Katherine Anne Porter

“She has simply an eye and an ear sharp, shrewd, and true as a tuning fork. She has given to this little story all her wit and observation, her blistering humor and her just cruelty; for she has none of that slack tolerance or sentimental tenderness toward symptomatic evils that amounts to criminal collusion between author and character. --From Katherine Anne Porter's Introduction to A Curtain of Green by Eudora Welty (Doubleday, 1941) in The Collected Essays and Occasional Writings of Katherine Anne Porter (Seymour Lawrence/Delacorte Press, 1970).

I sought out Katherine Anne Porter because Austin science fiction author Nnedi Okorafor spoke at Kyle’s Katherine Anne Porter Literary Center (508 West Center Street, 78640) and a review in the Hays County Free Press popped up for scrolling in my Kyle email. When I read the story, I merely recognized Porter’s name, not having read her before, but was nonetheless surprised that she is considered a local Kyle author. So, I went to the library. 

I found her pleasurable. Katherine Anne Porter is good company. I love listening to her  across our distances. In addition to a dozen essays here, some several times, I also read short stories and poems in The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter (Harvest/Harcourt Press, 1965, et seq). I read “Pale Horse/Pale Rider” through three times because that is what it took to understand the sequence of events. Clearly, even  though I read several other stories ahead of that, I was not prepared for a serious engagement. Nonetheless, she was an inspiration. I could have fattened these two anthologies with post-its bearing exclamation points or quotation marks tagging the juxtapositions, the clever and insightful phrases. 

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