"I'm just a Southern boy let loose in the big world," declares Walter in his delightful oral autobiography, the culmination of months of talks with literature professor Clark (Motherwit: An Alabama Midwife's Story). Born in 1921 in Mobile, Ala., (which is, he notes, "a separate kingdom. We are not North America; we are North Haiti"), Walter spent most of his adulthood in New York, Paris and Rome, where he published a prize-winning novel (The Untidy Pilgrim, 1954), translated hundreds of screenplays, helped found the Paris Review, appeared in Fellini films and figured centrally in the social life of the literati, entertaining everyone from T.S. Eliot to Muriel Spark to Dylan Thomas at his lavish parties. Legendary both in his hometown and among the European jet set of the '50s and '60s, Walter displays an abiding fascination with people of all kinds. Astute and opinionated, he comments more on the personalities than the output of his literary associates. Unconcerned with material success or critical renown, Walter, who died in 1998, was in perennial pursuit of lively and provocative encounters with interesting people. In this respect, Clark observes, he's "so classically Southern as to be archetypal"; indeed, Walter, who traveled with a shoebox filled with Alabama red clay dirt, filters all his experiences through an explicitly Southern perspective that is alternately provincial and insightful. After her own encounters with him, Clark was convinced that his eccentric, ebullient voice was worth preserving, and indeed he comes through as one of the most fascinating literary figures most of us have never heard of. Photos not seen by PW. (Aug.)
Forecast:Deliciously gossipy, this will make great late summer reading for the literate set and should sell briskly if it gets review attention.
