The Immersion Library

I was right not to be afraid of any thief but myself, who will end by leaving me nothing.

When traveling, do not give me an itinerary. Sure, tell me the sites to see. But do not give me a schedule. Tell me how long it takes to walk to those sites. Tell me about the eateries that no one knows about. Tell me about the busker on the street playing Muddy Waters and singing in an Italian accent. I want to run into him so he can teach me the correct pronuncation of grazie.

When reading this collection of stories from Katherine Anne Porter, one ought not to expect an indulgent immersion into her various settings. Whether in Texas, Berlin, or Mexico, the reader ought to leave their camera and pamphlet at home and ask the tour guide for a refund. Porter expounds on the human experience, the psychology of self and relationships. Rather than delving into a romanticized diatribe about the fields and haciendas of Mexico, she will explore the crumbling meaning of 1930s Berlin through the eyes of a poor American artist. She’ll avoid dramatizing the farm in Texas and add pressure to the tensions of strangers beginning a new, symbiotic life.

In her narrations, one loses sight of where her characters end and she begins. At times, it seems that she sits in your reading area with you, telling you a character’s story while the character sits right next to her. She coaxes you to connect with them, find similarities, empathies, and contrasts, depite the cultural and geographical devide. Some say the best art happens when the artist gets out of the way; create the purest conduit between the art and the recipient. Well, Porter might disagree; a rare voice in the literary lexicon that augments her work by “getting in the way”.

Strangely, I feel her best work happened in longer form – the “short novel”, as she would say. She despises the word “novella”. Yet these longer stories allowed her to expand a scope to encompass everything she sees in an experience. For her, the dimension is depth, not length. Unlike anyone else, she uncovers a universality from the smallest nugget of insignificance. Porter owns the short story form.