JOE ASHBY PORTER

By David Halcomb

Many times writers have great literary careers that seem to go almost unnoticed by in-state readers. This is the case with Joe Ashby Porter. Not only has Porter excelled in writing literature, but he has also been instrumental in the academic field as well. Joe Ashby Porter, the son of a coal miner, was born in 1942. He grew up in the town of his birth, Madisonville, a small coal mining town in Kentucky. Porter spent his formative years in Madisonville, with the exception of one year when he and his family moved to Benton, Kentucky. He graduated from Madisonville High School in 1960. He went on to study at Harvard University, Oxford, and Berkeley. He has a Masters and PhD from the University of California, and has taught at Murray State University. Porter is currently teaching creative writing and Shakespearean studies at Duke University (his name as a Shakespearean scholar is Joseph A. Porter).

Porter began creating his own stories at the astonishing age of four. As he got older, he became an avid reader. He attributes his desire to be a writer to this delectation for reading at such an early age. Porter has a unique gift to string together words which create vivid pictures for the mind's eye. His characters seem to carry repetitive themes such as innocence lost, revenge, justice, and dogged determination to reach specific goals. The characters are continually searching for some type of identity and some of them display desires to be socially different.

Porter's first novel, Eelgrass, is considered by many to be influenced by William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. In regard to this fact, Peggy Sullivan stated, "Eelgrass is a stoned sequel to Midsummer Night's Dream, set in the sixties" (10). In this work Porter develops a story centered around a fictional island, occupied by an odd conglomeration of visitors and inhabitants. A young lady by the name of Daisy owns a farmhouse on the island. Along with her friends Thuggy, Annabel, Jimbo, and Carter, they reside there for the summer. The house is run in a very commune-like fashion. Other visitors to the island include a rich couple with their two daughters, and a lesbian couple who seem to live nowhere but interact with the entire cast of characters. A lady by the name of Sue Holcombe lives on the island and is hell-bent on stealing the farmhouse away from Daisy. A widow by the name of Jane is also thrown into the mix to add spirit and texture to the story. Additionally, a creature that the people call Babe torments the island. The central plot tension behind this story is whether or not each of the aforementioned characters achieves his or her goals. The participants in the story go through many trials and hardships while trying to gain their satisfactions. Due to these facts, the story seems to take on the appearance of a mystery. Perhaps the most intriguing facet of Eelgrass is that the reader is drawn into active participation by Porter's commanding use of language.

In Porter's second major body of work, The Kentucky Stories, he draws from his home state roots to form eight fascinating short stories. All of these stories portray different aspects of Kentucky heritage. Possibly the two which accomplish this the most are "A Child of the Heart" and "Bowling Green." In the first, a man, his wife, and their daughter live in an isolated house in Pineville, Kentucky. The man works as a miner in the mountains at quiet a distance away from the house. He must spend four nights out of the week separated from his family, leaving his abusive wife alone with their daughter. Avis, the daughter, as a defense against both her parents, refuses to speak. Her parents, not out of love, but in hope of some type of normalcy, give her a crow which has been taught to speak. The child's parents hope that Avis will open up to the new pet. This ploy doesn't work. After openly viewing her parents' sexual activities and an unexplained but tragic encounter with a pedophile cloth salesman, Avis deliberately plots revenge against her parents. This happens when her drunken father, Abram, has been enticed by his wife, Lula into playing a sexual game of hide and seek in the nearby woods. Avis, appearing as a pagan nymph, seduces her father. She becomes pregnant. Her mother, suspecting the truth, beats Avis in the stomach with a hammer. In fear, Avis commits accidental suicide by running off a cliff. In the meantime, Lula hangs herself. After coming home from work, Abram is shocked by what greets him at the door. He sees the dead body of his wife. He runs away in fear, never stopping to think about his daughter. Once again Porter's style of writing is to pull the reader into the story. The theme of revenge is two-fold; not only does Avis get back at her mother and father, but Lula gets back at Avis as well.

"Bowling Green" is another tale of sex and revenge. Lena Toombs is Lois Meeker's best friend. Lois is in love with R.W. Pritchett, whose sole purpose is to leave her and their little town. He wants to go off to school in a Kentucky town called Bowling Green. Despite repeated warnings from Lena to stop leading Lois on, R.W. encourages Lois' obsessive love. Shortly, R.W. departs for Bowling Green leaving behind Lena to console a broken hearted-destroyed Lois. After two years of schooling R.W. returns home to find Lois still madly in love with him. In the meantime, Lena tries to warn both Lois and R.W. of the dangers of reentering the relationship. After a sexual encounter, where R.W. rejects Lois' inner feelings yet again, Lois commits suicide. Fueled by anger and rage, Lena punishes R.W. by scarring him for life. By using a straight razor, she carves the letters "BG" into his chest. The characters in this story fully illustrate the two themes of gaining justice and innocence lost. Just as the letter "A" in Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter represents the sins of the characters, "BG" represents R.W.'s callous selfishness towards Lois.

Not only does Porter excel in fictional writing, but his brilliance is also shown in the academic world through his critical writings on William Shakespeare's works. He has two books published which deal with Shakespearean studies. The first was published in 1979, entitled, The Drama of Speech Acts: Shakespeare's Lancastrian Tetralogy. The second was published in 1988 and is titled as Shakespeare's Mercutio: His History and Drama. In these two books Porter actively breaks down Shakespeare's use of speech acts and his characters. He explores Shakespeare's flair for drama and the Renaissance culture. These two bodies of work have been helpful in the understanding of Shakespeare to many young academic students.

Joe Ashby Porter is recognized as a true wordsmith. He is a craftsman of the written word and a vivid story teller. When asked about his reasons for writing, Porter answered by saying, "to please and entertain discriminating readers." He has been honored with several awards, such as the NEA Fellowship, the NEA/Pen Syndicated Fiction Award, and was a Pulitzer Prize Nominee for The Kentucky Stories.

Sullivan, Peggy. "Review of Porter's Eelgrass." New Mexico Humanities Review. 15 Feb. 1980: 10.

Porter, Joe Ashby. Personal interview. 4 Nov. 1994.

by David Halcomb

Resident Aliens. NY: New Amsterdam/Ivan R. Dee, 2000.

Lithuania: Short Stories. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.

Shakespeare's Mercutio: His History and Drama. Chapel Hill: TheUniversity of North Carolina Press, 1988. An analysis of Shakespeare's character, Mercutio.

The Kentucky Stories. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1983. A collection of eight short stories which take place in Kentucky.

The Drama of Speech Acts: Shakespeare's Lancastrian Tetralogy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979. The study of speech acts produced by Shakespeare's characters.

Eelgrass. New York: New Directions Publishers, 1977. A 224 page novel depicting a group of hippie-like people on a dreamy island.

Materials About Joe Ashby Porter:

The Pushcart Prize IV. ed. Bill Henderson. New York: Pushcart Press, 1979. A group of well-written short stories.

Pacific Northwest Review of Books. April 1978: 19. An assemblage of book reviews by Candice Percer.