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".