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JOHN THOMPSON
must be presented in other terms;
Ship of Fools
by its author's admis–
sion claims "this simple almost universal image of the ship of this
world on its voyage to eternity." But this is really beyond comment; all
art presents as much of this claim as its creator can manage.
In the view that Katherine Anne Porter manages here, there is
nothing obscure, nothing like the very genuine difficulty of the stories.
One of the few things that could be said about those stories as a body
of work was that they refused to yield a meaning, a theme; they re–
fused to make statements, they refused, as it were, to talk about their
own business. The reason for- this, at one level, is fairly clear; as Ed–
mund Wilson wrote, "What she wants other people to know she im–
parts to them by creating an object, the self-developing organism of a
work of prose." That, for some time, has been our idea of the proper
method of the literary artist. Katherine Anne Porter was brought up
in literature, she has said, on Henry James, James Joyce, W.B. Yeats,
T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound: whatever else they taught, surely they had one
lesson in common, that there had better not be any mere statement
in a work of art. This single artistic principle alone unified her stories,
and it extended into other reticences, other refusals, also in the modern
manner. Related tales refused to become novels. There were no plots.
The scenes were small-scale and personal. Each story had its own
intimate perfection of language; many had their own self-enclosed
structures of symbolic meanings. The author's voice was never heard
through the perfect ventriloquism of style.
Ship of Fools
is a total departure from this-Symbolist? Sym–
bolist-Naturalist-Impressionist?-method of fiction. It is statement. And
it is statement that is more than forthright, it is final, total, relentless.
The statements continue throughout the book. The author sees all,
knows all, knows the feelings and the most secret thoughts of all her
characters, man, woman and beast. This reversion to a literary method
not much used by serious writers today does not establish a landmark;
it is a personal eccentricity, suitable to the occasion. It does reduce
tension, it limits possibilities and responses, it substitutes explanation
for drama; yet it allows her to make her point, and she certainly knows
exactly what she wants to say.
What she says is quite simply a curse, a cold, joking, remorseless,
unpitying curse. The travellers believe they are bound for a place
better than the one they are leaving. This is a cruel joke. Veracruz is
Hell, the ship is Hell, they are bound for Hell; being young and being
old are Hell; and they are the devils in Hell. They torture one an–
other day and night. Those with good intentions do this rather lugubri-
