Katherine Anne Porter: A Life

by Joan Givner

My life has been incredible, Katherine Anne Porter used to say, "I don't believe a word of it." Author of the best-selling novel, Ship of Fools , winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for her short stories, Porter was both the first lady of American letters and a woman whose indomitable will forged a life that, as biographer Joan Givner makes clear, was not only incredible but may have been her most creative fiction of all.

Born Callie Porter in the log-cabin poverty of rural Texas, she, like Jay Gatsby, invented her own history, changing her name and "acquiring" a lineage of statesmen to become an aristocratic daughter of the Old South. Strikingly beautiful and gilded by her idealized background, Porter lived a life of drama and passion that spanned nine decades and witnessed some of this century's most tumultuous events. She traveled from revolutionary Mexico in the 1920s to Berlin at Hitler's rise and to Paris at the start of World War II; from Hollywood in the forties to Washington during the Kennedy era. Somehow, by design or coincidence, she was always right in the eye of the storm when history was being made. By the end of her life, she had risen from rags to riches, anonymity to renown―all on her own terms, all on the strength of her talent, her miraculous stamina, her wit, grit, and often ruthless determination.

As evocative of her era as it is of the woman herself, this book is a remarkable portrait of an artist who crafted her life to appear as elegant and structured as her short stories and who, in so doing, sometimes edited out of her experience the hard, cold facts that until now have remained obscure. Givner has recovered that experience to reveal the true version of Porter's childhood and family background, her first "hidden" marriage, her innumerable love affairs, her quarrels with Hart Crane and other friends, and her ultimate achievement of wealth and celebrity.

For this revised edition, Givner has provided an updated prologue and epilogue, incorporating new material to further illuminate Porter's life and fiction. Givner offers accurate information on Porter's battle with tuberculosis, an account of Porter's betrayal of her close friend Josephine Herbst during a mendacious interview with FBI agents, and new insight into her relationship with William Goyen. Recently discovered candid photographs of Porter have also been included.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, American History, Womens, American

616 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Joan Givner is a former English professor at the University of Regina. She is the author of the Ellen Fremedon series (Groundwood). She has published biographies of Katherine Anne Porter and Mazo de la Roche, as well as an autobiography. She is the winner of the 1992 CBC fiction competition.

Reviews

[Ronnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have no idea why I decided to add this book to my list; I had no idea who Katherine Anne Porter was beforehand, and I've never read any of her books. Joan Givner is, as it turns out, of my alma mater, but I'm sure that wasn't the reason I added it. Either way, it was on my list of Books To Read, and so I read it.

I assume that Givner actually liked Porter, given that Porter personally asked her to write her biography and because she did a very good job of learning everything there was to know about Porter, even stuff that seemed complete inconsequential (in a recreational creative writing class Porter once taught, she had a student who was an ornithologist. There are several sentences detailing her knowledge of birds. This woman is never mentioned again). With this assumption, I have to assume that Givner wrote a very balanced booked, because Porter does not seem likable at all. She was capricious, self-aggrandizing, a habitual liar, seemed to use everyone who came into her life, and apparently did not respond well to criticism at all (which leads me to believe that, had she lived to see this book published, she probably would have regretted asking Givner to be her biographer).

The biography itself is meticulously researched and incredibly detailed. It's written very academically, which was a bit of a disappointment after reading two other dynamic biographies this month, but it is very easy to read and doesn't bore despite the academic tone.

And, I'll add, on a personal note, it was very inspiring. As someone who has wanted to be an author since I was five, it's inspiring that Porter was such an acclaimed author despite never publishing a novel until she was 70 (and she didn't publish any short stories until she was in her 30s). For over twenty-years, she kept working at her novel, and eventually got it done. Hopefully I can take a page from her book in that regard, even if I'd be better off not mimicking anything at all in her personality.

[Lisa Roney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poor Joan Givner got so much grief for her biography of Porter, but it's really a very good biography. Givner may have been brutally honest about Porter's flaws, but she shows Porter to be all the more interesting for them. I will always have a soft spot in my heart for Porter because of how Givner told the story of her life.

[Martin · Rating 2 out of 5]

This took me forever to finish, but I was determined. And while I enjoyed reading about Porter, this biography was a slog. As Blake Bailey has demonstrated in his bios of Cheever and Yates, a long biography doesn't need to be boring, and nor does it need to read like an overlong graduate school thesis, which is what this book read like. Read it only if you're DYING to know about KAP.

[Marta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Porter's biography is totally fascinating and dramatic. Recommended!

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Author, writer, traveler, and speaker.