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9. Two Almost-Last Straws
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9 Two Almost- Last Straws I chose a perfect old stone house and barn sitting on a hill, renovated it splendidly, and left it forever, all in one fine June morning. In this snapshot style, I have also possessed beautiful old Texas ranch houses; a lovely little Georgian house in Alexandria, Virginia; an eighteenth- century Spanish-French house in Louisiana. . . . Indeed, I have lived for a few hours in any number of the most lovely houses in the world. —Katherine Anne Porter, “A House of My Own” (1941) In 1939 and 1958 two events occurred that drove Porter’s ambivalence about Texas nearly to estrangement. Both must be told along with a great deal of contextual material, in clud ing what I consider to be very pertinent to both: her long wish for a house of her own. As her poem “Anniversary in a Country Cemetery” tells us, she regarded herself as essentially homeless through out her adult life, and when she visited her mother’s grave in 1936 (the “anniversary” referred to in the poem, which may actually have been drafted on that occasion) she briefly thought of herself as being “home again.” The following year, 1937, when she went back to Texas to celebrate her father’s eightieth birthday at the Old Settlers Reunion in San Marcos, she became caught up in nostalgic emotion and began to wonder if she might make her home in Texas. Of course, she did not do so. But her wish for a home, combined with her nostalgia for a childhood bliss she never actually experienced and her wish to be embraced by “her own people,” as she was at the reunion, added to the feeling of rejection she experienced after the episodes in 1939 and 1958. As if the mellowness she felt at the Old Settlers Reunion were not enough, Porter’s feelings toward Texas were further sof tened by a four- month stay in Hous ton, largely at her sister Gay’s house, at the beginning of 1938 when she was waiting for her divorce from Pressly so she could marry the ardent Albert Erskine. This relatively happy time compounded her vulnerability to hurt when she was passed over for the Texas Institute of Letters (TIL) award in 1939. Being left as runner- up after she had thought Pale Horse, Pale Rider was a “certain winner” (KAP 315) struck her as another fundamental rejection by Texas and Texans. The year was an emotional roller coaster for Porter in other ways as well, from the high of publishing her most artistically triumphant book to the low of 164 / Chapter 9 yet another marital failure and the disaster of another world war. Germany invaded Poland on Sep tem ber 1, 1939. It was a big year for the fledgling Texas Institute of Letters, too. The or ga ni za tion had been founded only in 1936 for the promotion and recognition of literature in Texas. The TIL prize, being awarded for the first time in 1939, was designed to recognize the year’s best book written by a writer born in Texas or who had lived in Texas for at least two years or to the writer of a book substantially concerned with Texas. Porter had every reason to regard herself as the leading candidate on multiple grounds—as a native Texan, as author of a book about Texas (even if not very recognizably so), and because of the superb literary quality of the book. But when she returned to Louisiana in the fall after her summer stay at Olivet Writers’ Conference, she learned that the prize had gone to folklorist J. Frank Dobie for Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver. Dobie himself felt awkward about it; it was his or ga ni za tion, after all. But the award committee had expressed itself. Dobie’s book was the winner for its “indigenous nature” (KAP 315). This, too, is problematic. There would seem to be no good reason why a book of the rough-and-ready western stretches of the state would be more “indigenous” than one about central Texas and its ties to the South. But that was exactly the image of Texas Dobie was seeking to displace in favor of an image of Texas as the West. The award, then, had broadly po liti cal ramifications. What it represented to Porter, though, was simply rejection of her efforts to launch a reciprocal love affair with Texas. This was the last straw...