Katherine Anne Porter Collected Stories and Other Writings by Porter, Katherine Anne [Library of America,2008]

by Katherine Anne Porter

Katherine Anne Porter Collected Stories and Other Writings by Porter, Katherine Anne. Published by Library of America,2008, Hardcover

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Essays, Classics, Literature, Writing, 20th Century

1100 pages, Hardcover

First published September 18, 2008

About the author

Katherine Anne Porter was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist. She is known for her penetrating insight; her works deal with dark themes such as betrayal, death and the origin of human evil.
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherin...

Reviews

[Lorna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Collected Stories and Other Writings was a diverse and stunningly beautiful collection of essays and short stories by Katherine Anne Porter, many set in her native and home state of Texas, her beloved Mexico, the American South, Paris, and pre-war Nazi Germany. This comprehensive and delightful volume was awarded both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. In addition to the collected stories of Katherine Anne Porter that comprises a large percentage of this hefty volume, there are also her essays, reviews, and other writings. One of my favorite sections were her essays and tributes to fellow writers such as Willa Cather, Eudora Welty, Thomas Hardy, E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, and Dylan Thomas. There was also a group of writings in memoriam for Ford Maddox Ford, James Joyce, Sylvia Beach, and Flannery O'Connor. But it would not be complete without many of her writings about her love of Mexico and the Mexican people. Katherine Anne Porter's life alone is dizzying with all of her accomplishments. I have a special affinity for her because of her time here in Colorado where she was a valued correspondent for The Rocky Mountain News. And in 1918, she survived the Spanish Flu epidemic ravaging the country. Thus her short novel, Pale Horse, Pale Rider. The title is from a Negro spiritual she heard as a child in the Texas cottonfields: "Pale horse, pale rider, done take my lover away. . ." I loved this book and I look forward to reading more by Katherine Anne Porter.

And a few of my favorite passages:

Boulder, Colorado. July, 1942. "The death of James Joyce distressed me more than any other since the death of Yeats. How the tall old towers are falling: these were the men I most admired in my youth: I discovered Yeats for myself; he was the first contemporary poet I read, and the first poem was in a magazine in 1915. . . .Joyce came a little later but not much. I read Dubliners in 1917, and that was another revelation, this time what a short story might be. . . ."

In the series Personal and Particular, Katherine Anne Porter talks about her memories of the Old South and her grandmother in this beautiful tribute in 1944:

"In a family of willful eccentrics and headstrong characters and unpredictable histories, her presence was singularly free from peaks and edges and the kind of color that leaves a trail of family anecdotes. She left the lingering perfume and the airy shimmer of grace about her memory."

And her beautiful words about her beloved Mexico:

"I followed the crowd of tired burdened pilgrims, bowed under their loads of potteries and food and babies and baskets, their clothes dusty and their faces a little streaked with long-borne fatigue. Indians all over Mexico had gathered at the feet of Mary Guadalupe for the greatest 'fiesta' of the year, which celebrates the initiation of Mexico into the mystic company of the Church, with a saint and a miracle all her own, not transplanted from Spain. Juan Diego's long-ago vision of Mary on the bare hillside made her Queen of Mexico where before she had been Empress."

"It is not Mary Guadalupe nor her son that touches me. It is Juan Diego I remember, and his people I see, kneeling in scattered ranks on the flagged floor of their church, fixing their eyes on the mystic, speechless things. It is their ragged hands I see, and their wounded hearts that I feel beating under their work-stained clothes like a great volcano under the earth and I think to myself, hopefully, that men do not live in a deathly dream forever."

[Jeffrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Katherine Anne Porter



Novelist, essayist and short story writer Katherine Anne Porter’s works have been collected in the usual above average style by the Library of America. All of the must read works in one volume is handy, and I was delighted to find it on my door step a week ago. I have long loved Porter’s writing, first as a high school student introduced to all of the great short fiction and her work The jilting of Granny Weatherall, about a dying woman remembering being left at the alter. In the Southern Gothic tradition of Faulkner and O’Connor, Porter had a few submissions, yet she did not stay in the genre. As a person that loves essays, Porter’s are some of the best from her period. Her section on writers of her day is worth the price of the book on their own.

[William · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well it's been several months since I read this so until such time as I re-read it, we'll keep this short.

