The Golden Apples [Paperback]

Eudora Welty (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 14, 1956 | Series: Harvest Book

Welty is on home ground in the state of Mississippi in this collection of seven stories. She portrays the MacLains, the Starks, the Moodys, and other families of the fictitious town of Morgana. “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).

Editorial Reviews

Review

Collection of short stories by Eudora Welty, published in 1949. The stories had all been published previously, and Welty added one novella-length story, "Main Families in Morgana." Symbolism from Greek mythology unifies the stories, all of which are set in the Mississippi Delta town of Morgana over a 40-year period. The hero of "Moon Lake" and the guitarist in "Music from Spain" are Perseus figures. King MacLain, the protagonist of "Shower of Gold," is a sexually adventurous Zeus figure. -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature

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.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (September 14, 1956)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 015636090X
• ISBN-13: 978-0156360906
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #642,701 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
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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.