AMERICAN AUTHORS CHALLENGE--OCTOBER 2024--KATHERINE ANNE PORTER

Katharine Ann Porter was born in 1890 in Indian Creek, Texas. She lived at times in various places in the U.S., Mexico, and Europe. But like Faulkner, she found the most fertile ground for her imagination came from her own home patch -- in her case south central Texas, which she called her "native land of the heart."
There was a fine article on Porter's hometown in the July 2019 issue of Texas Highways, which can be accessed here.

Porter was married four times, beginning at age 16, when she dropped out of school, ran away from home, and married a scoundrel named John Koontz (! NO relation to the worthy @flamingrabbit, I am sure). She also had multiple love affairs, most of which ended badly, even on occasion in violence. She converted to Catholicism at the time of her first marriage, and maintained a connection to the Catholic Church throughout her life, even though at times she was at odds with organized religion in general. As a young woman she suffered a bout of tuberculosis, after which she settled in Greenwich Village, NY, and set herself to writing fiction. Through the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s her short stories often explored the dark side of human nature. She was a popular writer-in-residence and unconventional teacher at several universities during the 1950s. In 1962 she published her only novel, Ship of Fools, which followed a varied group of travelers on a cross-Atlantic voyage, and not one character deserved the air they breathed. It is often described as allegorical, and although it was critically praised in its day, many modern reviewers find it lacking in subtlety and burdened with cliches, even while recognizing the craft of the author.

Porter claimed that her stories were "true in the way that a work of fiction should be true, created out of all the scattered particles of life I was able to absorb and combine and shape into new being." When asked where she could be found in her stories, her answer was “everywhere”.

I look forward to reading Porter for the first time; I suspect she’s a “love her or hate her” sort of author, and it will be interesting to find out which side I fall on.

The Leaning Tower averaged out to a 4 star rating, with three of the stories at 5 and others at 2-3.

Opening can be scary cliches! Eventually redeemed so don't give up!

I know I have her collected stories somewhere.

I will be reading The Old Order this month. If I have time, I will try and get to Ship of Fools as well, but I am already pretty well booked for October - and it is only the first! lol

I have the collected stories so will be reading some of them but probably won't get them all read.
These are the main ones
Flowering Judas
Pale Horse, Pale Rider
The Leaning Tower

so I'll probably start with those.

I also have The Old Order but not the Ship of Fools.

I also have The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter (1965), which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1966 and includes an introduction by Porter. In the intro she says "Every story I ever finished and published is here." She also adds this:

I beg of the reader one gentle favor for which he may be sure of my perpetual gratitude: please do not call my short novels Novelettes, or even worse, Novellas. Novelette is classical usage for a trivial, dime-novel sort of thing; Novella is a slack, boneless, affected word that we do not need to describe anything. Please call my works by their right names: we have four that cover every division: short stories, long stories, short novels, novels. I now have examples of all four kinds under these headings, and they seem very clear, sufficient and plain English.

The reader be warned, I guess.

I won't be reading them all, but will try to pick a few from each collection.

>6 kac522: In doing my research for this month, I found a couple interviews with Porter---she was adamant about the "novella thing". It came up in every one I read or saw.

>2 m.belljackson:, >3 Caroline_McElwee:, >4 alcottacre:, >5 Kristelh: I had a lovely paperback edition of her collected stories on my "essential Americans" shelf (not that there was one shelf, mind you) for decades, and never cracked the cover. Then I inherited the Library of America edition of her Collected Stories and Other Writings and that has remained pristine for over 12 years now. About time I got around to some of it, eh? I think I will begin with Pale Horse, Pale Rider and see how far I get.

>6 kac522: Strange how words gather such strong emotions. Novelette and novella are terms I find useful to distinguish works from long stories, or yes, even short novels. But as Katherine Anne Porter wrote the works in question, they should be called what she wanted them to be called.

Ship of Fools was made into a movie in 1965, with a dazzling cast that included Oskar Werner, Simone Signoret, Jose Ferrar, George Segal, Lee Marvin, and Michael Dunn. It's been years since I've seen it.

>I did like Oskar Werner Judy. Don't think I saw that movie though, will seek it out.

I read The Never-Ending Wrong by Katherine Anne Porter. It is her last written work. Here are my thoughts;
It is essentially a essay or a small memoir of an event in history that she participated in; the Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti case. They were Italian anarchists who were convicted and executed for the 1920 robbery and murder of a shoe factory paymaster and guard in South Braintree, Massachusetts. This divided the nation with many protests because it was felt the trial was not fair. To this day, it really is unknown if they were guilty, if one was guilty or none.

Quotes:

"It is my conviction that when events are forgotten, buried in the cellar of the page--they are no longer even history".

"...never-never-land of the theoretically classless society which could not take root and finally withered ont he stalk."

"...I knew too well that this whole protest was the work of a complicated machine or a set of machines working together even if not always intentionally or with the same motives, and we were all of us being put rather expertly through set paces by distant operators, unknown manifulators whose motives and designs were far different from outs."

"I find that any recollections however vivid and lasting, must unavoidably be mixed with many afterthoughts."

This is in the afterwards and is in reference to Emma Gordon (Radical Activist Among Progressive Reformers) and Prince Kropotkin.
"...cause to which they devoted their lives--to ameliorate the anguish that human beings inflict on each other, the never-ending wrong, forever incurable."

"She finally came to admit sadly that the human race in its weakness demands government and all government was evil because human nature was basically weak and weakness is evil."

I found it was interesting and I thought about how some of this reflects even our current times. I again and again am reminded that what goes around comes around. There is nothing new under the sun.

>11 Kristelh: If that is contained in the collection I have, I believe I will read it next. I finished her short novel, Old Mortality, yesterday, and was quite taken with it, although I thought the ending was a bit weak.

>12 laytonwoman3rd: I am currently reading Old Mortality, Linda. I hope you have The Never Ending Wrong to read. I look forward to your thoughts.

The Never Ending Wrong is, in fact, in my collection, and I read a bit of it this afternoon. Eerie how timely her observations are...

>14 laytonwoman3rd: it was what struck me as well.

Completed Old Mortality. It covers family history, childhood, women’s place in society, and sense of place, in this case, the south.

I read 2 stories: "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall", which was quite intense and atmospheric, and "Flowering Judas", which was completely unmemorable. I tried starting 2 or 3 more, including "Old Mortality", and just could not get engaged with either the stories or the writing, so I think I am done. I may try again at some other time, but perhaps in a collection of many authors where the story(ies) have been hand-picked.

I finished Noon Wine last night and that one was much better than Old Mortality. The setting is the south. A dark tragedy. The title is from the single tune that the hired hand plays on a harmonica.