Katherine Anne Porter is best known as a distinguished and prize-winning author of short stories and short novels. Her only long novel, Ship of Fools, substantially different in texture from the shorter fiction, nevertheless deserves a respected place in the aggregate of her reputation when the novel is rightfully considered for what it is and what it is not.
In the late 1920s Porter conceived a long autobiographical novel whose working title was “Many Redeemers”. It was to have three parts: “Legend and Memory”, “Midway of This Mortal Life”, and “The Present Day”. The first part was to contain her childhood experiences and family legends handed down from her paternal grandmother; t…
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