This book consists of three parts, the short stories, some reviews of books and authors, and personal writings - her history, personal experiences and suchlike. The main highlight is obviously the short stories. They're well crafted and a few of the later ones just plain blew me away. The difference you'll see between this book and just the short story collections is the reviews and personal writings. Aside from some possible additions to your reading list, you'll feel like you almost sort of got to know her a bit. It's long, but a rewarding experience.

[J. Boo]

Useful excerpts from this review:

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/we...

"Only about half of her Library of America 1,100-page collection is taken up with Porter's fiction; the rest is given over to essays, which are fascinating, and reviews, which are only intermittently so. A virulent attack on Gertrude Stein ("The Wooden Umbrella," 1947) is hilarious and still well worth reading; a sympathetic essay on Willa Cather is a model of critical empathy. Predictably (for Porter is the most subjective and personal of fiction writers), it is the authors with whom she personally identifies--Cather, Katherine Mansfield, Colette, Eudora Welty--who inspire the most deeply felt criticism; a long essay on Henry James is dutifully reverent but lifeless.
[...]
One of the two biographies, either Unrue's or Givner's (they are both good), will make an invaluable supplement to this Library of America volume, for the life and work of this strange, gifted woman are connected in unusually complicated and contradictory ways."

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant. Exceptional - the highest standard: good stories, well told. I first read Porter in college, then have returned many times since. And I found this pristine volume at the library book sale! Which was exciting (one of my favorite authors) and disappointing (that it was so unread and pristine) at the same time. Meets the highest bar of American short stories, and then some. If you haven't read Porter, you owe it to yourself to pick up this volume. Meticulous, deft and profound. Read them. Then read them again.

[Sandy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I felt sad at the end of every story - not very encouraging about the human condition.

[AC]

Katherine Anne Porter, “Noon Wine” (1937) [4+]

Katherine Anne Porter, “Jilting of Granny Weatherall” (1930) [4]

Katherine Anne Porter, “He” (1927) [3.5]

[Clint Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Katherine Ann Porter demonstrates mastery of the writer's craft. Her sensitive insights reveal fresh, simple wisdom in our common shared experience. Her skill is embedded in artistry, but not self-consciously. The result is a clear impression made with honesty and clarity.

Porter was well-traveled, and the subjects of her writing reflect this, ranging from the psychic impact of WWI and WWII, to the lives of Mexican revolutionaries, Southern family feuds and the individual confronting death up to the moment when consciousness winks out.

In Porter's short fiction you will find subdued, thought-provoking symbolism delicately reinforcing the theme. A damaged miniature model of the Leaning Tower is emblematic of a battered Germany during the years leading up to WWII. In "Noon Wine" (as in life) the kitchen is a refuge ("... the kitchen, where all the fair prospects of life were centered.").

This collection also includes provocative essays along the lines of Virginia Woolf, with unique penetrating examination of people, art, cultures, moral and political ideas. They stand alone, but also help illuminate the short fiction.

KAP provides an inspirational view of art (from "The Only Reality"):

... the arts do live continuously, and they live literally by faith;... they outlive governments and creeds and the societies... They cannot be destroyed altogether because they represent the substance of faith and the only reality. They are what we find again when the ruins are cleared away.

Her criticisms are harsh at times, though justified. For example, in "Quetzalcoatl" (aka "The Plumed Serpent"), she makes her views of D. H. Lawrence's shortcomings clear, adding her reasons for them:

The triumph of [The Plumed Serpent] as a work of art lies in this: that out of his confusions, the divisions of his mind, he has gained by sheer poetic power to a fine order, a mystical truth above his obsessions and debased occult dogma.

In '"Noon Wine": The Sources' Porter describes an example of the shared experience which she harnesses so well:

There followed at once a high, thin, long-drawn scream, a sound I had never heard, but I knew what it was—it was the sound of death in the voice of a man. How did I know it was a shotgun? How should I not have known? How did I know it was death? We are born knowing death.

"Noon Wine" captures a sort of collusion of guilt, similar in some ways to Marquez' treatment in Chronicle of a Death Foretold:

Everyone in this story contributes, one way or another directly or indirectly, to murder, or death by violence;
...
There is nothing in any of these beings tough enough to work the miracle of redemption in them.

The politics of the time surrounding the World Wars are relevant today. "The Never-Ending Wrong" describes government abuse of power:

... the most appalling cruelties are committed by apparently virtuous governments in expectation of a great good to come, never learning that the evil done now is the sure destroyer of the expected good.

