ENGL 4310

In the blog I wrote about how I really, really just want Katherine Anne Porter to by my friend, I mentioned that she wasn't really jazzed about William Faulkner (as a person; she semi-complimented his The Sound and the Fury on one occasion) and thought little of him. Chelsea Lane told me she'd gotten the impression that the same was true of Porter's view of Ernest Hemingway, and Jillian posted a blog about Porter's anti-fandom of Maughan and Wilde. All these accumulated insults/discrediting of well-respected or widely read pieces of literature reminded me somewhat of a question Todd asked once about the stories of O'Connor and Porter: How would you read this story if it was just coming out of the fax machine? In other words, would we respect some of these stories as much if a famous author's name wasn't attached?

Well, anyway, one writer that Porter seems to have absolutely loved is Marianne Moore. On page 410 of the Letters collection, she describes Moore as "my favorite living poet, and one of the most delicious persons alive."

So, okay: at least when it comes to Faulkner, Hemingway, and (I think?) Maughan, Porter's distaste for their writing is influenced at least partially by knowing them personally and simply not liking them as people, or at least that's what her letters suggest to me. She calls Moore "one of the most delicious persons alive," and I wonder if maybe Porter's affection for Moore's poetry is determined somewhat by her love of Moore herself. It seems at least plausible.

I think that same concept - liking a person's work more when you like the person - is at play somewhat in this whole letter-reading campaign. I know I'm a little fixated on Porter's letters; this is basically the third blog I've written about how I absolutely adore reading them. Part of that adoration might be that reading Porter's letters gives me more understanding of who she was (or, at least, it helps me form my perception of who she was, and that may or may not be altogether accurate), and if I like the person she was, then I get to have an added measure of enjoyment when I reread the stories I liked so much to begin with.

The perception I've formed of Porter is more or less that she's just awesome, and I mean that in the slang sense and the actual sense; I'm awed by her work and from what I can tell of her life. Being a semi-crazed fan can't not taint my opinion of her work, but I don't think it would/will make me love a story that I would be indifferent to if it weren't for Porter's name at the top. It probably just means I'll rave a little more loudly about the ones I started out loving.