of the Society Volume XX June 2020 ISSN 1528.655X A Little Incident in South Bentley Avenue By Beth Alvarez, University of Maryland Last January in Los Angeles, I went back to the places that had been residences of Katherine Anne Porter between 1945 and 1947. Some of the readers of this newsletter will recall that I had previously made this pilgrimage in May 2002 and reported it in Volume 10, dated May 2003. The 2020 visit was made in the company of Society President Jerry Findley and our tour guide and host, Dan Bennett. We visited residences on 25th Street, Santa Monica; South Bentley Avenue, Westwood; and 6th Street, Santa Monica. On arrival at each, Jerry and I took photographs. Our first two stops were in Santa Monica. At South Bentley Avenue, we encountered Joe, the man of the house, who was about to pull out of his garage. He asked if he could help us, and we confessed why we had come. He was unfamiliar with Porter but assured us his wife, Patsy, was. Although she had just returned from exercising, she joined us and was delighted that Porter had once lived in their home. I gave her my card and told her that, when I returned to Maryland, I would consult my notes to refresh my memory and do some additional research on Porter’s residence on South Bentley Avenue. South Bentley home where Porter resided from June 30 to When I spoke with the owners of the South Bentley September 7, 1945, January 7, 2020. Photograph by Jerry Findley. house in January, I told them that Porter had lived with her niece Ann Hollaway at the house in Westwood. In fact, she lived there alone for approximately two months in 1945. Previous to that, Porter had arrived in California on January 10, 1945, and immediately Katherine Anne Porter Society Newsletter Members are welcome to submit articles, announcements, and comments for the society’s newsletter. Please send them to Amber Kohl, Newsletter Editor [email protected] and/or Beth Alvarez, Curator of Literary Manuscripts Emerita [email protected] University of Maryland Libraries, College Park, MD 20742, Society membership inquiries should be directed to Beth Alvarez. Entries for the annual bibliographical essay on Porter should be addressed to Christine Grogan at [email protected]. The newsletter of the Katherine Anne Porter Society is published at the University of Ann Hollaway [Heintze], southern California, circa Maryland Libraries, College Park, Maryland. February - May 1945. Katherine Anne Porter Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, University © Katherine Anne Porter Society 2020. of Maryland Libraries. began her work at MGM. She resided at the 1946. His first major directing success was of the Beverly Hills Hotel from January 10 to February musical Brigadoon, which opened in New York in 21, when she moved with her niece Ann to a house March 1947. In addition to his successful career as th on 25 Street, Santa Monica. In early February, a Broadway director, Lewis became well-known as Ann had come to California from New York City an educator. He co-founded the Actors Studio at Porter’s invitation, joining Porter at the Beverly (1947), established and taught the Robert Lewis Hills Hotel. While in southern California, Ann Theatre Workshop (1952-1997), and taught at studied ballet at the studio of Bronislava Nijinska. colleges and universities including Yale University Porter and her niece enjoyed a lively social life where he chaired the Acting and Directing while living in Santa Monica, attending cocktail Departments at the School of Drama (1975- th and dinner parties. They also entertained at 25 1976). Street. Apparently sometime before May 15, Porter’s birthday, she and Ann made the Porter’s May 19, 1945, letter to Monroe Wheeler acquaintance of Robert Lewis (1909-1997). Actor, described the birthday celebration orchestrated by director, educator, and author, Lewis was an Ann. Although Lewis is not named as one of the original member of New York’s Group Theatre celebrants, it is clear that the party ended at Lewis’s (1931-1941). In the 1940s, he acted and directed residence, on South Bentley Avenue. Like Porter, in Hollywood until returning to New York in Lewis was a music lover with a large collection of 2 recordings. After dinner at the Beverly Hills Hotel, life and death—her life as a writer is the life of her the party of five “went over to the pretty new work—Porter knew well. At a party to celebrate home of one of the men, with a little patio full of the publication of Ship of Fools, a reporter greeted roses, and listened to wonderful music—Trenet Porter with the question, “My GOD, Katherine and Beethoven, Josh White and Burl Ives, and a Anne, isn’t it like being brought back from the lovely-voiced Russian woman singing the drunken dead?” The party, at 21, one