Eudora Welty 's achievement in the short-story genre is primarily in the area of form. Several other writers could be said to have introduced the subject matter of the South to the American short story in the twentieth century. In fact, to look at Welty's short stories solely through the lens of subject matter dangerously limits any sense of her art; her reviewers, especially those writing about the first two collections, have frequently made that unfortunate mistake. Welty has from the outset of her writing career insisted on a unique form for the short story. She has not always indulged in critical explanations of that form, but one can see from careful readings its principal elements. The strong and consistent desire for revelations in the instant, rather than disclosure piecemeal over time (plot), is central to Welty's practice in the short story. She is not, for example, like Thomas Wolfe, for whom the only distinction between novel and short story seemed to be simply length.
