Z 2330.000 Welty-Millar Letters

Biography/History:

By 1970, Eudora Welty was an established writer with numerous short stories to her credit, including "The Optimist's Daughter," published in 1969 in The New Yorker. In February, 1970, her novel, Losing Battles, was published and became a bestseller. She was interviewed in the April 12^th issue of The New York Times Book Review in her Jackson, Mississippi, home by Walter Clemons, who noticed mystery novels among the books in her living room. In the ensuing discussion, Welty admitted she had read all the books by Ross Macdonald, and even once written a fan letter to him, but had never mailed it.

Ross Macdonald was the principal pen name of Kenneth (Ken) Millar. Born on December 13, 1915, in Los Gatos, California, and raised in Canada, he went to graduate school at the University of Michigan, and taught high school in Kitchener, Canada. In 1938, he married Margaret Sturm, herself a mystery writer; they had one child, Linda Jane, born in 1939. Millar served in the United States Navy in World War II, and finished his doctorate at the University of Michigan in 1951, with a dissertation on Samuel Coleridge. In 1943, Millar wrote his first novel; by 1970 he was living in Santa Barbara, California, and as Ross Macdonald was a well-known writer of crime fiction, who had won awards from The British Crime Writers Association. Often compared to Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Millar was by then the author of twenty-one novels, fifteen of which concerned the adventures of fictional detective Lew Archer.

When Millar read Welty had almost mailed him a fan letter, he wrote her one of his own and posted it. Welty answered, and a regular correspondence ensued between them, lasting until 1980. Welty biographer Suzanne Marrs notes that their letters quickly came to include personal confidences: in December 1970, Millar wrote to Welty of his daughter's death the previous month.

Welty and Millar influenced each other's literary work and came into contact through professional activities. On February 14, 1971, Welty gave an extremely favorable review of Millar's new Archer novel, The Underground Man, in The New York Times Book Review. Millar wrote that Welty's endorsement would enhance his literary reputation; he had sometimes been dismissed as a writer of "crime fiction" not of serious literature. In May 1971, it was through Walter Clemons and other literary contacts that Millar, learned that Welty was also staying in The Algonquin Hotel. Millar was in New York to receive an award for his work from the Women's Advertising Council. Welty was on her way to an award ceremony for writer Reynolds Price. Millar introduced himself, brought Welty with him to a party at his publisher Alfred Knopf's residence, and spent the evening walking around New York and talking with her. Their correspondence continued while Welty expanded The Optimist's Daughter into a novel, and Welty credits Millar with giving her the idea of the image of "confluence" she placed in the novel (see April 30, 1972, letter in this collection). On his part, Millar sent his next Archer novel, Sleeping Beauty, in typescript form to Welty before its 1973 publication, and dedicated it to her; Welty's reaction to the novel and the dedication are described in the October 15, 1972, letter in this collection.

Millar and Welty's second meeting was not a private one, but part of a public celebration. May 2, 1973, was proclaimed Eudora Welty Day by Mississippi Governor William Waller, who also gave Welty the Governor's Outstanding Mississippian Award that day. Welty's friends were invited to come to Jackson for the occasion and the attendant celebrations. Although Margaret Millar could not come, Ken Millar did, walked around Jackson, and talked with other Welty friends including Reynolds Price and New York Times Sunday Book Review critic Nona Balakian. It was also Millar's only meeting with an admirer of his work, Welty's longtime literary agent Diarmuid Russell, who died of cancer in December 1973.

A few days after Eudora Welty Day, Welty learned she had received the Pulitzer Prize for The Optimist's Daughter. In late 1973, Millar received the Popular Culture Association Award of Merit, and in May 1974, he received the Grandmaster Award from the Mystery Writers of America. 1976 saw the release of The Drowning Pool, a film adaptation of his 1950 novel, starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. Other attempts were made to bring Ross Macdonald novels to television; in 1976 Millar himself began drafting a screenplay for his 1968 novel, The Instant Enemy. 1976 also saw the publication of his last Archer novel, The Blue Hammer, although essays and short stories continued to appear, and in 1979, his A Collection of Reviews was published in a limited edition.

