ERIC Number: ED315770
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 1989-Jun
Pages: 11
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Katherine Anne Porter on Her Contemporaries.
Bridges, Phyllis
Personal experiences with and critical judgments of leading artists and intellectuals of the twentieth century are recorded in Katherine Anne Porter's essays, letters and conversations which provide snapshots of her attitudes and encounters. Porter's commentaries about such contemporaries as Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Saul Bellow, Flannery O'Connor, Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, Eudora Welty, Norman Mailer, and Betty Friedan communicate her own values, biases, perspectives; and sometimes betray her own egotism, insecurity, or even duplicity. Especially noteworthy are the anti-feminist sentiments expressed by Porter which seem inconsistent with her actions and struggles during a long, arduous literary career. Her public rejection of the movement to assure women's rights seems a contradiction for a woman whose experiences had surely taught her the realities of inequities. Still, these attitudes reflect another of the enigmas of Katherine Anne Porter, a woman who on the personal level aided the careers of other women, a woman whose fierce independence carried her through the rugged ups and downs of eighty years of this century, and an artist whose works show the roles of women to be meaningful, even heroic. (KEH)
Publication Type: Opinion Papers; Speeches/Meeting Papers; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A