KATHERINE ANNE PORTER

(1890-1980)

BACKGROUND

  • 5/15/90
    • Indian Creek, Texas
    • birth name = Callie Russell Porter
  • 1892:  mother = dead
    • raised by paternal grandmother in Texas, Louisiana
      • see "The Grave"
    • cousin of O. Henry (Sidney Porter)
    • descendent of Jonathon Boone (Daniel Boone’s brother)
  • 1901: grandmother = dead (TB); sent to convent schools in Texas, Louisiana
    • “Katherine Anne” = grandmother’s name??
  • 1906:  ran away from school & got married
  • 1909: divorce #1
  • 1911: to Chicago to work as journalist
  • 1914: returned to Texas, Scottish ballads singer
  • *literary hackwork:
    • book reviews, political articles
    • (Hawthorne, Poe, Porter)
  • aka, Miranda Gray
  • 1917: Fort Worth’s Critic
  • 1918-19: Denver’s Rocky Mountain News
    • influenza outbreak
  • New York: 
    • hackwork, ghost-writing
  • 1920’s: traveled to Mexico, wrote about country
  • 1930: 1st collection of stories, The Flowering Judas
    • flawless, unobtrusive style,
    • sold moderately (par for short story collections)
    • “The Flowering Judas”:  (short story)
      • Masterpiece
      • set in Mexico
      • turns brilliantly on a character contrast:
        • Braggioni: the fat, sensual, egotistical revolutionary vs.
        • Laura: the beautiful, sensitive, sexually frigid idealist who is a mere dilettante in the revolutionary cause.
      • Christian symbolism
      • power and beauty
      • theme:  self-betrayal in all its forms
    • Flowering Judas (book)
      • won a Guggenheim fellowship for Porter to study abroad
      • brief stay in Mexico --> Europe

 BACKGROUND

  • 1932: sailed from Veracruz to Bremerhaven
    • (which provided the setting for a novel completed 30 years later, Ship of Fools)
  • 1933: marriage #2: Eugene Pressly (member of the U.S. Foreign Service in Paris); divorce #2; marriage #3: Albert Russell Erskine, Jr.; divorce #3: 1942
  • 1934: 2nd volume of stories, Hacienda
  • 1937: Noon Wine, short novel
  • 1942: Pale Horse, Pale Rider:
    • consists of three short novels, including Noon Wine.
    • The title work is a bitter, tragic tale of a young woman's love for a World War I soldier who dies of influenza. It further established Porter's place in American literature: the impeccable artist of meager output.
  • 1944: The Leaning Tower and Other Stories:
    • title story = set in Berlin, deals with the menace of Nazism
  • 1952: The Days Before:
    • collection of mostly critical essays
  • 1962: Ship of Fools:
    • only novel (see Bremerhaven earlier);
    • based on Das Narrenschiff, (Sebastian Brant's 15th-century moral allegory)
    • examines the lives of an international group of voyagers;
    • their HUMAN FOLLY thwarts their personal lives and blinds them as well to the incipience of German fascism
  • 1966: Collected Stories
    • * won her The Pulitzer Prize
  • 1966: honorary degree from University of Maryland
    • later home of her personal library
  • conversion to Catholicism and abandonment of an early, strict Protestant influence during childhood
  • 9/18/80 = dead, 90, Silver Spring, Maryland
     

THEMES

  • self-betrayal in all its forms

  • distaste for the lack of rights for women & social injustice:

    • fostered by her childhood

  • the futility of love

    • married 3x

    • (autobiographical style)

  • loss

  • betrayal

  • solitude

  • effects of childhood experiences

    • psychological truism

    • we are our experiences

    • "inner child"

  • Bildungsroman

    • coming-of-age stories

    • maturation process

    • loss of innocence

      • Adam & Eve mythos

  • personal identity:

    • see "The Grave"

    • see women, below

  • female American Adam (Miranda, Laura)

THEMES

  • personal freedom vs. society conventions

  • OLD SOUTH:

    • the passing of its old myths, traditions

    • AND

    • the confusion that such passing creates

  • Old South vs. Modern South

    • modern America =

      • chaotic

      • technologically advancing (quickly, too)

      • war-torn

      • jaded society

  • "modernity"

    • modern America, modern world

    • human isolation

    • loveless sex

    • corrupt Garden of Eden

      • see "The Grave"

    • inverted "Brave New World"

  • Constraints on WOMEN:

    • biological

    • cultural

    • traditional

STYLE

  • well-regarded practitioner of the form
    • painstaking craftsmanship
  • flawless, unobtrusive style
  • smooth, objective, clear writing style
  • delicate, vivid descriptions
  • characters = "real":
    • psychological truth
      • psycho-social/sexual development
      • maturation process
      • inner (Freudian) conflicts
      • Maslovian needs
    • (as well as symbolic meaning)
      • --> creates characters that are universal, timeless
  • highly complex style - yet simplistic
    • seem simple but are in fact complex, deep
  • heavy imagery & symbolism
    • Christian symbolism
    • Bible allusions
  • highly symbolic
    • symbols often with multiple meanings
    • (see "complex" above)

STYLE

  • autobiographical:
    • the event = true, "based on real story"
    • BUT
    • the facts = fictionalized: 
      • dramatized, heightened, symbolized
      • almost Romantic, in the Wordsworthian sense
        • experience --> memory --> reflection --> transformation into Art
    • the personal experience = transformed into Art
      • the personal becomes universal
    • KAP:  "I shall try to tell the truth, but the result will be fiction."
      • Collected Essays
  • dark side of human nature/society
    • lightened by her unique sense of humor
  • stories set around epochal periods in US history
    • Pale Horse, Pale Rider --> influenza
    • Ship of Fools --> Nazi rise
    • “The Grave” --> post-Reconstruction South

 

LINKS LINKS