Suzanne Marrs on Eudora Welty Video

Below is a YouTube copy of MPB's Gene Edwards interviewing Millsaps Professor Suzanne Marrs about her book Eudora Welty: A Biography.

This is a couple of years old and Dr Marrs may not even know it's still available on the Internet.

I have to admit that I'm not the biggest Eudora Welty fan, and it's for pretty stupid reasons. Her writer's voice and her characters are so finely aligned with my cultural background that her stories make me feel like I'm listening to gossip and not fiction and it's been that way ever since I could read.

Faulkner's writer's voice was very different for me. He was more like someone confessing things they'd really rather not talk about, which is hugely compelling by itself.

That being said, I dearly love hearing Suzanne talking about Miss Eudora. She speaks from the two very different cultures, the one she was born to and the one she adopted after twenty something years in Mississippi, which I find exciting, and she has a powerful mastery of words that's both beautiful and descriptive, but also structured and efficient. Her book reads much the same way as she speaks.

The thing that separates this book from really any other other biography I can think of is that Marrs is a fine academician and she does all the things that requires, but she's also writing about someone who was a loved friend for many years and the merger of those two points of view makes the book worth reading.

If you haven't picked it up, I recommend it.

She has a great speaking voice too. It's not an actor's voice or a radio voice but a really authentic voice, filled with humanity and personality. I love Gene Edwards, but I can tune him out pretty quickly, Suzanne's voice compels you to listen though, like you'll miss something if you don't.

Watch the video, it's great:

On Dogs and Free Markets

I want to talk about free market economies, but first I want to talk about dogs.

Dogs in the City

Dog-owners who live in cities and don't have yards know that they have to walk their dog once, sometimes twice a day.

Dogs are remarkable creatures. They're highly intelligent and blessed with sharp natural instincts as well. Their senses are far superior to ours and pound-per-pound, they are much stronger and faster than us, but, the city isn't their natural environment.

Owning a dog in the city means using a leash. The leash prevents the dog from walking in front of a moving bus, going into a sewer drain, after another dog, into a garbage can or humping a cop's leg. It keeps the dog safe and healthy and keeps the owner out of trouble.

The leash needs to be long enough to allow the dog some natural freedom of movement, but short enough to keep the dog out of dangerous situations and keep the owner out of trouble.

Dog owners will tell you that, at first, dogs hate the leash, but pretty soon they grow to love just the sight of it because it means they get to go outside.

Markets are like Dogs.

Markets are like dogs. They're remarkable creatures, but stable societies aren't their natural environment. Markets are made up of human beings, but they, themselves are not human and they require human supervision and control to keep them out of trouble.

Think of government regulation as a leash for markets. They prevent the market from wandering in front of a bus, chasing after squirrels or humping a cop's leg.

Completely free markets are like dogs in a city without a leash. They're free to run around and have a great time, but there's a really high risk they'll end up as road kill, getting lost, or getting the owner in some sort of trouble, so responsible owners invest in a leash.

Regulation isn't necessarily anti-capitalism. Its a recognition that, unlike ants, human beings clearly aren't more intelligent when they act in groups than they are individually and need some sort of guidance to prevent them from doing something really stupid.