of New York City’s song from Perikola, and then Conchita Supervia, a most fashionable venues, Porter found “a purely half dozen of her best things.” The correspondence commercial circus” and the reporter “some idiot.” exchanged between Porter and Lewis, found in her Her rejoinder, “Why, nobody told me you’d been papers at the University of Maryland and his at dead!” echoes one of Mark Twain’s most famous Kent State University, documents the development retorts. He was one of the writers Porter most of their relationship beginning in June 1945. admired; and, like Twain, Porter used a wry, caustic sense of humor to protect that which she [Continued on page 13] most valued and loved: life. A Message from the President of the Porter Society By Jerry Findley, Independent Scholar The panel scheduled for the American Literature Association Conference in San Diego will present in Boston, May 27-30, 2021, along with a second panel and session. If you have a paper you would like us to consider, please submit your proposal by December 1 ([email protected]). Hilton Als of the New Yorker and New York Review of Books is scheduled to give a lecture at the Porter Center in Kyle, Texas, September 18, 2020, world permitting. If the lecture cannot go forward due to the coronavirus (or any other reason), I, speaking for the Society, hope it, too, will be rescheduled. If you learn of other events that might be of interest to the Porter Society, please send us the Porter, Katherine Anne. Pale Horse, Pale Rider: Three Short information to post. Novels. 1st Edition. Harcourt, Brace, and Co.,1939. Katherine Anne Porter Library. Special Collections and University Archives, University of Maryland Libraries. 2020 may be the year that brings the work of Katherine Anne Porter back to life. This guise of 3 Annual American Literature Porter, like Miranda in “Pale Horse, Pale Rider,” had crossed the line between life and death; and Association Conference like those on board the Vera in Ship of Fools, 2020 and 2021 between hope and despair, the latter many times. Around the time Porter received news of her first The 31st annual American Literature Association Guggenheim that would help fund her first trip to conference in San Diego, CA, scheduled for May Europe on board the Werra (Vera), she wrote to a 21-24, 2020, was cancelled because of the colleague (10 January 1931) who had worked with COVID-19 pandemic. her on the Rocky Mountain News during the influenza epidemic of 1918: The Katherine Anne Porter Society’s planned session, “Katherine Anne Porter: Out of the The spirit and energy that appeared to nd Archives,” will be presented at the 32 conference you supernatural was in fact just that. I in Boston, MA, May 2021. The papers on the have not the slightest idea how I did it, panel, chaired by Beth Alvarez, will include “Katherine Anne Porter: Letters from Berlin, nor precisely why, but I am beginning to 1931-1932” by Joseph Kuhn, University of Adam see a little what I must have known in my Mickiewicz, Poznań, Poland; “The bones then, you might say: that the latter Correspondence between Katherine Anne Porter time would be better than the first, if and Janice Biala” by Alice Cheylan, Université de only I would consent to survive and see Toulon, France; and “Intuition and Telepathy: it. (Selected Letters 78) How the Chance Encounter of George Platt Lynes with Katherine Anne Porter Created the Iconic Death and the Armistice of the First World War Image of Shared Artistry and Lasting Friendship” fused the two Nemeses of humanity, the ravages of by Jerry Findley, Independent Scholar. Amber disease and the ravages of war, inseparably into Kohl, University of Maryland, will serve as the Porter’s conscience, the connection made famous respondent. by Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor. To The Society intends to sponsor a second session at commemorate her escaping death during the First the May 2021 conference. It will feature the World War and her nephew’s service and escaping graduate student paper awarded the first Katherine death in the Second, Porter wrote to him thirty- Anne Porter Graduate Student Paper Award. Jerry four years after the Armistice: Findley will chair this session and invites papers on any topic on Katherine Anne Porter. On that day I came out of the death- stupor of influenza, and realized that I Please send a 200-word proposal and a brief would live, after all, but it made such a biographical statement to Jerry Findley at change in me, that near-dying, and [email protected] by December 1, 2020. knowing just what was happening, it is as Information about the Porter activities planned for if I had had two lives—one on the other the conference will be posted on the society’s Web site: https://kaportersociety.org/.