SOURCE: “The Upward Path: Notes on the Work of Katherine Anne Porter,” in The Southern Review, Vol. 4, January, 1968, pp. 1–19.

In the following essay, Baker places Porter's short fiction within a literary context and traces the influence of her time in Mexico on her life and her fiction.

I

“The Downward Path to Wisdom” is the title of one of Katherine Anne Porter's most characteristic short stories.¹ In it a boy, still almost a baby, comes into an elementary consciousness of himself and the world. He begins to realize that he is a thing apart from other things, something named Stephen; as for the world, he recapitulates an ancient discovery, to the effect that human beings, as such, are bad. “I hate Mama,” he chants as the story closes, “I hate Papa, I hate Grandma, I hate Uncle David, I hate old Janet, I hate Marjory. …” It's a sort...