12Once William and Virgil have gathered everyone together, they take the wide net and all set out walking down the Old Natchez Trace. Geographically, I had lived outside as a boy in the steamy heat of southern Florida. and I believe I could find stories, old ones & new ones, and beliefs and songs and violent events all over the place to show what the life here is, to my belief Think of all the people who would be in my bookwonderful Indians to start with, and the Indian tales are beautiful and dramatic and very touching some of themand Aaron Burr & Blennerhassett, and Lafayette, and Audubon, and Jefferson Davis, and the bandits and Lafitte the pirate, and all kinds of remarkable people. They all belong together in the Mississippi chorus line, until William Wallace finally breaks away on his own. What I remember most about growing up was the joy of being outside for most of the day in a sort of tropical paradise. To me, there is more irony than history in the name William Wallace. I do not mean to suggest that I find anything of myself in William Wallace, nor in his search for Hazel. I am ready to plead, however. The packet switching technology was essential to the development of . But the town itself was lively and busy and relatively sheltered from the poverty and misery that remained a plague throughout the greater South even in the 1950s. Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston. publication online or last modification online. A more distant past was hidden behind the Spanish place names and the faces of the Seminole Indians who worked as cowboys on the ranches. Whenever Walter Scott is mentioned in the context of the South, Mark Twains theory of the Civil War and the southern imagination immediately leaps to mind. My mother had met her and gave me the names of several people who had been her friends. Knowing Eudora Weltys love of Ireland and the Irish, the echo is surely deliberate. As we discover, we remember; remembering, we discover; and most intensely do we experience this when our separate journeys converge (Welty, One Writers Beginnings 102). Even though there is no southern history in the story, surely his name is steeped in historical associations. He had never been given much credit for his act, though in the recent biography of Hurston, by Valerie Boyd, written long after my visit home, he is singled out for praise (436). 4. Its going to turn from hot to cold, and we can kill the hog thats ripe and have fresh meat to eat. , one of Eudora Weltys favorite books, Twain makes the outrageous, though irresistible, claim that Scott and his historical romances helped cause the Civil War by promoting a mythical vision of history, and by shaping the southern character: It was Sir Walter Scott that made every gentleman in the South a Major or Colonel, or a General or a Judge, before the war; and it was he, also, that made these gentlemen value these bogus decorations Sir Walter Scott had so large a hand in making the southern character, as it existed before the war, that he is in great measure responsible (266). Then there are the other adult members of the search party, the six Doyle brothers and their dogs, and the eight Malone brothers, eight giants with great long black eyelashes (Welty. These were some of the memories humming in my head when I began reading the books about Southern myth in Chapel Hill. He made a sign for me to follow him in what was now a blind tunnel steaming with sweat and humidity. Eudora Welty is a master of subjective impressionism, but there is not an escapist reflex in all her work. And if my commentaries, such as they are, do make me vulnerable to all sorts of criticism, especially when judged by the principles of pure scholarship (principles I would be the first to preach), at least I cannot be faulted on what I say about my own autobiography. 16What is missing in my account of rereading the story is my misremembering the total absence of southern history, a conspicuous absence. I wanted to talk to him, so my mother invited him over to the house. Seeing I was struggling with my bucket and shovel, he came right over and helped show me the right way to do it. Though she is changing every day, she has really not changed at all. For one thing, I think I would have trouble arguing to myself, or to my wife and family, that I never existed, even as a boy, yet Eudora Welty is writing in the tradition of the modern folk tale. Her reaction is more than understandable. As Mr Duval finished, and stood up to leave, he reached out to me and shook my hand: Your granddaddy was the only white man I ever loved.. What I want to single out is not his place in the community, which was central, but his difference from most of the adult white men I knew and observed. Myth and meaning in that book are indivisible. More important to my purpose here, however, they did help me throw some light on the pluralities of myth and legend that had confused me when I had first read The Wide Net. I realize this is a self-indulgent proposition, but to be honest, I no longer have much faith in finding the definitive myth of the collective South. It was a far better show than the movie. Eudora Welty (April 13, 1909 - July 23, 2001) was an American writer of short stories, novels, and essays, best known for her realistic portrayal of the South. Boyd, Valerie. I was not surprised he had been a good friend of Hurston, but I never found any reference to him in the standard biographies. The storm in The Wide Net seems bent more on celebration than punishment, however. review but they say those things just because I happen to live in the southbut nobody else had better say I am unhuman (qtd. Still, if I should apologize, I do. Us is the fishes (Welty, Collected Stories 183). A man named William Wallace Jamieson has a pregnant wife called Hazel, and he's been going out a lot lately until finally, one night, he stays out all night. After politely answering my questions about the Hurston papers, he turned to me and spoke for a good thirty minutes about my grandfather. the citation above will include either 2 or 3 dates. It runs in our family, Robbie says (Welty. Grady is already a sort of father to Brucie. CSNET bridged between the original (closed) ARPANET and the NSFNET (open) by . But the shifting, or loss of identity, is a constant threat. As Welty adds in her autobiography, there were Edna Earles all over the South. In leaving you now, I am reminded of an old story out of Georgia. 21His full name is William Wallace Jamieson. Be the first to contribute! When I was invited to speak about the myth of the South, the thought of Weltys The Wide Net, came to my mind in a flash. Engraved in large letters beneath the names was the single word: Murdered. These were the graves of her maternal grandparents who had been viciously axed to death by two men looking for easy prey and a few dollars. Carrying his great string of fish, he enters at the head of the party into Dover which now looked somehow like new after the rain (Welty, Collected Stories 184). 33In this respect, my grandfather was a rare exception. