{"id":84770,"date":"2015-04-13T19:46:09","date_gmt":"2015-04-13T23:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=84770"},"modified":"2015-04-14T10:16:24","modified_gmt":"2015-04-14T14:16:24","slug":"sailing-with-faulkner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/04\/13\/sailing-with-faulkner\/","title":{"rendered":"Sailing with Faulkner"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Welty<\/a>

Eudora Welty watering in her garden.<\/p><\/div>\n

A letter from Eudora Welty to Jean Stafford, September 2, 1949. Faulkner and Welty had met once before, when she presented him with the National Institute of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Fiction<\/em>.<\/p>\n

William Faulkner took us sailing on his sailboat on a big inland lake they\u2019ve cut out of the woods there\u2014waves and everything, big. We were late getting there\u2014got lost and went to Blackjack, Miss.\u2014and then when we found the lake there was Faulkner, cruising around, and headed right for us, through the dead cypresses and stumps and all, pulled down his sail and took the oar, and hollered, \u201cYou all better take your shoes off and get ready to wade,\u201d which we did, sinking\u2014got pulled on board and then we all sailed around, all quiet and nice\u2014what a wonderful person he is, the most profound face, something that nearly breaks your heart though, just in the clasp of his hand\u2014a strange kind of life he leads in Oxford, two lives really. We never, either time I\u2019ve been with him, talked about anything bookish of course\u2014it\u2019s his life, not his opinions,\u2014that seems to be with you all the time. He can do or make anything, and can sail beautifully. We got in his 20 year old Ford touring car which he hunts and fishes and goes over the farm in, with holes in the floor (\u201cwell, I know where all the holes are\u201d) and when we couldn\u2019t open a back door he said, \u201cThere\u2019s a cupboard latch on it,\u201d you ought to see that car.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A letter from Eudora Welty to Jean Stafford, September 2, 1949. Faulkner and Welty had met once before, when she presented him with the National Institute of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Fiction. William Faulkner took us sailing on his sailboat on a big inland lake they\u2019ve cut out of the woods there\u2014waves and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1900],"tags":[10484,6461,158,3339,17744,9087,3581],"class_list":["post-84770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-correspondence","tag-cars","tag-celebrity","tag-encounters","tag-eudora-welty","tag-jean-stafford","tag-sailing","tag-william-faulkner"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhen Eudora Welty Went Sailing with Faulkner<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In a 1949 letter, Welty relays her boating adventure with Faulkner.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/04\/13\/sailing-with-faulkner\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sailing with Faulkner by Dan Piepenbring\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"April 13, 2015 \u2013 A letter from Eudora Welty to Jean Stafford, September 2, 1949. 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