She had an effect on people...
"Before my move to the remote Yaak Valley in Montana, I had lived in Mississippi. One summer there I attempted to become Eudora Welty's yard man. It was one of the many summers when I was writing, but had not published anything, and did not believe I ever would. I am sad to say this was not when I was a teenager; this was when I was a grown man: twenty-four, maybe twenty-five years old.
I just wanted to be close to her was the thing. It seemed like the perfect world. I could be close to her, but I wouldn't have to say anything. I could just stagger around in the Jackson heat, shirtless, in her front yard, and perspire: trimming the hedges, mowing the lawn, sweeping the sidewalks and the driveway like some sort of yard savage. Standing guard is what I imagined it would feel like, protecting her, but more important, just being around her.
Why? I hesitate even to try to explain what the work of Eudora Welty, the best American writer never to win the Nobel Prize, has meant to me."
~ R. Bass pages 4 & 5 The Traveling Feast
https://www.outsideonline.com/2326696/rick-bass-art-living-traveling-feast
He also talks about shyness a lot after that.
Here is Eudora Welty...
https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2014/marchapril/feature/the-quiet-greatness-eudora-welty
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