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). What touched me more, and what I remember best now, were the lives around me while growing up. The second is the date of When we went to the movies on Saturday night, we would never hesitate to stop outside the county jail across the street from the Sunrise Theater. Now a host of biblical allusions begin to prevail over the Greek and Roman. William Wallace is beset on all sides by distractions, advice, omens, signs of all sorts. This blend of domestic realism with mythology and ancient fertility tales is characteristic of the entire collection, in which ordinary people are somehow connected to the myths of other cultures. His grandfather had been branded by the devil in a storm, Lightnin drawed a pitchfork right on our grandpappys cheek, stayed till he died (Welty. Physically, he was everything the legend had promised. 14The second half of the story is rich in events, but the outcome is never in doubt. He plays his role well, lost in his own performance, an unstoppable gramophone of platitudes, talking just to hear himself talk, but sometimes, almost despite himself, repeating nuggets of wisdom that bear directly on the quest itself: Were walking along in the changing-time. In many respects he cherished the community as much as his family, but it had to be the whole community, white and black. There is Old Doc, the local wise man who owns the net. William goes out one night with two friends, gets drunk and lies all night in a ditch playing the harmonica. What interests me more as the years go on is the life story of the individual southerner. When we went to the movies on Saturday night, we would never hesitate to stop outside the county jail across the street from the Sunrise Theater. And I found a note to myself slipped in the pages of my old single volume edition of the collection relating Eudora Weltys initial concept of writing a fictional history of the Old Natchez Trace. Wives and girlfriends would be gathered under the windows, and the banter and singing between them and the men in jail are impossible to exaggerate. [] Magnolia and live-oak never die. He returns to his wife better capable of living a meaningful, fulfilling life. In keeping with the Scottish link, it might be reversed to be read the son of James. Geographically, I had lived outside as a boy in the steamy heat of southern Florida. 184). What was missing in this southern town was southern history, or at least any striking display of history. Even the trees have bones that crack when lightning strikes. Other than Old Doc, the characters making up the search party include two sets of young brothers, the white boys, Brucie and Grady Rippin, and the black boys, Sam and Robbie Bell. One day on a summer trip to Homerville, my mother took me to a field in the countryside and showed me two old tombstones under a tree. Jamieson takes a bit more twisting to unravel a historical connection. There I was shocked to learn I may have been born into a myth, despite myself. As far as living space was concerned, however, the town was strictly divided into white and black, and though the blacks were often seen in the white district, there were few whites who ventured into colored town. [] Old Jack Frost will be pinching things up. I loved the music, the food, the voices, the family stories, and to this day I cannot imagine life without them. Foots waited until they were all inside. The white families, like my own, had migrated there from their farms in South Georgia in the hope of improving their prospects. Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston. As Mr Duval finished, and stood up to leave, he reached out to me and shook my hand: Your granddaddy was the only white man I ever loved.. The last date is today's And we fished for the same fish from the same piers in the inlet. The town was a typical Florida collection of frame houses, shady streets, and sandy alleys held together by a compact center of brick banks, churches, cafes, shops, and one movie theater, on the western side of the river within walking distance of the ocean to the east. I would agree, and I did try to explore its implications as I reworked my way through the story. He surely died the poorest judge in all of Florida, but he did leave me his gold Hamilton watch which had been given him when he retired from working on the railroad as a young man in Georgia. date the date you are citing the material. the second is . eNotes.com will help you with any book or any question. They were even stronger reasons to question the myths of the South I later encountered. Einstein activity capture is a powerful productivity-boosting tool that is integrated with Salesforce. When was Delta Wedding set?? 36There is one more story about my grandfather that I need to relate. There is Virgil of course, living up to his name (but only in the mind of the reader, we need to remember) in that he is there to guide William on his quest, to keep him on the track, as he says. 26I am ready to plead, however. (qtd. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc, 1980. That was only part of the legend. 46I have talked about William Wallace and The Wide Net, but I have said little about the assigned subject, the myth of the South. Neither does Eudora Welty in her autobiography, and she is one of the most southern writers who ever existed. online is the same, and will be the first date in the citation. She is in her early twenties (an age we might give to William Wallace) when she discovers the gift of memory, and in her seventies when she confirms it: Writing fiction has developed in me an abiding respect for the unknown in a human lifetime and a sense of where to look for the threads, how to follow, how to connect, find in the thick of the tangle what clear line persists. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. The Pearl River is the prime example in The Wide Net and therefore the source of selfhood that will save William Wallace. My own is the treasure most dearly regarded by me, in my life and in my work as a writer. There is Old Doc, the local wise man who owns the net. 32But I digress, drifting with the memory. The workers, all black men, would let us sit on the blocks of ice waiting to be crushed. My own is the treasure most dearly regarded by me, in my life and in my work as a writer. The river never seems the same, yet even when William Wallace forgets its name, its ageless identity is never in question: The winding river looked old sometimes, when it ran wrinkled and deep under high banks where the roots of trees hung down, and sometimes it seemed to be only a young creek, shining with the colors of wildflowers (Welty. The never forgetting is another gift of becoming oneself, the power of memory. But during its moment, all that is remembered joins, and livesthe old and the young, the past and the present, the living and the dead (Welty, One Writers Beginnings 104). [] Any day now the change will come. Instead of one of the more conventional pieties, here was a crying out to both God and man against injustice. References to babies, for example, can be found everywhere, from the little man on the toy-like train, to the baby alligator, all the way to the corn shuck doll waiting by itself on the bench back in Dover. The Malones are indistinguishable from each other, and so are the Doyles. 11The strongest proof of identity is the capacity to change, to slip from one role to another if necessary, to pass through the modes of being that nature and time demand, but always to remain at one with oneself. The Wide Net. 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