Katherine Anne Porter & the Art of Rejection


Book Description

In the first book-length study of Porter's work, Nance defines a central thematic pattern--a principle of rejection--that unifies her fiction. This study is largely devoted to the explication of this theme in the individual works, though necessarily it reaches beyond this theme and into a general consideration of Porter's literary career and biography. Originally published in 1964. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.




Katherine Anne Porter


Book Description

A biography of one of American literature's most enigmatic figures portrays the award-winning writer through all the drama, passion, excitement, and carefully constructed fiction of her ninety-year life







Katherine Anne Porter and Texas


Book Description

"A Texas bibliography of Katherine Anne Porter" : p. [124]-182.




Selected Letters of Katherine Anne Porter


Book Description

Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980) produced a relatively small body of fiction, but she wrote thousands and thousands of letters. The present selection of 135 unexpurgated letters, written to seventy-four different persons, begins with a 1916 letter written from a tuberculosis sanatorium in Texas and ends with a 1979 letter dictated to an unnamed nursing-home attendant in Maryland. Different from any previous selection, this body of letters does not omit Porter's frank criticism of fellow writers and spans her entire life. Within that circumscription is the chronicle of Porter, a twentieth-century woman searching for love while she struggles to become the writer who she is sure she can be. Porter's letters vividly showcase the twentieth century as the writer observes it from her historical vantage points—tuberculosis sanatoria and the influenza pandemic of 1918; the leftist community in Greenwich Village in the 1920s; the Mexican cultural revolution of the 1920s and early 1930s; the expatriate community in Paris in the 1930s; the rise of Nazism in Europe between the World Wars; the Second World War and its concomitant suppression of civil liberties; Hollywood and the university circuit as a haven for financially strapped writers in the 1940s and 1950s; the Cold War and its competition for supremacy in space; the women's rights and the civil rights movements; and the evolution and demise of literary modernism.




Adolescent Hero in the Works of Katherine Anne Porter and J.D. Salinger


Book Description

Growing Up For Some Adolescents Is A Source Of Anxiety. They Dread Relinquishing Childhood Dependency And Assuming Responsibility. Sometimes They Feel Completely Overwhelmed By These Problems. In These Cases, Previous Blighting Experiences Make Them Hostile Or Excessively Submissive. From The Birth An Individual Is Influenced By The Social Environment And He Influences It. The Law Of Conditioning Plays A Significant Role In Fashioning Human Personality. The Influences Of Home, The Freedoms And Constraints Of Society And Processes Of Conflict, Co-Operation, Accommodation And Isolation Have Distinct Contribution In The Process Of Conditioning. The Social Forces, Social Problems And Social Situations Hamper Or Help An Individual Towards The Realization Of His Aspirations. Many Of The Problems Arise From Gender Discrimination And Social Set-Up Or Structure. It Is Against This Backdrop The Author Has Tried To Assess The Adolescent Behaviour In The Works Of Katherine Anne Porter And J.D. Salinger. Katherine Anne Porter S Later Stories And J.D. Salinger S The Catcher In The Rye Most Appropriately Suggest The Modern Predicament Of Alienation. Feeling Isolated The Hero Distrusts Truth, Justice And Love And Negates Everything Conforming To A Value-Oriented Society. Salinger S Main Concern Is With The Dehumanizing Effects Of Urbanization And Technological Developments On The Psyche Of An Individual. The Writer Feels That An Incessant Striving For Wealth, Luxuries And Comforts Of Technological Civilization Lead The Individual To Spiritual Vacuity. The Individual In Ms. Porter S Works Desires To Understand The Past And Compares It To The Failures Of Modern Man In A Mechanized, Chaotic World. Ms. Porter Longs For The Pastoral World Of The Past But Mocks Its Inadequacy To Meet The Contemporary Challenges. This Paradox Of Illusion Is Essential To Her Art And Philosophy Of Life.The Book Would Be Highly Useful Not Only For Students And Researchers Of English Literature But Also For Students And Researchers Of Psychology And Psycho-Therapists.




A Study Guide for Katherine Anne Porter's Ship of Fools


Book Description

A Study Guide for Katherine Anne Porter's "Ship of Fools," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students.This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.




Truth and Vision in Katherine Anne Porter's Fiction


Book Description

My stories are fragments of a larger plan, Katherine Anne Porter once wrote. And on another occasion she praised a critic who perceived that all her work, from the very beginning, was part of an "unbroken progression, all related." In Truth and Vision in Katherine Anne Porter's Fiction, Darlene Unrue examines the encompassing themes that underlie Porter's shorter fiction and that combined to create the haunting events of her complex metaphorical novel, Ship of Fools. Porter believed that men and women are compelled toward discovering the truth about their existence, but that the nature of our world makes those truths difficult to discern. In her writing, Unrue finds, Porter explored not only this basic human need to confront the truth, but also the bewilderment and suffering that are so often the results of failing to fulfill that need. Often in Porter's fiction the movement toward truth is obstructed by the hollow beliefs and illusions that abound in the world--by the seductions of ideology and dogmatic religion, by romantic love or the vision of a golden past. Clinging to such illusions, using them to lend a false coherence to their lives, Porter's characters are led away from the hard realization that truth requires accepting the existence of the unknowable at the center of life, and that what is knowable lies within themselves. Drawing on essays, reviews, letters, and notes, as well as on the intricate fabric of the fiction, this study traces Porter's pursuit of the truth through the creation of a body of fiction in which, from fragments of life, she could assemble an honest vision of the world.




Katherine Anne Porter and Mexico


Book Description

In 1920, an unknown journalist named Katherine Anne Porter first sojourned in Mexico. When she left her "familiar country" for the last time in 1931, she was the celebrated author of Flowering Judas and Other Stories and had accumulated a wealth of experiences and impressions that would inspire numerous short stories, essays, and reviews, as well as the opening section of her only novel, Ship of Fools. In this perceptive study of Porter's Mexican experiences, Thomas Walsh traces the important connections between those events and her literary works. Separating fact from the fictions that Porter constantly created about her life, he follows the active role that she played in Mexican political and intellectual life—even to the discovery of a plot to overthrow the Mexican government, which eventually figured in Flowering Judas. Most important, Walsh discerns how the great swings between depression and elation that characterized Porter's emotional life influenced her alternating visions of Mexico. In such works as "Xochimilco," Porter saw Mexico as an earthly Eden where hopes for a better society could be realized, but in other stories, including "The Fiesta of Guadalupe," she depicts Mexico as a place of hopeless oppression for the native peoples. Mexico, Porter once said, gave her back her Texas past. Given the unhappiness of that past, her feelings toward Mexico would always be ambivalent, but her Mexican experiences influenced all her subsequent works to some degree, even those pieces not specifically Mexican in setting. Walsh's study, then, is an essential key for anyone seeking greater understanding of the life or works of Katherine Anne Porter.