800 KS
611
ously; those who know that they are devils, like the Katzenjammer
twins Ric and Rae, perfonn their tortures with great spirit and fun.
The book is pleasant to read because all the characters are hateful
and it
is
a pleasure to see each in turn get his lumps. Most of them are
piggish Gennans. They suffer for it.
There
is
no plot, but there really is narrative; no sea adventures,
no hurricanes or mutinies, only a dog overboard. Instead of a plot,
there is a complex but clearly registered mounting of tensions and an
ebb and flow in the forced or sought intimacies of the passengers.
These intimacies either fail or if they succeed prove to be superbly
revolting. There is no hero, no heroine, nobody on this ship works,
nobody succeeds. The ship seems
to
run of itself. The Captain only
pretends to command.
For what it is worth, this is why they are all devils. This is what
Katherine Anne Porter was so exquisitely not saying in those stories
with their beautifully-arranged images and symbols, their exact and
enigmatic actions. What is missing we can see only in one person in
all her fiction, the heroic Grandmother of a few stories who wore her–
self out, after the failure of all the men, running the fann, riding out
in winter when women had babies, and who can say, as she lies dying,
"I hardly ever lost one of them!" Nobody else in all this world even
tries.
The book is an honest and spirited rendering of this view of life.
The view has a considerable correspondence to reality. It is easy to
deny but less easy to refute, unless those whose experience allows them
to refute it may have found that their experience has also set free
for them something like the great energy that this truth has given the
author.
Aboard the poor suffering ship are three or four women who must
remind us, as of course these things do in fiction, of figures of the
author herself at various stages of life. One of them is a Mrs. Tread–
well. All through the voyage, politely, prettily, she tries to avoid any
involvements with the other passengers, although she cannot help let–
ting fall, once in a while, in her light agreeable voice, some deadly
remark or some inadvertent word of sympathy. Devotedly she polishes
her bright red varnished nails, dresses carefully in
"airy
yellow stuff,"
in her "silvery pleated gown," her "perfectly fitted, expensive-looking
linen frock," her "lightly pleated gown, rose-red, with a wide gilded
leather belt," her "gilded sandals," her "nightgown of smooth white
satin, with a buttoned-up collar and full bishop sleeves." Thus beauti–
fully groomed and beautifully mannered, an object of art made with
