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 American
essayist, short story writer, and journalist, whose only novel was
THE SHIP OF FOOLS (1962), a story of forlorn hope and recurring
struggle. Porter spent twenty years with the book before it was
finished. It made her rich and famous. The name of the book comes
from an old German satire Das Narrenschiff (1494), by Sebastian
Brant. However, Porter is also remembered as one of America's best
short-story writers.
"I don't want any promises, I won't have false hopes, I won't
be romantic about myself. I can't live in their world any longer,
she told herself, listening to the voices back of her. Let them
tell their stories to each other. Let them go on explaining how
things happened. I don't care. At least I can know the truth about
what happens to me, she assured herself silently, making a promise
to herself, in her hopefulness, her ignorance."
(from 'Old Mortality', in Pale Horse, Pale Rider, 1939)
Porter started as a communist sympathizer but she became a friend
of a Nazi leader; she was a southerner who led a cosmopolitan life.
Porter's literary production can be divided in three stages: her
early writings done in Mexico, the rediscovery of her southern identity,
and the last period of cynicism. In her social life Porter's circle
of acquaintances included such figures as President Obregon of Mexico,
Herman Göring in Berlin, writers Eudora Welty and Allen Tate, and
member of the Johnson White House.
A descendent of Daniel Boone, the legendary pioneer and explorer,
Katherine Anne Porter was born in Indian Creek, Texas. She grew
up in poverty in Texas and Louisinana. Her mother died when Katherine
was two and her paternal grandmother raised her. Porter was educated
in convent schools. At the age of sixteen she ran away and married
the first of her three husbands. A few years later she left him
to work as an actress. She contracted tuberculosis and during her
recovery she decided to become a writer. Subsequently Porter earned
her living as a journalist in Chicago, Illinois and Denver.
 Between
1918 and 1921 she became involved in revolutionary politics in Mexico,
the scene of several of her stories, and where she worked as a journalist
and teacher. Mexico, Porter once said, gave her back her Texas past.
Her feelings toward Mexico, however, were ambivalent, and later
in such works as "Xochimilco," Porter saw Mexico as an earthly Eden
where hopes for a better society could be realized. In other stories,
including "The Fiesta of Guadalupe," she depicts Mexico as a place
of hopeless oppression for the native peoples.
In 1922 Porter published a study OUTLINE OF MEXICAN POPULAR ARTS
AND CRAFTS. She travelled Europe in the late 1920s, settling in
Paris during the early 1930s, and became friends with the English
modernist writer Ford Madox Ford. Porter also contributed to leftist
journals, such as The New Republic and The Nation.
Her first published story was 'María Concepción' published in Century
magazine in December 1922. The next story, 'He,' appeared in New
Masses in 1927. It was followed by 'Magic' in Transition
and 'Rope' in the Second American Caravan in 1928. 'The Jilting
of Granny Weatherall' appeared in Transition in 1929 and
'Flowering Judas' in Hound and Horn in the spring of 1930.
Porter's first collection of short stories was FLOWERING JUDAS.
A limited edition of 600 copies appeared in 1930. The collection
was enlarged in 1935.
Porter's PALE HORSE, PALE RIDER (1939) received widespread critical
acclaim. It consisted of three short novels: 'Old Mortality', 'Noon
Wine', a study of evil, set on a Texas farm circa 1900, and the
title piece, which tells of a short-lived love affair between a
soldier and a young Southern newspaperwoman during the influenza
epidemic of World War I. The central character in the stories is
Miranda, whose background is roughly parallel to Porter's - she
runs away from a convent, and in the last story she is working as
a reporter on a western newspaper. In THE LEARNING TOWER (1944)
there are six related stories dealing with Miranda and the background
of her family. 'The Old Order' gives the most complete picture of
Miranda's family -the grandmother was the great-granddaughter of
"Kentucky's most famous pioneer" (Daniel Boone). The unnamed narrator
is Miranda.
In the 1950s Porter published two volumes essays, THE DAYS BEFORE
(1952) and A DEFENCE CIRCLE (1954). In 1966 her COLLECTED STORIES
(1965) won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Ship
of Fools was published when Porter was 72. The book was made
into an Oscar winning film in 1966, directed by Stanley Kramer.
In the 1970s she published COLLECTED ESSAYS AND OCCASIONAL WRITINGS
(1970) and THE NEVER-ENDING WRONG (1977), an account of the infamous
Sacco-Vanzetti trial and execution. Porter died in Silver Spring,
Maryland on September 18, 1980.
 The
Ship of Fools: A bitterly ironic novel, set in 1931 aboard
a German passenger ship, returning to Germany from Mexico. Mixed
bag of passengers, Germans, Americans, Spaniards, Gypsies, and
Mexicans represent a micro cosmos of peoples, whose life are characterized
by jealousy, cruelty, hatred, love, and duplicity. In the first
part the reader becomes acquainted with the various characters.
The second part contains the torment of the passengers in steerage,
their attempts to love, and their struggle for detachment. In
part three a bacchanalian fiesta brings out all the hidden fears
and guilt. Porter explores the origin of human evil through the
allegorical use of characters that represent various national
and moral types. Captain Thiele is the embodiment of Teutonic
authority, one passenger is a Basque, a Christ figure, who plunges
into the sea to save an aged bulldog but drowns himself.
For further reading: Critical Essays on Katherine Anne
Porter, ed by Darlene Harbour Unrue (1997); Katherine Anne Porter
by Janis P. Stout (1995); Katherine Anne Porter. Fiction As History
by Lakshmi Chandra (1993); Katherine Anne Porter's Artistic Development
by Robert H. Brinkmeyer Jr (1993); Katherine Anne Porter and Mexico
by Thomas F. Walsh (1992), The Texas Legacy of Katherine Anne
Porter by James T.F. Tanner (1991); Katherine Anne Porter and
Texas, ed. by Clinton MacHann, William Clark (1990); Katherine
Anne Porter: Conversations, ed by Joan Givner (1987); Katherine
Anne Porter: A Life by Joan Givner (1982)
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