Katherine Anne Porter's Feminist Criticism: Book Reviews from the 1920's

Abstract

Katherine Anne Porter is seldom recognized as a feminist, and little known as a literary critic. She was both. No mere stylist-a charge she denies: I've been called a stylist until I could really tear my hair out[1]-Porter exhibits in her work a well-trained critical intellect which frequently addressed itself, particularly during early part of her career, to women's rights and women's concerns. Her book reviews from 1920's provide ample evidence both of her critical abilities and of her commitment to feminist cause. Porter was heavily involved in critical activitieslecturing, essay writing, and book reviewing--during many of her most productive years.[2] A perfectionist about her art, Porter was in no hurry to publish her fiction. But she was writing all along, cutting her teeth as a book reviewer on dozens of other authors' works while she perfected her own. During 1920's, as her first stories began to appear in print,[3] Porter contributed regularly to New York Herald Tribune Books and also wrote for various other periodicals.[4] It was hard work, and good experience. These early book reviews illustrate Porter's forthrightness, her liberal spirit, and her witty mastery of English. They trace formation of her critical tastes and knowledge of her craft. They also help to fill in a somewhat unknown period in Porter's life. Always reticent about herself and evasive with would-be biographers in later years, Porter reveals herself in her early reviews and essays not merely through her stated opinions, but also in her offhand comments, allusions, comparisons, and ironic turns of phrase, as well as in quick glimpses of her social milieu sprinkled throughout these early pieces. They warrant attention not because of works discussed (most of which have long been buried in oblivion), but because they provide a new perspective on author of Flowering Judas, Old Mortality, Horse, Pale Rider, Noon Wine, and Ship of Fools. Book reviews, of course, are assigned; reviewers are often asked to evaluate books falling into what editors believe to be appropriate categories. Porter was frequently assigned books about Mexico, where she had lived, as well as books about art, archaeology, travel, and history. As a woman and a fledgling author, she was asked to review many works by women novelists, poets, and biographers, and books about feminism. The subject of women's rights was so important to Katherine Anne Porter that it appears in a great number of her reviews, just as female characters and women's experience predominate in her fiction. Anyone interested in Porter's personal struggle for independence will find her comments on women and feminist issues very significant. Critics often have overlooked feminist orientation of Porter's work. William L. Nance has called her art the art of rejection,[5] a negative and sub-