Golden Apples [Hardcover]

Eudora Welty (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1949

First published in 1949, "The Golden Apples" is an acutely observed, richly atmospheric portrayal of small town life in Morgana, Mississippi. There's Snowdie, who has to bring up her twin boys alone after her husband, King Maclain, disappears one day, discarding his hat on the banks of the Big Black. There's Loch Morrison, convalescing with malaria, who watches from his bedroom window as wayward Virgie Rainey meets a sailor in the vacant house opposite. Meanwhile, Miss Eckhart the piano teacher, grieving the loss of her most promising pupil, tries her hand at arson. Eudora Welty has a fine ear for dialogue and describes each of the characters in incisive, haunting prose. '...in the South,' she says, 'everybody stays busy talking all the time - they're not sorry for you to overhear their tales'. Welty deftly picks up their stories to create an unflinching potrait of everyday life in the American South and offers a deeply moving look at human nature.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A great and generous achievement -- Jonathan Raban I doubt that a better book about 'the South' - one that more completely gets the feel of the particular texture of Southern life and its special tone and pattern - has ever been written New Yorker A hauntingly beautiful work...This excellent new edition is prefaced with an essay by Paul Binding which sheds light on the mythic structures that underpin the tales The Independent, Paperbacks of the Year --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From the Back Cover

Here is Eudora Welty's classic portrait of a Mississippi town-where, as one inhabitant says, "time goes like a dream no matter how hard you run." In Morgana, the young think of other places and the old know every name on every stone in the cemetery at the town's edge. Young and old, black and white, married and spinster, restless or settled, the voices that make up this collection of interrelated stories prove that Welty, as Katherine Anne Porter once wrote, had "an ear sharp, shrewd, and true as a tuning fork." Like James Joyce's Dubliners and Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, The Golden Apples, though it gives readers a particular time and place, is both timeless and universal.

"I doubt that a better book about 'the South'--one that more completely gets the feel of the particular texture of Southern life, and its special tone and pattern--has ever been written."-Original review, September 3, 1949, The New Yorker

"A work of art . . . the original creation of an invaluable artist."-The New York Times Book Review


Eudora Welty (1909-2001) was born in Jackson, Mississippi. She worked as a photographer during the Depression and published her first book, a collection of short stories, in 1941. In addition to short fiction, Welty wrote novels, novellas, essays, and reviews, and was the winner of both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. By the time of her death in 2001, Welty had established herself as one of the most important and beloved American writers of the twentieth century.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Harcourt; First Edition edition (October 1949)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151360898
• ISBN-13: 978-0151360895
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,095,984 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful, Subtle, Resonating Stories, April 22, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Golden Apples (Paperback)

"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.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Book for Wanderers, December 21, 2004

By 

Samuel Streed - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Golden Apples (Paperback)

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.

12 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Short Story collection mascarading as a novel, July 16, 2004

By 

Sarah Sammis "Avid BookCrosser" (Hayward, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Golden Apples (Paperback)

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.