Two titans of the South : Welty and O'Connor

It's amazing how similar - the early stories of Eudora Welty and the stories of Flannery O'Connor, in fact their lives are similar, too, at least on the capsule-biography level, two women of about the same age who, for reasons of health (O'Connor) and temperament (Welty) lived among family in Southern home town, never married, a bit of a literary outsider (O'Connor less so than she let on) whose reputation built slowly, O'Connor's cut short by early death. As to their writings, both write about smalltown Southern communities roughly from the 30s-60s, occasional excursions (by train) to bigger cities (Welty from the larger city of Jackson, O'Connor from small Ga. town but near Atlanta), and about working-class or rural people, gossipy, barely literate, fascinated with the grotesque, many of the stories built upon the arrival of a more-sophisticated stranger in town - just compare for example Welty's Petrified Man with O'Connor's Wise Blood (a novel), for example. In each, lots of carnival people, petty thieves and scoundrels, busy-body gossips. Lots of funny dialogue. One difference: O'Connor's stories often about religious hucksters and, at least according to the author, are built on Christian themes and models (hard to see that sometimes without FO'Cs own explication in her letters); Welty seems more purely secular, but maybe there are depths I haven't plumbed yet - will continue to read more Welty, as I go deeper into her "Collected Stories."