ASSESSING PORTER
ALLENSWORTH, JAMES
Correspondence ASSESSING PORTER THERE WE WERE IN the height of our silly season, the presidential elections, and you found space for a gem of an essay on Katherine Anne Porter (“Pale...
...The question is a nonstarter...
...Wonderful stories—but could she write a novel...
...her dwindling fame nowadays...
...I am sorry to hear they are now blanketed with shopping centers and malls...
...Caravaggio’s reputation as a painter is not changed by his violent life and commission of manslaughter...
...Brooke Allen knows her subject and sums it up beautifully...
...Perhaps Ship of Fools can best be thought of as a series of related short stories, sketches of people as they reveal themselves on the slow passage of a ship to Europe, to Germany in particular...
...It cannot be so...
...It was wellwritten, informative, valid, and valuable...
...My hat’s off to Brooke Allen...
...I would quibble with one point...
...The Founders established the U.S...
...Furthermore, the statement in the California sample ballot for Proposition 8 was inaccurate...
...MASCULINE FICTION MARY GRABAR’S “Boyz n the Book” (October 27, 2008) only touched on part of the reason I still read comic books...
...Comic books seem to be the only place where this contest is still taken seriously...
...The “blessings of liberty” are the “unalienable rights” with which all men are “endowed by their Creator” as stated in the Declaration of Independence...
...The Founders framed the Constitution to secure only unalienable rights: “[T]o secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among men...
...In any case, it doesn’t matter...
...She does portray, unfl aggingly, her doleful view of human nature...
...Perhaps this is a blunt statement, but it is true nonetheless...
...If anything, these reputations are enhanced by their subjects’ villainous natures, as Bottum suggests is possible when he muses on V.S...
...Naipaul’s motives for letting the world know all about his vicious personality...
...Of course they can...
...nor is Richard Wagner’s stature as one of the greatest composers affected by his egregious anti-Semitism and personal rottenness in general...
...CHARLES ZIGMUND Ossining, N.Y...
...THE RIGHTS OF MAN THANKS FOR “R-e-s-p-e-c-t” by Robert F. Nagel (October 13...
...EDWARD SHORT New York, N.Y...
...What Nagel did not say—yea, is never said—is that there is no constitutional or natural right of same-sex marriage...
...Whether we like it or not, art and life are separate...
...DON SCHENK Allentown, Pa...
...The initiative does not eliminate the “right of same-sex couples to marry” unless “right” is understood to mean a privilege granted by government...
...Naipaul...
...A union between two members of the same sex was not, is not, and never will be an unalienable, natural right...
...Did Porter fi nd the one vehicle that would suffi ce, both as a longer work and as a testament of her ability to tell a story in as few words as possible...
...Fran?ois Villon’s stature as a great poet is not affected by his having been a highwayman and murderer...
...Bottum justly deplores in The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V.S...
...I know Porter’s childhood haunts well, those rolling, black-soiled and fruitful lands between Austin and San Antonio...
...Porter’s childhood memories in Texas, the loss of her mother when young, the “feckless” father—all of these things weigh heavily in her best work...
...VICTOR A. STURGILL La Palma, Calif...
...Not only does most modern high-brow fi ction ignore or disparage “masculine stereotypes of tests of strength, intelligence, and bravery” while superheroes are tested on all three virtues, but there is another masculine test known from mythology as “the choice of Hercules”: whether to pursue pleasure or virtue, whether or not to sacrifi ce yourself in order to be a hero...
...JAMES ALLENSWORTH Arcata, Calif...
...Allen has a fi ne narrative sense and weaves it all together: Porter’s later incarnation as a grand dame, literary-wise...
...LIFE AND ART THE SUBHEADLINE OF Joseph Bottum’s “Sir Vidia’s Dance” (November 17) asks, “Can life and art be separated...
...Unfortunately in 1985, at the age of 40, the man whom the Daily Telegraph called “one of the most talented and wide-ranging writers of his generation,” died suddenly of thrombosis...
...Correspondence ASSESSING PORTER THERE WE WERE IN the height of our silly season, the presidential elections, and you found space for a gem of an essay on Katherine Anne Porter (“Pale Horse, Pale Writer,” October 27...
...SHIVA NAIPAUL, the author of Firefl ies (1970), The Chip-Chip Gatherers (1973), and North of South (1978) is the Naipaul worth reading, not V.S...
...the two biographies and other critical comments...
...If Shiva had lived, he would have long overshadowed his older brother, and we should have been spared the tiresome avowals of whoring and wife beating, which Mr...
...Constitution in part to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity...
Vol. 14 • December 2008 • No. 11
