SOURCE: "Katherine Anne Porter: The Low Comedy of Sex," in American Humor: Essays Presented to John C. Gerber, edited by 0. M. Brack, Jr., Arete Publications, 1977, pp. 139-52.

In the following essay, Gessel sees Katherine Anne Porter's novel Ship of Fools as revealing the delusions of the western world and offering "brief salvation" to its characters through unsentimentalized sex.

Katherine Anne Porter has the unpleasant power to involve an audience against its will, and in her writings, as in much of modern literature, it is death to the reader who identifies. For the reader is the butt of the writer, who involves him in order to shake him up. We are likely to find a character with whom we may identify at the outset of a work—perhaps this character is open and charming—but we are likely to suffer discomfort later in the work when our character hangs...