Eudora Welty al New Yorker

Gentlemen,
I suppose you'd be more interested in even a slight-o'-hand trick than you'd be in an application for a position with your magazine, but as usual you can't have the thing you want most.

I have seen an untoward amount of picture galleries and 15¢ movies lately, and could review them with my old prosperous detachment, I think; in fact, I recently coined a general word for Matisse's pictures after seeing his latest at the Marie Harriman: concubineapple. That shows you how my mind works - quick, and away from the point….

How I would like to work for you! A little paragraph each morning - a little paragraph each night, if you can’t hire me from daylight to dark, although I would work like a slave. I can also draw like Mr. Thurber, in case he goes off the deep end.

Questa è una delle lettere che Eudora Welty scrisse al New Yorker. E' il 1933, Eudora Welty aveva 23 anni, si era laureata da poco, era a New York da sei settimane e aveva disperatamente bisogno di un lavoro. Nonostante l'intellegenza e l'umorismo della lettera, il New Yorker non l'assunse. La lettera è contenuta in un bel volume di prossima uscita, What There Is to Say We Have Said: The Correspondence of Eudora Welty and William Maxwell (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), a cura di Suzanne Marrs. newyorker.