Katherine Anne Porter and Mexico: The Illusion of Eden

Thomas F. Walsh

Published by University of Texas Press 1992

Katherine Anne Porter and Mexico

The Illusion of Eden

Thomas F. Walsh

https://doi.org/10.7560/743113

Overview
Contents

About this book

In 1920, an unknown journalist named Katherine Anne Porter first sojourned in Mexico. When she left her "familiar country" for the last time in 1931, she was the celebrated author of Flowering Judas and Other Stories and had accumulated a wealth of experiences and impressions that would inspire numerous short stories, essays, and reviews, as well as the opening section of her only novel, Ship of Fools.

In this perceptive study of Porter's Mexican experiences, Thomas Walsh traces the important connections between those events and her literary works. Separating fact from the fictions that Porter constantly created about her life, he follows the active role that she played in Mexican political and intellectual life—even to the discovery of a plot to overthrow the Mexican government, which eventually figured in Flowering Judas.

Most important, Walsh discerns how the great swings between depression and elation that characterized Porter's emotional life influenced her alternating visions of Mexico. In such works as "Xochimilco," Porter saw Mexico as an earthly Eden where hopes for a better society could be realized, but in other stories, including "The Fiesta of Guadalupe," she depicts Mexico as a place of hopeless oppression for the native peoples.

Mexico, Porter once said, gave her back her Texas past. Given the unhappiness of that past, her feelings toward Mexico would always be ambivalent, but her Mexican experiences influenced all her subsequent works to some degree, even those pieces not specifically Mexican in setting. Walsh's study, then, is an essential key for anyone seeking greater understanding of the life or works of Katherine Anne Porter.

Author / Editor information

The late Thomas F. Walsh was a professor of English at Georgetown University and the author of numerous studies of Katherine Anne Porter's works.

Reviews

... the fullest account yet of Porter's Mexican sojourns and the origins of her Mexican stories.

— American Literature

The careful consideration given by Walsh to Porter's four trips to Mexico during the period 1920–1931 dwarfs all previous studies of Mexico's influence on her, including Joan Givner's Katherine Anne Porter: A Life, which gives only slight attention to the subject. This work is pivotal to an understanding of Porter's works.

— Choice

With this work, Walsh unquestionably established himself as the leading authority on the complex subject of Porter and Mexico . . . [He] argues convincingly, without undue strain, for the central importance in all Porter's later work of the Edenic vision, extravagantly hopeful and inordinately despairing, that was first and most strikingly expressed in her writings about Mexico.

— John Edward Hardy, Professor of English, University of Illinois at Chicago

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Preface Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Note to the Reader Publicly Available Download PDF	xii
Introduction Publicly Available Download PDF	xiii
1· Porter and Mexican Politics Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2. Porter in Mexico, 1920-1921 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	14
3. Porter and Mexican Art, 1922 and 1923 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	49
4. Thinking of Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	95
5. Mexico Once More, 1930-1931 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	136
6. Becoming Miranda Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	165
7. Ship of Fools Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	205
Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	226
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	231
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	243
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	253
Permissions Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	267

Language: English
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 293

eBook

Published: December 15, 2014
ISBN: 9781477305256