating her work has been an ongoing obsession – for its immense strangeness, her genius and delight in the absurd, her intense powers of observation and being able to relate them so powerfully to the essence of a story or novel.

As an English major and later English teacher at Belhaven, I had the usual memories–looking up at her busy concentration at that manual typewriter as we waited for the #4 bus. But when I encountered her in Jitney #14, our discussion was focused on a mutual friend, garden writer Elizabeth Lawrence. pictured right with her nephew

Years later, on a trip to Washington, my family shared first a cab and then a Greyhound bus to Meridian with Miss Welty, to catch the “Southern Crescent.” As we were going to a Daffodil Convention, we talked about the “square daffodil” which is mentioned in Losing Battles, and I was able to identify it as Narcissus moschatus.

Later, as the train clicked along, our 4-year-old son said, “Mother, I know she’s a famous writer, but doesn’t she know all daffodils are round?”

-Written by Loyce Cain McKenzie

above: Eudora Welty with her mother Chestina from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History

The summer of 1973 after I graduated from Forest Hill, five friends came down from Senatobia and Memphis for a long weekend visit.  Among the things on their to-do list was a visit to Miss Eudora Welty.  She wouldn’t be hard to find — we might run into her at the Jitney Jungle 14, but that didn’t seem sure enough to count on.  Besides, she had lived in the same house forever and was listed in the phone book just like everyone else in Jackson.  So it wasn’t long before the six of us were on her front porch, knocking on the door.

Miss Welty opened the door herself and looked out at the mob on her porch and asked “May I help you?”

I explained that my high school-age friends had come all the way to Jackson and really wanted to meet her.

She said, “Well, I am working, but why don’t you all come in.”

She welcomed us into her rather plain parlor and began to ask questions about the six of us: “Where do you go to school? What is your favorite subject? What sort of books do you read?”

Here we were excited to meet a world-famous author, and Miss Welty was more interested in what us six teenagers were doing.  We tried to ask her a few erudite questions about “The Ponder Heart” and “Why I Live at the P.O.”, which she dutifully answered.

After a few minutes, she asked us if we wanted something to drink and some cookies, but we had been raised better and told her “thank you, no.”  She noticed that we each had a book or two so she asked if she might sign them for us, carefully personalizing each one.  Knowing that she was busy, we excused ourselves, and she saw us to the door, waving to us as we drove down Pinehurst.  For a few minutes, Miss Welty had made us feel as if we were the most important people in the world.

Years later, when I was the new Operations Supervisor of the Jackson Social Security office, I checked the reception area and saw Miss Welty sitting there waiting along with everyone else.  I went out and offered to get someone to help her right away, and she told me no, that she would wait her turn.  I wondered if she might be observing the other people waiting and their interactions with each other and the staff.  After one of the Service Representatives had helped her with her Medicare issue, she gathered up her papers and quietly left the office.  I said something to the employee, and she said, “Oh, we see her every now and then, but she just wants us to treat her like everyone else.”  What a gracious lady!

Written by Rod Clark

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If you have story about Miss Welty that you would like to share on our blog, please e-mail them to lisa[at]lemuriabooks[dot]com.

Click here to learn about Carolyn Brown’s A Daring Life: A Biography of Eudora Welty

Click here to see all blogs in our Miss Welty series

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Last week I sat by my friend Mary Alice White, Miss Welty’s niece, who has written a beautiful Lemuria blog on her famous aunt. I told Mary Alice that I was going to write a blog for Lisa at Lemuria if only I could remember the recipe! I went on to tell Mary Alice about the delightful conversation that I had with Miss Welty (that is what I called her face to face, as a Southern girl would) in the “Jitney 14” probably in the early to mid 1980s. I was in the vegetable and fruit section looking around when Miss Welty walked up. We had the most delightful conversation about a recipe. But was it banana bread, or what? I can’t remember! We laughed and talked for some time, and I recall thinking at that point that besides being one of the most talented writers of the 20th century, she was a true Southern lady who was friendly to all who walked by and who seemed absolutely delighted to see me and all her other friends who were in the store that day.

It was not too much longer after that when I went with my friends Charlotte Capers, Patti Carr Black, and Miss Welty to a meeting one night. We drove up in her driveway, and she walked out. Moments later, I remember thinking, “I am in a car with one of the most famous writers in the world, and I am never going to forget this.” Afterwards, however, I recalled the laughter among these dear Jackson friends and their delight at being in each other’s company. This is what struck me that night as very, very special.

Years later, I would tell my students at Millsaps, or Belhaven, or Hinds, or Holmes or Tulane as we were reading and laughing about “Why I Live at the P.O.” or examining the complexities of “A Worn Path” that I personally knew Miss Welty, the person. They would look at me with amazement. I would tell them how friendly and genuine she was. I would also tell them that she holds a high place of honor not only in Jackson, not only in the South, not only in the United States, but in the world. I would tell them how much the French absolutely adore her and her writing.

I went to Miss Welty’s funeral in the spring of 2001. It was hard for me to go because my own dear mother had died only a few weeks earlier; yet, I wanted to be there to honor Miss Wetly at Galloway Memorial United Methodist Church.I keep the service bulletin in a file and run across it from time to time and look at the names all of the national dignitaries who came from afar. I wanted to be there and reflect with thanksgiving on the joy that she brought to others, whether it was through her writing or her personal friendships. I am grateful to say that I knew Miss Welty, the person. Her legacy, not only as a beloved Southern writer, but as a beloved Southerner will live on in my mind always.

-Nan Graves Goodman

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If you have story about Miss Welty that you would like to share on our blog, please e-mail them to lisa[at]lemuriabooks[dot]com.

Click here to learn about Carolyn Brown’s A Daring Life: A Biography of Eudora Welty

Click here to see all blogs in our Miss Welty series

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