Books by Pearl Amelia McHaney
A Tyrannous Eye: Eudora Welty's Nonfiction and Photographs
A Tyrannous Eye: Eudora Welty’s Nonfiction and Photographs is the first book-length study of Eudora Welty’s full range of achievements in nonfiction and photography. A preeminent Welty scholar, Pearl Amelia McHaney offers clear-eyed and complex assessments of Welty’s journalism, book reviews, letters, essays, autobiography, and photographs. Each chapter focuses on one genre, filling in gaps left by previous books. With keen skills of observation, finely tuned senses, intellect, wit, awareness of audience, and modesty, Welty applied her genius in all that she did, holding a tough line on truth, breaking through “the veil of indifference to each other’s presence, each other’s wonder, each other’s plight.”
McHaney’s study brings critical attention to the under-evaluated genres of Welty’s work and discusses the purposeful use of arguments, examples, and styles, demonstrating that Welty pursued her craft to a high standard across genres with a greater awareness of context than she admitted in her numerous interviews. Welty consistently dared new styles, new audiences, and new publishing venues in order to express her ideas to their fullest. It is “serious daring,” as she wrote in One Writer’s Beginnings, that makes for great writing. In “Place in Fiction,” Welty asks, “How can you go out on a limb if you do not know your own tree? No art ever came out of not risking your neck. And risk―experiment―is a considerable part of the joy of doing.”
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Eudora Welty: Writers' Reflections upon First Reading Welty
A celebration of the legacy of the "first lady of American letters" from an impressive cast of writers, scholars, and friends of the author
On the occasion of Eudora Welty's ninetieth birthday in 1999, a pantheon of accomplished writers came together to offer their deeply personal tributes in honor of her importance as the "first lady of American letters." Many of these contributors have long friendships with Welty, while others have felt her influence on their writing from a distance. The common denominator, though, is their collective awe and respect for her unrivaled place in America literature.
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Eudora Welty as Photographer
by Eudora Welty, Pearl Amelia McHaney, Sandra S. Phillips
These forty-three photographs, taken in the 1930s and 1940s with three different cameras, illustrate both the formal and narrative skills of framing the world as only a great short story writer could. They show Eudora Welty (1909-2001) ardently pursuing an audience and honing her technique as she worked behind the lens.
Considering light, design, texture, framing, and perspective, she experimented with composition. She tried different films, papers, and exposures, took shots from various angles and distances, cropped and enlarged photographs in her kitchen darkroom, then waited until morning to discover what had been revealed.
Paramount in Eudora Welty as Photographer are the photographs themselves. Only nine have been published previously. The accompanying essays by Welty scholar Pearl Amelia McHaney; by Chief curator of photography at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Sandra S. Phillips; and by photographer and photography historian Deborah Willis describe Welty's developing aesthetic and her representations of the world as illustrated by the photographs. Welty took photographs of people, animals, patterns, shadows, and structures natural and man-made in Mississippi, Louisiana, New York, and North Carolina. The photographs are paired to contrast and complement, to surprise and suggest, and to please and provoke. Among the photographs in Eudora Welty as Photographer are prints exhibited in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1934; Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in 1935; and in New York City in 1936 and 1937.
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