{"product_id":"eudora-welty-and-mystery-jacob-agner-9781496842718","title":"Eudora Welty and Mystery: Hidden in Plain Sight","description":"Contributions by Jacob Agner, Sarah Gilbreath Ford, Katie Berry Frye, Michael Kreyling, Andrew B. Leiter, Rebecca Mark, Suzanne Marrs, Tom Nolan, Michael Pickard, Harriet Pollack, and Victoria Richard \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eEudora Welty's ingenious play with readers' expectations made her a cunning writer, a paramount modernist, a short story artist of the first rank, and a remarkable literary innovator. In her signature puzzle-texts, she habitually engages with familiar genres and then delights readers with her transformations and nonfulfillment of conventions\u003ci\u003e. Eudora Welty and Mystery: Hidden in Plain Sight\u003c\/i\u003e reveals how often that play is with mystery, crime, and detective fiction genres, popular fiction forms often condescended to in literary studies, but unabashedly beloved by Welty throughout her lifetime. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Put another way, Welty often creates her stories' secrets by both evoking and displacing crime fiction conventions. Instead of restoring order with a culminating reveal, her story-puzzles characteristically allow mystery to linger and thicken. The mystery pursued becomes mystery elsewhere. The essays in this collection shift attention from narratives, characters, and plots as they have previously been understood by unearthing enigmas hidden within those constructions. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Some of these new readings continue Welty's investigation of hegemonic whiteness and southern narratives of race--outlining these in chalk as outright crime stories. Other essays show how Welty anticipated the regendering of the form now so characteristic of contemporary women mystery writers. Her tender and widely ranging personal correspondence with the hard-boiled American crime writer Ross Macdonald is also discussed. Together these essays make the case that across her career, Eudora Welty was arguably one of the genre's greatest double agents, and, to apply the titles of Macdonald's novels to her inventiveness with the form, she is its \"underground woman,\" its unexpected \"sleeping beauty.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Jacob Agner\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 1496842715\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781496842718\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University Press of Mississippi\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 12\/28\/2022\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 252\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.82lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.57d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReview Citation(s): \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e 12\/19\/2022","brand":"Jacob Agner","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":44071525220607,"sku":"9781496842718","price":30.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_99158f28-bfee-40b8-a236-d9af7fe8c4d0.jpg?v=1685436616","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/eudora-welty-and-mystery-jacob-agner-9781496842718","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}