WHAT THERE IS TO SAY WE HAVE SAID, a long, lively friendship in letters

WHAT THERE IS TO SAY WE HAVE SAID: The Correspondence of Eudora Welty and William Maxwell
Suzanne Marrs, ed.
Mariner Books non-affiliate Amazon link
$12.99 ebook editions, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: For over fifty years, Eudora Welty and William Maxwell, two of our most admired writers, penned letters to each other. They shared their worries about work and family, literary opinions and scuttlebutt, moments of despair and hilarity. Living half a continent apart, their friendship was nourished and maintained by their correspondence.

What There Is to Say We Have Said bears witness to Welty and Maxwell’s editorial relationships—both in his capacity as New Yorker editor and in their collegial back-andforth on their work. It’s also a chronicle of the literary world of the time; read talk of James Thurber, William Shawn, Katherine Anne Porter, J. D. Salinger, Isak Dinesen, William Faulkner, John Updike, Virginia Woolf, Walker Percy, Ford Madox Ford, John Cheever, and many more. It is a treasure trove of reading recommendations.

Here, Suzanne Marrs—Welty’s biographer and friend—offers an unprecedented window into two intertwined lives. Through careful collection of more than 300 letters as well as her own insightful introductions, she has created a record of a remarkable friendship and a lyrical homage to the forgotten art of letter writing.

My Review: You already know who Eudora Welty is or you wouldn't've clicked on the review. I assume most of my readers know who William Maxwell is as well, since his fame hasn't precisely been shrinking. You'll realize, since the correspondents are monadnocks of American literature, that this book was a Must-Have-or-Expire purchase. Lucky me, I had then (2011) a lovely man in my life who knew me well and gifted the book to me.

No one who loved the mid-century American literary scene could've known the deep and abiding affection Welty, a nominally single woman, and Maxwell, a thoroughly married man, carried for each other. In that time, perhaps even more than this one, men and women were not friends unless there were benefits, in the public's mind at least. The fact that Maxwell was The New Yorker editor whose staunch championing of Welty's work would've added to the cynical public's certainty that there must've been somethin' goin' on. Nothing could've been further from the truth: Maxwell, in a letter to Welty, says he stopped reading a letter in a famous couple's correspondence because it contained an intimate endearment as a salutation!

Not the sort of man to sexually harass his woman friend.

But think of the work these two giants did, together...his editorial eye made her work much better, as she readily acknowledged; he felt her talent was matchless and merely benefited from burnishing...and in their own rights. I can insert a list of delicious works by both, a long, long list, for you to romp through, but those things are never complete even when both authors are dead. My tastes have changed, your tastes aren't necessarily much like mine. Suffice it to say, for today, you should go read my reviews of So Long, See You Tomorrow among Maxwell's ouevre, and One Writer's Beginnings among Welty's. They're not even small samples, it's true, but there are reasons to read these two revealing, personal narratives in conjunction with this collection of letters.

The course of a long friendship contains many bends and twists. Marrs doesn't comment extensively on Welty's seeming reticence about her long-time lover, married man Kenneth Millar, beyond noting it; I expect it was starchy Maxwell destroying "compromising" things if it existed at all. In honesty, I expect it was more likely the result of a natural reticence, a reserve, that these immensely and intensely creative people maintained in their ordinary lives. What isn't said can't be regretted with anything like the bitterness of blurting too much. A surprise to me was the long breaks between the mention of one or another's creative projects' progress. I was half-expecting a white-hot exchange of intensely felt writerly frustrations! Instead, it's the quotidian...what Mother did, what Brookie said...that they reserved for each other's eyes. It is far more intimate than mere sex. It is Love.

That is the shocking truth of this book. These two people loved each other. They cared deeply about each other, knew the foibles and failings each self-reproached, and supported supported supported until the shadows passed. Can there be a more perfect way to have a friend? A more fortunate discovery than this kind of friend?

I can't excerpt enough from any letter to make you feel the deep and abiding caring each carried for the other. I can tell you that the collection's title, which seems a bit overstated and awkward on first reading, is the only possible title for the work. It is verbatim from a letter, late in the writers' lives, sent by Maxwell to Welty. She has apologized for her long-delayed response to him. He says, "Dearest Eudora, what there is to say we have said, in one way or another.”

If ever in your life you have a friend to whom you can say, or write such a thing, or from whom you can expect it, you are a lucky person indeed.

Author Marrs has also written Eudora Welty: A Biography, which I possess but have not yet read...after all, I need a retirement project as much as people who work do!...and fully expect to enjoy as much as I did this delightful work.