Katherine Anne Porter – Lecture: Taste Of The Age – March 4, 1954 – University Of Illinois – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
Katherine Anne Porter (1890 – 1980) was an American short story writer, novelist, and journalist, best known for her dark short stories about betrayal and death. She became a leading author in the genre of Southern Literature and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1966 for The Complete Stories (1965).
From early childhood Katherine Anne Porter had been writing stories, an activity she described as the passion of her life. In 1917 she joined the staff of the Critic, a Fort Worth, Texas, weekly newspaper, and in 1918 and 1919 she worked for the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, Colorado, writing mostly book reviews and political articles. In 1918 Katherine almost died during the 1918 flu pandemic. When she was discharged from the hospital months later, she was frail and completely bald. When her hair finally grew back, it was white and remained that color for the rest of her life. Her experience was reflected in her trilogy of short novels, Pale Horse, Pale Rider (1939), for which she received the first annual gold medal for literature in 1940 from the Society of Libraries of New York University. She then moved to New York City, where she continued to write. During the 1920s she traveled often to Mexico, wrote articles about the country, and studied art. She also worked on a biography of minister and author Cotton Mather (1663–1728) and wrote some book reviews.
During the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, Porter enjoyed a prominent reputation as one of America’s most distinguished writers, but her limited output and equally-limited sales had her living on grants and advances for most of the era.
Between 1948 and 1958, she taught at Stanford University, the University of Michigan, Washington and Lee University, and the University of Texas, where her unconventional manner of teaching made her popular with students. In 1959 the Ford Foundation granted Porter $26,000 over two years.
Three of Porter’s stories were adapted into radio dramas on the program NBC University Theatre. “Noon Wine” was made into an hour drama in early 1948, and two years later “Flowering Judas” and “Pale Horse, Pale Rider” each were produced in half-hour dramas on an episode of the hour-long program. Porter herself made two appearances on the radio series giving critical commentary on works by Rebecca West and Virginia Woolf. In the 1950s and 1960s she occasionally appeared on television in programs discussing literature.
Porter published her only novel, Ship of Fools, in 1962; it was based on her reminiscences of a 1931 ocean cruise she had taken from Vera Cruz, Mexico, to Germany.
Despite Porter’s claim that after the publication of Ship of Fools she would not win any more prizes in America, in 1966 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the U.S. National Book Award for The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter. That year she was also appointed to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times between 1964 and 1968.
Here is a lecture Katherine Anne Porter delivered at the University Of Illinois as part of the series The Taste Of The Age, from March 4, 1954. It’s an interesting listen, especially lately.
(Special thanks to Wikipedia for bio information).
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