Mississippi - A State Rich in Writers

The United States Census Bureau would support the assertion that Mississippi has been home to more writers of enduring quality per capita than any other state. This statistic is even more amazing considering the upheaval and social change that Mississippi has undergone over the last century and a half. The last thing one would expect to flourish in this uneven environment is great writing.

In spite of this, Mississippi has produced at least nine writers in the 20th century - William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Richard Wright, Shelby Foote, Walker
Percy, Tennessee Williams, Margaret Walker, Ellen Douglas, and Elizabeth Spencer - whose fiction has outlived their generations. And we have also had our share of great historians - Stephen Ambrose, David Herbert Donald, and Dumas Malone.

Like John Guare's play and the subsequent movie, "Six Degrees of Separation," most of these writers knew one another and crossed paths frequently. Each still maintained their distinctive styles, subjects, and views of the world.

In 1945, William Faulkner wrote to Richard Wright in Paris: "I have just read 'Black Boy.' It needed to be said and you said it well. I think you will agree that the good lasting stuff comes out of one individual's imagination and sensitivity to and comprehension of the suffering of Everyman, Anyman, not out of the memory of his own grief."

Elizabeth Spencer writes in her 1998 memoir, "Landscapes of the Heart," of her first meeting with Eudora Welty. A student at Belhaven at the time, and a member of a writing group, Spencer nervously called and invited the already established Welty to speak to their group: "She appeared for us by walking across the street for us on a lovely spring day. It seemed an enchanted afternoon." This was the start of a lifelong friendship.

Walker Percy and Shelby Foote were lifelong best friends and also crossed paths in their youths with Ellen Douglas. All three grew up in Greenville.

Faulkner made a "disastrous visit" to the home of Will Percy, Walker's uncle and adoptive parent, in Greenville during the late 1920's. According to Walker Percy's biographer Jay Tolson, Faulkner had been invited to play tennis and "in one of his bohemian phases, refused to wear shoes. To make matters worse, he had been sipping on corn whiskey. At one point, (Faulkner) fell down while lunging for a ball." Needless to say, the staid Will Percy called a halt to the doubles match and suggested that Faulkner leave.

If you have not read these authors before, now is a great time to start. If you have, these writers stand up well to a re-reading. Their works are deep enough and rich enough to offer us different perspectives at various stages in our own lives.