Customer Reviews

The Golden Apples.

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"The Golden Apples" is one of the five best short story collections I've read. Welty's description of character, and its transformation throughout life (it's almost like an episodic novel) is subtle, humorous, and moving. Her style is poetic yet lucid, perfect for the emotionally complex situations she describes. The citizens of Morgana, Mississippi, with all their virtues, flaws and perversities, reminded me of Anderson's "Winesberg, Ohio." But Welty's eye seems defter, deeper, less given to easy pay-off and caricature. Similarly, she is superior to Flannary O'Connor because her tales deal with the nuances of everyday events rather than thunder-and-lightning epiphanies.

Dive into this swirling, invigorating pool and have your views of people and the world changed, as were mine.

In The Golden Apples, Welty offers a cycle of subtle, complex and often hilarious stories/myths from the fictional town of Morgana, Mississippi. Told from a variety of perspectives and voices, the cycle uses southern imagery, greek mythology (sometimes via the poetry of Yeats) and musings on art and music to narrate the history of a cast of characters either absorbed by or isolated from Morgana and the surrounding world. The reader, in assembling meaning from the flood of rich narrative becomes more than a casual observer, but a participant in the ongoing mythology of Morgana.

Like Winesberg or Yoknapatawpha or even Middle Earth, Welty creates a world so complete and convincing that we can't help but immerse ourselves. And what lies in the gaps between the stories and known chronology becomes just as captivating as the story we're given.

Golden Apples, in its complexity, can be a lot of work. But the payoff is huge.

Golden Apples is a novel by Eudora Welty that reads like a series of bizarre short stories with the same recurring characters set in a fictional town in Mississippi. Some readers may find it difficult because of its use of language (...). Others may find it difficult just for it's odd prose. The chapters are not linear nor are obvious segues ever used to cue the reader in that a jump in time has taken place. There are also lots of characters with similar names making it easy to lose track of who has done what, when. If I were more drawn into the book I'd want to reread it to get the pieces I missed or misunderstood but frankly I'm just not captivated enough to want to do that right now.

Hippomenes (with apologies to Ogden Nash)

Behold the great Hippomenes!
Who spies his quarry through the trees,
Though prospect of his loss was grim,
Venus will look after him.

Race, race thou grand Hippomenes!
Throw apples at Atlanta's knees,
Win her love with one last try
The glint of gold will catch her eye.

Eudora's Sour Apples

While conceiving what direction to take this review, this writer had many choices. We could have traversed the stratosphere with the highbrow intellect of the King's English of Oxford University. Or, we could have writ this down like the class of lower aptitude that pervades the book at hand. A handbook, indeed. However, we of the committees of good taste and proclivity have decided to stick with the traditional method of the rant.

It has come to this writer's attention that there is a new book that is making the rounds of all the traditional literati: Eudora Welty's The Golden Apples. It is an interesting tome that takes place in little ole Harrisburg, Mississippi. As if we didn't already have enough on Mississippi from our fellow Yoknapatawphanian and bourbon connoisseur, Mr. Faulkner. (By the way, Yoknapatawphan means muddy shoed drunk in the Choctaw language). Unlike our friend Mr. Hemingway, both Ms. Welty and Mr. Faulkner do not appear to want themselves or their characters to step out into the cold dark world. It is quite evident to this reviewer they are quite safe in "the land of cotton." Look away, I say, look away! In Apples, Ms. Welty does not want her characters to step into the woods. God forbid they return from the forest primeval laden with child by a shadowy figure or an initiation of a band of horny twins. There are, Ms. Welty, scarier things in the world than what rattles around in the jungle.

The story has been told that Ms. Welty was a photographer in her prior vocation. I would like to suggest she take back up her brownie and return post haste to the world of the daguerreotype. I do not find her writing or typing (if I may borrow from Mr. Capote) either enriching or entertaining. I will get into that in more specifics in a moment.

During a recent lark, I myself ventured into the wilderness, not for the traditional forty days mind you, but to see what I could see. I also carried with me my brownie and took a photo or so. My favorite picture was the one of the rundown farmhouse. It conveyed what it was, what it is and what it will become. At one time, I'm sure, it was a flourishing home with children and grandchildren running about. It is now in ruin and decay and in the future, it will be razed for some purpose. This sounds somewhat like what Miss Eckhart in June Recital was up to, razing the past for an unknown future.

The book is laid out with a short to long story rotation. (Not unlike the of all the young ladies who attended the NC State promenade being laid end to end, and no one being surprised in the least.) Just when you think she has run out of things to say, she hits you with stories that are 78, 45, and 58 pages long respectfully. This is a triumph of the will . . . will you read this, or will you not. Personally, I could only get through, with woe and boredom, the first three stories Shower of Gold, June Recital and Sir Rabbit (which consequently, I wished I had hippity, hoppity, hopped down the bunny trail) without scouring the medicine cabinet for arsenic or razor blades.

In Shower, we meet a fine hardworking lady named Snowdie who just happens to be an albino. Her life has not been too terribly hard. That is until she meets King MacLain. She and King meet, marry and then he up and leaves. However, one day, Snowdie gets a message to meet him in Morgan's Woods (from here on to be referred to as the woods of conception/fornication). Nine months after their tryst in the underbrush, Snowdie produces twins. After numerous global sightings of King, he finally returns to Morgana only to be scared away by his own children.
In June, we meet a voyeuristic malaria sufferer. Loch has taken to bed with what can be assumed is malaria (quinine was the hint). He is using his father's telescope to peer into the dilapidated house next door where he notices some interesting goings on -- most notably, a romantic tryst between a sailor (anchors aweigh!) and Virgie Rainey. I do confess that one of my most favorite lines in the book is from this vignette. "Her name was Virgie Rainey. She had been in Cassie's room all the way through school, so that made her sixteen; she would ruin any nice idea." I have heard of home wreckers, but idea wreckers. Indeed. This piece is also a flashback to when a family actually used to live in that house. (I would like a flashback so that I can remember what it was like to have my faculties before I started this review.)

Finally, in Rabbit, we meet the spawn of King MacLain lurking around in the woods of conception/fornication. Mattie Will, with hoe (garden implement) in hand, is permissively abused by King MacLain's sons. Mattie says that she allowed this because their mother was an albino. What does this sexual charity teach us?

The apples in this book have been at least a distraction, nothing more. I'm sure if Hippomenes had rolled these apples in front of Atlanta, she would have never stopped to them up. I would like to hope that in future trysts with the typewriter, Ms. Welty's trees never bear fruit and if they should it falls far from the tree and the seeds never sprout.