What There Is to Say We Have Said: The Correspondence of Eudora Welty and William Maxwell

"A complex improvisation, carried on for years, by two artists for whom nothing in the realm of literature or feeling was remote." Alec Wilkinson 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, they nourished and maintained their friendship through correspondence. "What There Is to Say We Have Said "bears witness to Welty and Maxwell s editorial relationships both in his capacity as her "New Yorker "editor and in their collegial back and forth on their work. It also serves as 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 three hundred letters as well as her own insightful introductions, she has created a record of a remarkable friendship, an illuminating look at artists in community, and a lyrical homage to the forgotten art of letter writing."