In the following essay, Ann Romines explores Eudora Welty's rare, yet "memorable" use of first person narration in "Why I Live at the P.O."

Eudora Welty's fiction overflows with gifted, loquacious storytellers; it resounds with their voices. So, for me at least, it is surprising to realize how few of the stories are actually told in the first person. Welty is much more likely to depict storytelling as a kinetic exchange, an unpredictable process of reply, response, and mutual invention. Losing Battles, with its "fray" of voices, is the epitome of this process.

In that novel, one of the Beechams' main strengths (however terrifying) is their capacity to draw everyone and everything into a communal, continual story which becomes their own, as when they invent a paternity for Gloria which makes her one of the family. Such storytelling is a constant interchange, a game which everyone...