Katherine Anne Porter’s Birthday
In 1965, a writer for McCall’s Magazine interviewed Katherine Anne Porter, the Kyle native who wrote great fiction like “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall,” Pale Horse, Pale Rider, and Noon Wine, but also enriched her penchant for storytelling by telling stories about herself. By 1965, the always elegant and dramatic grande dame of American fiction had already been married five times, but when her interviewer said, “I vaguely remember the fact that you’ve been married” — which is either the sign of a reporter who knows exactly what he is doing or the most uninformed question in history (sometimes it’s a precariously thin line) — Porter responded, “I’ve been married to three very passable men. … I have no hidden marriages. They just sort of escape my mind.” And when McCall’s wanted to know why Porter hadn’t stayed married, she said, “Do you know I attract insane people?” That’s one of the many treasures in From Texas to the World and Back: Essays on the Journeys of Katherine Anne Porter (TCU Press, $26.50) — specifically, it’s from SWT creative writing grad Larry Herold‘s essay “Trapped by the Great White Searchlight: Katherine Anne Porter and Marital Bliss.” Porter would have turned 101 on Tuesday, May 15, and to celebrate, half a dozen contributors to the book — Don Graham, Mark Busby, and Dick Holland, among others — will be at a booksigning and party at the Katherine Anne Porter Literary Center in Kyle at 7pm on May 15.
“Until quite recently, Porter in her home state has always lived in the shadow cast by tall men, or short men who told tall tales,” Graham quips in his essay, “Katherine Anne Porter’s Journey From Texas to the World”. He’s referring to folklorist and historian J. Frank Dobie, historian Walter Prescott Webb, and naturalist Roy Bedichek, all of whom are thought of as the “fathers” of Texas literature but aren’t nearly as widely read as Porter is. From Texas to the World and Back contains details about why and how it has happened that Porter has been overshadowed here — Holland covers her sad and not entirely blameworthy miscommunication with the University of Texas over their intention (or not) to name a library in her honor. The collection includes a fascinating transcript of a recollection by Dr. Roger Brooks, who was president of Howard Payne University in Brownwood when Porter went there in 1976 to receive an honorary degree. (“After all, I thought, Howard Payne is a small Baptist institution and to receive an honorary degree cannot be much to a person of that stature, but she wrote me as if she were receiving a degree from Harvard, and so it pleased me.”) For directions to the Porter Literary Center, see www.english.swt.edu/kap/contactpage5.html. Sponsored by SWT’s Center for the Study of the Southwest, SWT’s MFA program, and Barnes & Noble.
New Voices
Clockwork Storybook is an Austin outfit that has been a premier online publisher of fantasy, adventure, and horror fiction (www.clockworkstorybook.com) since 1998. But now they’re breaking into print; their first four authors will be signing their books at Adventures in Crime and Space (609-A W. Sixth) on Saturday, May 12, from 2-4pm.
This article appears in May 11 • 2001.