During this time, Welty and Millar continued their literary association: Welty was one of the writers he approached for help in choosing authors for his 1974 collection, Great Stories of Suspense. Welty wrote to Millar of her work on "The Shadow Club"; she sent him essays or papers she was writing; and acting on a suggestion Millar made to her in 1972 and again in 1973, Welty created a collection of her essays and reviews. In 1978, when The Eye of the Story was published; Welty dedicated it to Ken Millar.

Three meetings of Welty and Millar occurred during these years, all in Santa Barbara, where she attended the Writers Conference in 1975, 1976, and 1977. During the conferences, Welty and Millar alternated in giving introductory remarks for each other, she introducing him in 1975, he introducing her in 1977. The conferences gave her the opportunity to meet Millar's friends: he introduced her to bookseller Ralph B. Sipper who had helped him obtain pieces for his suspense stories collection, and took her to his usually exclusively-male writers' luncheon. Welty had the chance to converse with the Millars: to drive and walk by the ocean with Ken Millar; to learn of the environmentalist activities in which both he and Margaret engaged; and to visit with him and Margaret at their house.

Biographers of Welty and Millar have remarked on the tension in the Millar household that marred her visits in 1976 and 1977. Whether or not there was animosity towards Welty on Margaret Millar's part, it was clear that both Millars by this time had health problems. Margaret Millar had a cancer removed from her face in October 1975; a lung cancer operation in the summer of 1977; shingles in early 1978; and later that year, eye trouble that would be diagnosed as macular degeneration and lead to near blindness. His biographer Tom Nolan dates Ken Millar's memory troubles as starting as early as 1971. By 1976, Millar needed editing suggestions from Robert Easton and Ralph Sipper and proofing help from William Campbell Gault to finish The Blue Hammer. Welty noted his anxiety and forgetfulness during her June visit. From 1976 to 1981, Millar sought medical help: testing by a psychologist in 1976; treatment by a psychiatrist in 1977; unsuccessful surgery to relieve pressure on the brain in 1981. By April 1981, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

Millar's letters to Welty had slowed by 1978 and stopped coming in early 1980. Welty, however, still wrote to Millar, sometimes through Sipper's agency, until November 1982. As early as 1976, she wrote letters that were supportive emotionally, and comforting about his memory loss. She also wrote about him or his situation in her unpublished stories, "The Shadow Club" and "Henry." She received news of him from his friends, particularly Sipper who handled some of his business affairs. Welty wrote a foreword for a collection of Millar's autobiographical writings that Sipper had arranged, Self-Portrait: Ceaselessly Into the Past, published at the end of 1981.

In August 1982, Margaret and Ken Millar telephoned Welty, and Margaret sent Welty a letter with a photograph of Ken, and the news that he no longer knew where he was. After asking Margaret's permission, and with dining and meeting arrangements made by Ralph and Carol Sipper, Welty went to Santa Barbara on November 15, 1982, for a last visit with Ken Millar. Margaret's volatile behavior caused difficulties, but Ralph Sipper confirmed that Ken Millar responded to Welty's presence, and was more lucid around her. But, by mid-December, Millar, who had started falling occasionally, was moved to a rest home. On July 18, 1973, Kenneth Millar died. His ashes were scattered in the Santa Barbara channel.

After his death, Eudora Welty worked with Ralph Sipper on other projects in Ken Millar's memory. The first was a collection of essays by Millar and his friends on Ross Macdonald's work that Sipper edited, Inward Journey: Ross Macdonald. To it Welty contributed "Finding the Connections." Then, in 1985, Sipper introduced the foreword written by Ross Macdonald to Faulkner's "The Hound," and the review of "Intruder in the Dust" penned by Eudora Welty, and placed them in one work, The Faulkner Investigation.

