The Art of Fiction No. 29
“Even Saint Teresa said, ‘I can pray better when I’m comfortable.’ I don’t think living in cellars and starving is any better for an artist than it is for anybody else.”
Katherine Anne Porter was born on May 15, 1890, in Indian Creek, Texas. Porter received an O. Henry Award for her short story “Holiday” (1962) and the 1966 Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award in fiction for The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter (1965). With clarity and attention to detail, Porter’s short fiction examines its characters in great depth. In the author’s own words, she was interested in the very small, or “what the French call la petite histoire.” Yet Porter’s novel Ship of Fools (1962), a reflection on her travels to Germany on a 1931 Guggenheim Fellowship, transcends the miniature, using allegory to question the nature of good and evil on the brink of World War II. Porter, a favorite for interviews and speaking engagements, was known for her personal style. Her most notable fiction includes Flowering Judas (1930), Noon Wine (1937), and Pale Horse, Pale Rider (1939). In 1980, after residing for many years in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., Porter died in Silver Spring, Maryland at the age of ninety.
“Even Saint Teresa said, ‘I can pray better when I’m comfortable.’ I don’t think living in cellars and starving is any better for an artist than it is for anybody else.”
What follows are the authors’ discussions on the first stirrings, the germination of a poem, or a work of fiction. Any number of headings would be appropriate: Beginnings, The Starting Point, etc. Inspiration would be as good as any.