As Welty adds in her autobiography, there were Edna Earles all over the South. The town was neatly divided into black and white neighborhoods, but my grandfathers house had been deliberately chosen because it was right on the border between the two and my cousins and I played and talked with black children every day. 1. New York: A Lisa Drew Book, 2004. The Malones are indistinguishable from each other, and so are the Doyles. 20Still, going back to William Wallace, I can hear someone somewhere asking about his name. This was not because it was dangerous, or unseemly; it was simply against the code. But the history of the South itself came to me mainly through the stories I heard in my family. In keeping with the Scottish link, it might be reversed to be read the son of James. He made a sign for me to follow him in what was now a blind tunnel steaming with sweat and humidity. Grady is already a sort of father to Brucie. I say this because when, published a review that claimed that the stories were about as human as a fish. Eudora Welty was never much affected by reviews, good or bad, but this one raised her hackles, and she wrote to Diarmuid Russell: I saw the. It is a plunge into the inner depths that strains every fibre of his being, and tests his spirit to the limit. I did recall that it had fascinated (and puzzled) me by mixing together a multitude of myths and legends, reaching far and wide in time and in place, including the local and the regional. The white families, like my own, had migrated there from their farms in South Georgia in the hope of improving their prospects. For much of the story at least, William Wallace and the other characters are closer to the simple stock figures of song and legend than they are to men and women in the real world. date the date you are citing the material. Sometimes referred to as a "network of networks," the Internet emerged in the United States in the 1970s but did not become visible to the general public until the early 1990s. Eudora Welty is comically playing on the popular refrain that such a collection of rural men and boys could be found only in the Deep South. Twain, Mark. When William Wallace praises Hazels intelligence, Virgil agrees: Shes a lot smarter than her cousins in Beulah Edna Earle never did get to be what youd call a heavy thinker. The Wide Net (185) :Eudora Welty Breaking up of the party Discussed by Jenna Campbell William Wallace Jameson Hazel In old 1300s Great war hero of Scotland Williams Wife 3 mths Pregnate Virgil in the wars for Scottish Independence Conflicted main character, Best friend of William almost like his voice of reason Also In Dante's Inferno When was Delta Wedding set?? Sam wore them around his head, with a knot over his forehead and loops around his ears, and Robbie Bell walked behind and stared at them (Welty, Collected Stories 179). But more than anything, in rereading the story I realized that my own fading or forgotten memories about growing up in the South had somehow dictated my choice, and that the mythic failures, or inadequacies, of The Wide Net to match the intractable selfhood of the living individual clearly harmonized with my own experience. with a celebration of memory that for her has now become a personal creed, and has allowed her to begin her life as a writer. His full name is William Wallace Jamieson. Once again, however, we cannot escape the fact that names are chosen for us. The Wide Net. He had nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by defying convention, but I do not think his prestige in the white community was ever at risk. Boys, he said, I didnt run, but I did some mighty high walking. I hope I have not run away from the myth of the South, but I admit I may have done some high walking. Thank you for the indulgence, and the invitation. Later on I was given an army jeep salvaged from the war. 7William Wallace Jamieson, the first words of the story, and a name I will return to, is a young man who has been married to his wife, Hazel, for a year. Trans. [] Magnolia and live-oak never die. HIGHLIGHTS who: February et al. This is the truth that William Wallace discovers by himself, and somehow memory, lost and found, is crucial to the discovery. Walker Percy has written somewhere that a boy who has a Hamilton from his grandfather is a true son of the South, and I still have mine. I realized that the origins of these myths had to be traced and analyzed, not least of all to better understand their impact on American culture and history. She continues several pages later: It is our inward journey that leads us through timeforward or back, seldom in a straight line, most often spiraling. Perhaps nature itself, the mother of all myth, is the true heart of the story. My grandfather, as I will discuss later on, was one of the reasons I had trouble with the grand southern myths I discovered at the university. The second date is today's Hazel wands were traditionally used as dowsing rods. The Collected Stories. There is the miraculous catch of fish, and the hymns William and Virgil hear while walking back home: They were having the Sacred Harp Sing on the grounds of an old white church glimmering there at the crossroads, far below. When William arrives alone at his house, he sees something he had never seen, a rainbow at night (Welty. The strongest proof of identity is the capacity to change, to slip from one role to another if necessary, to pass through the modes of being that nature and time demand, but always to remain at one with oneself. Sunlight was scarce and each turn of the river took one deeper into a ripe darkness smelling of frog spawn and wild magnolia. Eudora Welty could use myth otherwise, as she does in such works as her masterpiece. Neither does Eudora Welty in her autobiography, and she is one of the most southern writers who ever existed. The second half of the story is rich in events, but the outcome is never in doubt. To begin with, the southern world I grew up in, a small coastal town in Florida in the years after WWII, was not all that representative of the South. There seemed to be a force in the family that drove it to act or speak out, with or without the common consensus. All of these stories were about life around the old family farms and houses back in Homerville, Georgia, not far from the edge of the Okefenokee Swamp. No wonder Eudora Welty was ready to lash out if anyone else showed the same dimwittedness as the reviewer in Time Magazine. As we discover, we remember; remembering, we discover; and most intensely do we experience this when our separate journeys converge (Welty, One Writers Beginnings 102). County judges are elected, and he never lost an election because there was never any opposition. 