Scope and Content:

This collection consists of twenty letters, arranged chronologically, written by Eudora Welty to Kenneth Millar between May 1970 and October 1981. These letters both document the friendship of Welty and Millar, and reflect Welty's dedication to the craft of writing. Most of the letters are handwritten or contain handwritten additions or closings. With the exception of the letter of June 16, 1971, postmarked Lexington, Kentucky, all of the letters were written or sent from Welty's residence in Jackson, Mississippi. They serve as a complement to those written by Welty to Kenneth Millar found in Z/0301.000/S, the WELTY (EUDORA) COLLECTION, Series 29a: Correspondence by Eudora Welty.

The twenty letters include several that mark significant moments in the friendship of Welty and Millar. The letter of May 10, 1970, is the first letter written by Eudora Welty to Ken Millar, sent in response to his "fan" letter to her. The June 3, 1971, letter, from Lexington, Kentucky, was written just after her first meeting with Millar, and expresses her happiness at the evening. The letters of June 22, 1975, July 2-4, 1976, and July 3, 1977, document her reactions to her three visits with Ken and Margaret Millar in Santa Barbara, California.

The letters in general bear witness to the growing friendship of Welty and Millar not only through the increasing informality of the salutations and the warm closings of her letters, as noted by Welty's biographer Suzanne Marrs, but through the events in their personal lives that Welty and Millar share with each other. Welty relates anecdotes of her travels and stories of her family (June 16, 1971); includes descriptions of family gatherings at Thanksgiving (1979) and at Christmas (letters of January 12 and December 29, 1976); and encloses family photographs (June 22, 1975). Welty responds to Millar's revelations of personal aspects of his life in turn: she alludes to the loss of his daughter, and discusses the difficulties Margaret Millar experienced with her health. Two letters apparently written in August 1976 directly address the onset of Millar's memory loss, discussing the nature of memory and revealing Welty's efforts to provide emotional support. A December 29, 1976, letter reflects Welty's discomfort when she feared Millar took a suggestion she made amiss: she provides a lengthy explanation of her offer to read some of Millar's work while it was still in draft form, describing a similar effort her friend, The New Yorker editor William Maxwell, had made to help her during the writing of Losing Battles.

Welty wrote to Millar of other friends of hers, including Elizabeth Bowen, Mary Louise Aswell, and Aristide and Mary Mian. There is a letter mentioning John Robinson (January 12, 1976), and a humorous description of a visit from Reynolds Price (September 9, 1977). The September 9, 1977, letter and the next one of September 19, 1977, are particularly of interest for Welty's lengthy depiction of Katherine Anne Porter and her friendship, and Welty's own reaction to Porter's early support of her work as receiving a "charge to do right – to do right by our craft."

Welty writes to Millar not only as a friend, but as one writer discussing her craft with another. Her letters mention their professional activities: the party at publisher Alfred A. Knopf's the first evening they met (letter of June 3, 1971); the awarding of honorary degrees to her by Denison University and the University of the South (June 16, 1971); the conference at Santa Barbara at which Millar introduced her (June 22, 1975 letter); her work on the Pulitzer committee (January 12-13, 1976); and an Arts Council meeting in Washington, D.C. (letter with supplied date of Sept. 9, 1977). She relates an anecdote concerning the musical adaptation of her work "The Robber Bridegroom," (July 2-4, 1976). In the same year, Welty repeatedly inquired after Millar's work on a film version of one of his works, probably referring to his screenplay of The Instant Enemy.

