Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980)

Following the toil of twenty years, Katherine Anne Porter published her one and only novel in 1962 on the heels of her fame as a short story author. It became the number one bestseller in fiction for that year. Her inspiration was a similar cruise and the fellow passengers she observed while traveling from Mexico to Germany in the 1930s. Her novel serves to capture the rampant prejudices and attitudes of the time among people from different nations and circumstances, in the years of the show more Great Depression leading up to World War II and the Jewish Holocaust.

In his earlier novel "Howards End", E.M. Forster explicitly implored us to "only connect". In "Ship of Fools", Katherine Anne Porter depicts a world that does the inverse as if to underline the point. It is very simple to dismiss this as 500 pages of nothing more than unlikeable people being cruel to one another, without considering if that's fully intentional and what can be learned from it.

Is there nothing likeable about the artist Jenny, who knows she needs to get out from under her boyfriend's thumb and somehow cannot? About Freytag, who stands up for his Jewish wife even in her absence? About Elsa Lutz, the unfortunate girl who dreams hopelessly of finding love? Or what about Mrs. Hutten, who has a brilliant and penetrating mind of her own but feels obliged to live in her husband's shadow? Certainly even these characters have their low moments, but again that's part of the message.

Why are none of these people making an effort to actually know one another? The answer lands frighteningly close to what we habitually do in our own lives. Isn't it easier not to get involved, not to care, to judge without knowing? After all, look what happens when we try. Porter shows us barriers we may meet with: racism, misogyny, ageism, prejudice against other social classes. All of them are defence mechanisms against fear of the other, whichever 'other' they've chosen to designate.

Everyone on the ship fears being call upon to empathize, certain they would never be empathized with themselves. Jenny almost says it, when David asks what she's crying for. "Everything in the whole world. That lets you in, somewhere ..." All it does is hurt those who show empathy, exposing themselves as the weak, the vulnerable, the foolish. It becomes a contest to see who can make whom display it, and for what. They are horrified when given one another's confidences, as if being handed poison. Nobody wants to summon the empathy being called upon. Take Mrs. Treadwell, when she does not want to understand too much about Mr. Freytag's life and circumstances: "There was no cure, no comfort, tears change nothing and words can never get at the truth. No don't tell me any more about yourself, I am not listening, you cannot force my attention. I don't want know you, and I will not know you. Don't try to come nearer."

Disdain of others, dislike, even cold hatred, are used as a means of self-preservation. Perhaps they don't want exposure to how small and self-involved their problems are in the grand scheme. Why does nobody understand or appreciate the enormity of what they are going through? It's a certainty that blinds them from understanding anyone else, or even wanting to understand. There are examples in plenty of this dismissive behaviour in the novel, in the acts of racism, righteous religious differences, Mrs. Rittersdorf's diary entries, on and on. Mrs. Schmitt feels it happening: "One man's desire must always crowd out another's, one must always take his own good at another's expense. Or so it seemed. God forgive us all." And yet she behaves no better.

Where will it all lead? On a literal level, the ship leads them to Germany which in that time period was the epitome of all the problems here on display. On a literary level, we should look at Ric and Rac who place themselves "outside of humanity" with their utter disregard for anything and everything, the symbol of what at least most of the adults are striving for. On the outside, at least. On the inside they are also these children, but huddling and shivering in their bunks with no where safe to turn. Vulnerable, and afraid of that vulnerability.

The best novels hold up a mirror to show us what we are. We don't have to like it, but let's at least acknowledge what not liking it means. show less

Katherine Anne Porter remembers what happens in the adolescent brain, she knows how husbands and wives argue and what about, she knows how poorly drawn is the line between aspiration and realism. Her stories are high on intimacy rather than drama, internal rather than external. There are themes she circles back to in subsequent stories like echoes, revisiting and reconsidering. Sometimes she holds the mirror a little too close for comfort; but that problem lies with me, not her. There are show more too many stories here to rate all of them, but some of the highlights:

Virgin Violeta - the bitter clash of fantasy and reality in coming-of-age.

The Martyr - contrasts in perception/reputation before and after death.

Rope - a perfect capturing of petty marital bickering.

He - the convenience of adopting others' biases.

The Jilting of Granny Weatherall - death bed regrets.

The Cracked Looking Glass - a kinder, gentler Madame Bovary story.

Old Mortality - the past as family legend, gossip, or the tiresome memories of a prior generation.

Noon Wine - consequences for caring "how things look"; study Mr Thompson.

Pale Horse, Pale Rider - journalist vs metaphorical horsemen of the apocalypse.

The Old Order - Tennyson, "The old order changes, yielding place to new." Contrasts generations; comprised of several shorter stories.

The Downward Path to Wisdom - the mis-rearing of a young child.

A Day's Work - balanced view of a dysfunctional marriage.

Holiday - an unexpected personal connection.

The Leaning Tower - an American finds 1931 Berlin to be fragile and vulnerable. show less

I had read nothing by Katherine Anne Porter up until this year. I was missing out on a perceptive, powerful, profound author and now I'm just worried about reading through all her work too quickly. PH,PR was on my pandemic reading list and it was a wonderful (and dark) personal account, not only of someone who experienced the Spanish flu firsthand, suffering the illness and the loss of someone she loved, but someone experiencing the culture of the First World War from a critical, sometimes show more cynical, perspective. I began to highlight on every other page, gems like:
[T]he worst of war is the fear and suspicion and the awful expression in all the eyes you meet...as if they had pulled down the shutters over their minds and their hearts and were peering out at you, ready to leap if you make one gesture or say one word they do not understand instantly...It's what war does to the mind and heart...
And:
The body is a curious monster, no place to live in, how could anyone feel at home there? Is it possible I can ever accustom myself to this place? she asked herself.
I could go on. The way that she weaves dreams and fevered visions through her prose is masterful.
I could go on...but better you go pick up a copy and read it straight from Porter. show less

This was one of the best collections of short stories I've ever read.

I am not generally a fan of short stories. I like to commit to my literature and short stories tend to feel like a summer fling that was over before I was able to analyze it to death and suck all of the fun out it.

I especially dislike collections of short stories because even the best authors' voices come through in them. While I typically like to feel as though I can hear an author's voice, when it happens during a book show more of 30 of their short stories and it's the same author with different stories, I get confused, partially due to the fact that I'm extremely dumb and partially due to the fact that they almost always center around the same themes or characters who hail from similar backgrounds and locations.

This was not the case with Katherine Anne Porter. Every one of these stories was completely different in style, voice, content and characterization and every one of the stories was brilliant. It helped that many of them were over 50 pages long (one was over 100). The length allowed me to get to know the characters as intimately as I wanted.

All in all, this was a fantastic book from a writer who is not only talented but extremely versatile as well. show less