27Even as I write, the memories come flooding, but two or three should be enough to make my case. And after a few minutes she took him by the hand and led him into the house, smiling as if she were smiling down on him (Welty, Collected Stories 188). The human drama is my main concern, however, and the one day in the life of William Wallace, wild as it is, is much easier to summarize. Subscribe for more videos like this: http://youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=92YplusWhen Eudora Welty read at 92Y on April 22, 1985, it had been 32 y. William Wallace takes the lead back to Dover, and back to Hazel who has never left their house. Once every now and then I rode my horse to school where there was a rail fence and where the teachers allowed us to eat our lunch sitting down by the horses. He was a tall dignified man who dressed in a white suit and always had a Stetson hat on his head or in his hand. They all carried their classic illustrations. William Wallace is beset on all sides by distractions, advice, omens, signs of all sorts. I have tried to explain, to myself more than to anyone else, that the multiplication of myth and legend in The Wide Net is there, in all its rich jumbling, to nudge the reader elsewhere. He plays his role well, lost in his own performance, an unstoppable gramophone of platitudes, talking just to hear himself talk, but sometimes, almost despite himself, repeating nuggets of wisdom that bear directly on the quest itself: Were walking along in the changing-time. N 102 Library of America Series. But Hazel is no rabbit as Virgil makes clear: Anybody can freeze a. , that wants to he says, and promptly chases the rabbit away: Was you out catching cotton-tails, or was you out catching your wife? (Welty. At least the small boys have names that set them apart. William Wallace knows now that Hazel holds the secret mystery that will continue to make him more of his own man, and he is willing to follow her lead as long as it takes: He climbed to his feet too and stood beside her trying to look where she looked. 1 Mar. It was a huge success, a romantic tome so overwritten and full of adjectives that Eudora Welty in her autobiography says her mother told her it used to be recommended to take it out with a chair when watering the roses. Old Doc lives on a hill and can usually be found in his rocking chair. Ed. It is a plunge into the inner depths that strains every fibre of his being, and tests his spirit to the limit. and Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. As Mr Duval finished, and stood up to leave, he reached out to me and shook my hand: Your granddaddy was the only white man I ever loved.. . To me, there is more irony than history in the name William Wallace. Then there are the other adult members of the search party, the six Doyle brothers and their dogs, and the eight Malone brothers, eight giants with great long black eyelashes (Welty, Collected Stories 173). The never forgetting is another gift of becoming oneself, the power of memory. Corrections? William Jamieson comes home one night from being out with friends and finds a note from his pregnant wife, who is threatening suicide by jumping off bridge He calls his friends and they go to the river searching for her, they also recruit bystanders to help out . He himself would have been too modest to mention it. 28What was missing in this southern town was southern history, or at least any striking display of history. Right before it begins in force, a holy-ghostly benediction or aeolian charma wind touched each man on the forehead (Welty. publication online or last modification online. Press in the Library of Southern Civilization series. What touched me more, and what I remember best now, were the lives around me while growing up. Geographically, I had lived outside as a boy in the steamy heat of southern Florida. Note: When citing an online source, it is important to include all necessary dates. To me, there is more irony than history in the name William Wallace. In The Wide Net, William Wallace must make his own way, and history, southern or otherwise, mythical or not, does not provide him (or the reader) with any guidelines. He walked through the streets of colored town as naturally as he walked to work. What I want to single out is not his place in the community, which was central, but his difference from most of the adult white men I knew and observed. 10The Malones are like horses, and the Doyles are never without their dogs. No police, no first responders, no telephones, no helicopters just the local men and boys with an old fish net. Ignorant as I was, I had no doubt I was southern, born and bred. But during its moment, all that is remembered joins, and livesthe old and the young, the past and the present, the living and the dead (Welty. Then he announced Boys, look right here, the Judge is his granddaddy. He saw that the bodies of the frozen birds had fallen out of the trees, and he fell down and wept for his father and mother, to whom he had not said good-bye (Welty, First Love,, (and thus the collection itself) concludes with the portrait of a young woman who is rejected, and is forced to face absolute desolation and a serial rape. Ben Forkner, Converging Toward the Human: Myth and Theory in "The Wide Net" (and me),Journal of the Short Story in English [En ligne], 67|Autumn 2016, mis en ligne le 01 dcembre 2018, consult le 02 mars 2023. As a matter of fact, he was a pillar of the community. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). So I grew up surrounded by southern voices. There doesn't seem to be a regularization effect from very high depth in residual net- works as wide networks with the same number of parameters as thin ones can learn same or better representations. Eudora Welty: A Biography. What interests me more as the years go on is the life story of the individual southerner. 171). eNotes.com will help you with any book or any question. By Alexa's traffic estimates bigpicture.net placed at 30,366 position over the world, while the largest amount of its visitors comes from India, where it takes 35,646 place. Soon after his triumphant dive, William Wallace smiles for the first time, and falls asleep, but not for long. I benefited from these books as much as anyone. The Pearl River is the prime example in The Wide Net and therefore the source of selfhood that will save William Wallace. The packet switching technology was essential to the development of . Later on I was given an army jeep salvaged from the war. In many respects he cherished the community as much as his family, but it had to be the whole community, white and black. Escape the fact that names are chosen for us requires login ) any Book or any question rocking. 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