Noel Polk, Thank You
Résumé
Noel’s kindness and enthusiasm played a great part in what still remains for me a magic encounter with Eudora Welty herself and with some major early critics: the inauguration on November 10–12, 1977, of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi for which Bill Ferris, its new director, had asked Professor Louis Dollarhide to organize a symposium honoring Eudora Welty, “Mississippi’s greatest living author.” Noel offered hospitality in Hattiesburg, and then drove us to Oxford. On the panel were seven speakers, chosen out of a spirit of celebration and friendship—Cleanth Brooks, Charlotte Capers, Reynolds Price, William Jay Smith, and younger scholars Michael Kreyling, Peggy Prenshaw, and Noel. In the large enthusiastic audience, there were critics with influential essays on Welty, including Thomas McHaney, and two Europeans in love with Welty’s work, Jan Nordby Gretlund and myself. Noel’s presentation was timeless and ever-evolving as we shall see.