posted on 27 Jun 2021

Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter

Ship of Fools was the publishing sensation of 1962 from an author whose reputation was really made off the back of short story writing. This novel too started life as a short story idea that just grew and grew – to something over 500 pages in the end. In truth, it was the drama and anticipation of missed deadline after missed deadline that built its reputation well in advance of anyone actually reading it. Porter just couldn’t bring herself to take shortcuts with what became a sort of allegory or moral mirror to the European (and specifically the German Nazi ) mind of the 1930s and what she produced in the end had perhaps more in common with the classic high Victorian novel than the Modernist experiments of her contemporaries.

This is a book with the most modest of plots but it’s also one that demands time – it forces you in fact to read it slowly. Essentially it’s the tale of a diverse (and mostly repellent) characters from a whole range of backgrounds making a sea journey from Mexico to Germany on a passage ship rigidly organised on a class basis – with the poorest in the bowels of the boat and the first class passengers promenading the upper decks and casting the occasional quizzical eye to their third class fellow travellers who they view as an unpleasant inconvenience at best.

Porter structures the book around a cast of central characters and we cut from one to another as they interact, move on, interact again and discuss their fellows, the moral decline of Europe, Jews and their own physical and mental health. Relationships, infatuations and deceptions grow and wither, flourish and poison and all of them seem to reflect some coming, unspoken horror that, of course, we know is coming as a reader but to which they are oblivious.

Taylor Jasmine writing for the Literary Ladies website in 2015 put it like this:

“The world was then on the edge of catastrophe and people were blind to the imminent disaster. This is revealed in episodes of personal unkindness and cruelty, stubborn prejudices and the reciprocal and destructive hatred between Jew and Christian.

Katherine Anne Porter has succeeded in creating the brilliant panorama of life in all its glory and depravity. Her Ship of Fools is the ship of humanity…”

As is always the case with a book built around episodic cutting from one set of characters to another, you will probably, as I did, develop favourite threads and favoured individuals whose stories you are more keen on seeing unwind than is true with other characters. The problem with this is that it becomes mildly irritating when you are forced to wait for these storylines to re-emerge and there’s always the temptation to skip along picking out the narratives that most attract you. It’s clearly not my place to tell you how to read the book but I’d just put in a word of warning against the sort of strategy I’ve mentioned above – the book is essentially cumulative and if you want the full impact I think it’s important to stay attached to all the threads as they weave together into a vivid tapestry.

So set aside some time for this book and don’t try and read it in a hurry. I’m sure that if you do that you’ll discover there’s a real gem to be found here.

 

Terry Potter

June 2021