A Curtain of Green

When A Curtain of Green was published, it immediately established an unknown young writer from Mississippi as a uniquely original literary voice and a great American author. In her now-famous introduction to the collection, Katherine Anne Porter wrote that "there is even in the smallest story a sense of power in reserve which makes me believe firmly that, splendid beginning that it is, it is only a beginning." In this collection are many of the stories that have become acknowledged masterpieces: the hilarious over-the-top family drama that drives a small-town resentful postmistress to explain "Why I Live at the P.O."; the deeply satisfying thwarting of a trio of busybodies by a "feeble-minded" young woman in "Lily Daw and the Three Ladies"; the poignant pilgrimage of elderly Phoenix Jackson in "A Worn Path"; and the boldly experimental and jubilantly playful literary improvisation of "Powerhouse," inspired by a performance Eudora Welty saw by Fats Waller. Porter added that "[Welty] has simply an eye and an ear sharp, shrewd, and true as a tuning fork." Like the jazz tunes Powerhouse bangs out on the piano, Welty's stories remain as fresh, alive, and unpredictable today as when they first appeared.