''Losing Battles'' is the last novel written by

Eudora Welty Eudora Alice Welty (April 13, 1909 – July 23, 2001) was an American short story writer, novelist and photographer who wrote about the American South. Her novel ''The Optimist's Daughter'' won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. Welty received numerous ...

. It was released on April 13, 1970. Its setting is two days—a Sunday and Monday morning—in a 1930s farm in Mississippi. It was her first novel to make the best seller lists, to Welty's surprise.

Development

Welty wrote the novel as a challenge to herself. In an interview for ''

The Paris Review ''The Paris Review'' is a quarterly English-language literary magazine established in Paris in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. In its first five years, ''The Paris Review'' published works by Jack Kerouac, Phi ...

,'' she said:

I wanted to see if I could do something that was new for me: translating every thought and feeling into action and speech, speech being another form of action—to bring the whole life of it off through the completed gesture, so to speak. I felt that I’d been writing too much by way of description, of introspection on the part of my characters. I tried to see if I could make everything shown, brought forth, without benefit of the author’s telling any more about what was going on inside the characters’ minds and hearts. For me, this makes almost certainly for comedy—which I love to write best of all. Now I see it might be a transition toward writing a play.

Welty set the novel in the 1930s because she wanted to write about "a family who had ''nothing''" and the Depression provided that opportunity. Originally, she had not planned to write a novel; in the ''Paris Review'' interview she said, "I’m a short-story writer who writes novels the hard way, and by accident". The novel's first edition was published on Welty's 61st birthday.

Reception

The novel's reception was generally very positive, with many critics praising its "geniality and humour". ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' reviewer and academic James Boatwright gave strong praise, calling it "a beautiful and valuable novel" which had an "overwhelming effect

hat A hat is a head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorporate mech ...

is comic—lyrical and touching." Joyce Carol Oates was not as enthusiastic, describing it as "entertainment", and less successful at probing the characters' "psychological concerns". Scholar Larry J. Reynolds challenged that assessment, noting that "beneath its entertaining surface

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intense struggle for survival ..subtly and carefully told."

References

{{Eudora Welty Novels by Eudora Welty 1970 American novels Novels set in the 1930s Novels set in Mississippi