For the 2001 release of the book "Milking the Moon", which is actually
an "oral autobiography" of many hours of tape recorded conversations
that Eugene Walter had with novelist Katherine Clark, the publishers
are promoting Eugene as "the most well-known man you've never heard
of."
After three years in Alaska as an Army cryptographer during World War
II, he made is way to New York's Greenwich Village for a few years.
Then to Paris for the 1950s, and to Rome for the 1960s. Along the way
he met many famous and not so famous people such as Robert Penn Warren,
William Faulkner, Judy Garland, Alice B. Toklas and Joan Crawford. His
friendships with Federico Fellini, Michaelangelo Antonioni, and Franco
Zeffirelli got him most of his starring roles.
With George Plimpton, Walter helped found the Paris Review and later
the Transatlantic Review. He won several literary awards, including a
Rockefeller-Sewanee Fellowship, an O. Henry citation, and the Prix
Guilloux. Monkey Poems (1953), The Byzantine Riddle (1980), and
American Cooking: Southern Style (Time-Life, 1971) are among his
best-known books.
The University of Alabama Press recently reprinted his out of print
book "The Untidy Pilgrim".