"The Leaning Tower" shows the cyclical nature of war as WWII draws close on the heels of WWI:

"We were all in short pants when that war was ended," he said. Hans answered instantly, "Ah, yes, but we will all be in uniforms for the next."

Porter's characters are well-rounded with traits we're all familiar with (and sometimes find in ourselves). Here are a few examples:
From "That Tree":

She was never able to see the amusing side of a threatening situation which, taken solemnly, would ruin everything. No, her sense of humor never worked for salvation. It was just an extra frill on what would have been a good time anyhow.

From "The Cracked Looking-Glass":

That dream about Honora now, it hadn't come true at all. Maybe the dream about Kevin wasn't true either. If one dream failed on you it would be foolish to think another mightn't fail you too: wouldn't it, wouldn't it?

Here, in "Old Mortality," Porter finds an opportunity to elevate theme through character:

[They] knew they were young, though they felt they had lived a long time. They had lived not only their own years; but their memories, it seemed to them, began years before they were born, in the lives of the grownups around them, old people above forty, most of them, who had a way of insisting that they too had been young once.

... Harry commented: "Religion put claws on Aunt Sally and gave her a post to whet them on." She had out-argued, out-fought, and out-lived her entire generation, but she did not miss them. She bedeviled the second generation without ceasing, and was beginning hungrily on the third.

They had long since learned to draw the lines between life, which was real and earnest, and the grave was not its goal; poetry, which was true but not real;...

"Noon Wine":

Mrs. Thompson was perfectly accustomed to all kinds of men full of all kinds of cranky ways. The point was, to find out just how Mr. Helton's crankiness was different from any other man's, and then get used to it, and let him feel at home.

Nannie is a former slave in "The Journey". Her past experience has raised a bleak moral question:

[Nannie] wondered, simply and without resentment, whether God, Who had been so cruel to black people on earth, might not continue His severity in the next world.

Porter uses new technologies in her writing. As film begins to enter into the culture, Porter draws some of its effects into her writing. In "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" she draws a cinematic scene:

Miranda, her face near Adam's shoulder, noticed a dark young pair sitting at a corner table, each with an arm around the waist of the other, their heads together, their eyes staring at the same thing, whatever it was, that hovered in space before them. Her right hand lay on the table, his hand over it, and her face was a blur with weeping. Now and then he raised her hand and kissed it, and set it down and held it, and her eyes would fill again. They were not shameless, they had merely forgotten where they were, or they had no other place to go, perhaps. They said not a word, and the small pantomime repeated itself, like a melancholy short film running monotonously over and over again.

Porter objectifies experiences of the senses in "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall":

Cornelia's voice staggered and bumped like a cart in a bad road. It rounded corners and turned back again and arrived nowhere. Granny stepped up in the cart very lightly and reached for the reins, but a man sat beside her and she knew him by his hands, driving the cart.

The afterlife is a fickle groom -- an ultimate betrayal:

God, give a sign!

For the second time there was no sign. Again no bridegroom and the priest in the house.

[Sarah]

got from public library. have to return without reading any of her stories because it is not time. did enjoy new yorker piece on her. that is what prompted the online request for book. someone else has it on hold probably from the same inspiration. will read another time.

[Tej Rathore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stolen from a review :: Katherine Anne Porter's powers of perception are so keen that she's the kind of person I would never want to have around as a friend. Everything would be stripped down in her gaze, leaving little room for cherished illusions.

[Natalie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exquisitely written: witty, atmospheric, precise, economical. The stories are beautiful and fall on a spectrum from a bit melancholy to devastatingly sad. The essays and memoirs are evocative and intelligent, while some of the book reviews are utterly brilliant, often far outshining the texts that are their subject. Also she is highly discerning - she loves Henry James and roses.

[Barbara T. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Several excellent shorts stories. I liked Pale Horse, Pale rider (first person account of the 1918 influenza epidemic). I found the articles on Mexican politics less interesting

[Mell]

Just could not get into these short stories. Maybe I'll try again another time.

[Imlac · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pale Horse, Pale Rider****

[Peacefulbookery · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful, perceptive writing.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not generally a fan of short stories, and that holds true here, but there's no denying there is some great work here (for me, the first few and the final story). Porter covers an astonishing...universe...with her writing. She seems capable of a deep understanding of many cultures, many times, many people. Impressive stuff.

[Lisa Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the funniest stories I read was an account of a family going to the circus. I could read that again and again and never stop laughing my big loud laugh.

[George]

I only read the first two short story collections. She's really good, though.