Reynolds Price: The Source of Prophecy

More than twenty years ago, my friend Eudora Welty introduced me to Reynolds Price. Eudora had long thought of Reynolds as a son, and she wanted us to know each other. In fact, she expected that we would like each other. And we did. After our first meeting, Reynolds told Eudora that I had an open and honest face, too open and honest to thrive in academic politics. When she repeated that assessment to me, I was amused and delighted, and my delight increased over the years as Reynolds adopted me as a sort of little sister and provided brotherly support. Now, in facing his death, I feel as Eudora did when her friend Frank Lyell died: "I'm at an age when the loss of friends is not considered surprising.... But I am not going to learn to accept it for being not surprising, I'm going to hate it & protest it straight ahead—I'm indignant for their sakes—up to my last breath. I testify to their absence" (Letter to Millar). Here then is my testimony to Reynolds's absence, to the depth of his friendship with Eudora Welty, and to the prophetic nature of his early fiction.¹

In February 1955, just three weeks after he had turned twenty-two, Duke University undergraduate Reynolds Price met Eudora Welty. That first meeting was almost delayed. Eudora was scheduled to arrive at the Durham train station in the wee hours, but wary of cloying student attention, she had asked not to be met. Reynolds chose to disregard her request—he knew that finding a cab after midnight in Durham would prove difficult. So there he was, in his ice cream suit (according to Eudora's memory), to meet her and to promise immediately that he would not trap her in conversation. That, as Humphrey Bogart said to Claude Raines in Casablanca, was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

During her stint at Duke, Eudora saw a great deal of Reynolds, but most importantly, she read a story Reynolds had written. She was impressed, and she told him so. Later she wrote to reiterate her praise. She was grateful for having been collected at the depot, she noted, but added that

it was more than the welcome, it was the pleasure of meeting and talking, and I'm delighted to have become acquainted with your writing ... I hope to have the chance to see more.... If there's ever anything useful I could do and you know of it, I look for you to let me know. As you may have heard, writers get along on one another's little notes and bits of information passed along, all their lives, and if you should ever want to try for a Guggenheim, for instance, I should feel very pleased to be named as a reference.

(7 March 1955)

This offer was far from a perfunctory one. Within a month or so, Eudora volunteered to send "Michael Egerton" out to "a place or two." And a month after that, when Reynolds and Eudora were both in New York, they went to dinner and a show and had time for talk about a new story of his, one titled "A Chain of Love." Back home, Reynolds wrote to express his gratitude for her encouragement, and Eudora responded,

You know all I did was say what I thought, and you don't owe me a thing for that! I wouldn't want you to feel anything but my warm appreciation and pleasure, my admiration and high expectations— practically a prophecy, I guess that amounts to. I'm the one [who] owes you thanks for the cheer and reassurance it gives me to see a young writer coming along who's so undoubtedly good."

([13 July 1955])

In an effort to be sure Reynolds would come along into public view, Eudora showed both "Michael Egerton" and "A Chain of Love" to her agent Diarmuid Russell, who agreed to represent the young writer. And in the coming years, Eudora would gladly respond to Reynolds's requests for advice about other stories and would put...