By the time Callie Russell Porter was 28 her hair was white. Born in the small community of Indian Creek, Texas in 1890, and having lost her mother at the age of two, Porter would lead a life designed for fiction.
A ravishing beauty, Callie Porter led many lives before settling into a life as a writer, including marriage to an abusive husband at age 16, being an actress, a singer and a journalist. In 1915, she divorced her first husband and, to honor of the grandmother who raised her, included changing her name to Katherine Anne as part of the decree. Having remade herself, Porter married and divorced two more times before moving to Colorado to work as a writer. It was here that Porter contracted a severe case of the flu in 1918. Emerging from the hospital several months later, she was bald and physically fragile but game. While her hair grew out white, her already compelling life story became fodder for fiction. The consequence of these dramatic events was Porter’s award-winning trilogy of novellas Pale Horse, Pale Rider.
The attention brought by the book’s publication led to a move to Greenwich Village in 1919. Like a lot of artists of her generation, life in New York brought a level of political awareness hitherto unknown to the writer. Porter began writing essays and short stories that reflected her growing radicalism. She soon began dividing her time between New York and Mexico, where she had an affair with the painter Diego Rivera.
Porter’s great beauty made her irresistible to men. Many affairs ensued as did two more marriages, though she was never able to successfully bear children. This misfortune is hinted at in the acclaimed short story “Flowering Judas.” The story’s protagonist is a beautiful young woman named Laura who goes to Mexico to support the post-revolution Socialist government under the guidance of Braggioni (a thinly veiled portrait of Rivera). Her many suitors soon learn that she employs the word “No” as a “holy talismanic word which does not suffer her to be led into evil.” Yet Braggioni persists in pursuing his protege though he admits, "One woman is really as good as another for me, in the dark." Meanwhile, his long suffering wife (modeled on Frida Kahlo) weeps because she knows she cannot escape her love for him, and even if she did leave him he would, “lock her up.” Consequently, Porter’s portrait of the Socialist leader Braggioni might feel remarkably familiar to modern audiences. He says he’s a revolutionary, but he enjoys all the trappings of Capitalism. He shows off his ornate gun-belt as evidence of his commitment to the Revolution but he is actually a hypocrite who would rather enjoy soft fabrics and expensive cologne. I won’t spoil the marvelous ending for you, but suffice to say it is haunting.
Oddly, despite fame and good reviews, Porter had to rely on ghost writing, grants and publisher’s advances in order to survive throughout the 1930s and most of the 1940s. Then, despite having little more than a grammar school education, Porter became a writer-in-residence at some of our nation’s finest universities, including the University of Chicago and the University of Virginia. This led to becoming a favorite with students at Stanford University and the University of Texas where she taught writing during the ‘50s. Fortunately, the author was given a chance to write full time when the Ford Foundation gave her a two-year stipend of $26,000 in 1959. The result was her only full-length novel, the 1962 bestseller Ship of Fools, a fictionalized account of a trip she made from Veracruz, Mexico to Germany in 1931. This work enabled Porter to finally enjoy financial security after the movie rights were sold for a whopping $500,000 (which would be over $5 million in today’s money)!
More critical acclaim for Porter’s work followed. She won a Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter in 1961, and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature every year between 1964 and 1968. A notorious raconteur, Porter also became a favorite of the television talk show circuit throughout the ‘60s and much of the ‘70s. Although Porter had become a successful novelist, she will always be remembered for her beautiful if somewhat cynical short stories.
Sadly, the acclaimed author had a debilitating stroke shortly after the 1977 publication of The Never-Ending Wrong, an account of the politics at play in the Sacco-Vanzetti verdict. She died in a nursing home on September 15, 1980 at the age of 90.
I just saw the movie, Ship of Fools, for the first time. While the acting was over the top, the story was ripping. Made in 1965, it had a feel of an older movie, not just from 1931 story. I've read her short stories. I'll look for more books. Thanks.