Welty's correspondence mentions books she and Millar exchanged, or acquired, including her acquisition of Blindness by Henry Green from Millar's friend, Ralph A. Sipper (September 9, 1977); a book about seals she herself had sent Millar (June 16, 1971), and the introduction to Uncle Silas by Elizabeth Bowen she sent Millar (June 22, 1975). Welty's letters include more detailed discussions of a book by Matthew J. Bruccoli on F. Scott Fitzgerald that Millar had sent her (June 16 and July 1, 1971), and Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White (January 12-13, 1976). In these letters, Welty specifically describes the features of the books that she likes, such as Bruccoli's investigation and organization of evidence, and Collins's careful plot structure.

There are brief mentions of Margaret Millar's work. Welty noted her friend Mary Mian's interest in Margaret Millar's books (July 3, 1977), and indicated her own. In an early letter Welty admitted she had read Margaret Millar's books before she read Ken's, and that she had liked Margaret's Beyond this Point are Monsters (January 24, 1971). Welty also stated that she was looking forward to reading her Ask for Me Tomorrow (January 12, 1976), and on several occasions offers congratulations or comments on Margaret Millar's new books.

Welty also passed on to Millar news of the appreciation shown by Elizabeth Bowen (June 22, 1975) and Mary Louise Aswell (July 2, 1976) of his own work. But the letters Welty writes describing Millar's work and her own reactions to them are especially interesting. For they specifically note elements of his writing that interested her, or images that she found striking, and so reveal some of her own ideas on writing. In her first letter to him (May 10, 1970), she mentions being intrigued by Millar's idea of a common North American language, and then discusses The Chill, and its construction and character development. Among several letters with brief mentions of Millar's works, there are ones describing details of her review of Millar's The Underground Man (January 24, 1971); and elements she enjoyed in The Blue Hammer (February 23, 1976). Welty's October 15, 1972, letter is devoted almost exclusively to her reaction to Millar's Sleeping Beauty, which he had dedicated to her. In two letters discussing The Zebra Striped Hearse (July 2-4, 1976, Thanksgiving 1979) Welty comments not only on that book, but on Millar's technique of writing, and on writing in general. In the July 2-4, 1976 letter, she describes the importance of "the action" of "seeing" to a writer, bringing to mind her own later work, One Writer's Beginnings.

Further insight into Welty's own work can be gained in letters responding to Millar's reading of Welty's works, several of which she sent him. There are mentions of her essays on Willa Cather and Chekhov (October 24, 1973; July 3, 1977), and of a review she wrote of a work of Katherine Anne Porter (probably "The Never-Ending Wrong"), as well as a short description of The Eye of the Story, which she had dedicated to Millar (July 3, 1977). Welty alludes as well to her work on "The Shadow Club," (February 23, 1976) which would remain unpublished. Two letters (June 16 and July 1, 1971), refer to "A Still Moment," calling it a "convergence story," discussing the image of the bird, the flaws of the story, and what Welty learned about writing from it. Welty writes the influence of her early life on "The Hitch-hikers" and "The Winds," (September 19, [1977]), and on The Optimist's Daughter, referring to the novel as "closer to me by far than anything I ever before tried to write." In that letter of April 30, 1972, Welty also expressed pleasure at Millar's favorable reception of it, and told him that she had been influenced in writing The Optimist's Daughter by his image of "confluence."

The last letter of this collection of correspondence was written by Welty on October 30, 1981, when it was clear that Millar had Alzheimer's disease, and after he had stopped answering her letters. It provides further evidence of the support Welty offered Millar during his illness, and her emotional response to his plight. In it, Welty focuses on topics familiar to Millar, stating her pleasure at receiving a copy of the recently-published Self-Portrait: Ceaselessly Into the Past, praising Ralph Sipper's work in editing it, and mentioning her foreword and Millar's introduction of her at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference in 1977. She continues with anecdotes of her recent train trip through his Ontario, known to him from his childhood; and speaks of her visit with their mutual friends, Julian and Kathleen Symons. She closes the letter: "You are in my thoughts every day and dear to my heart. As always, Eudora."

Series Identification:

1. Correspondence. 1970-1981; n.d.

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