Born in a coal mining town in western Kentucky, Joe Ashby Porter has had a career of distinction. From his days at Harvard to the publication of his first novel, Eelgrass, and winning the prestigious Pushcart Prize for short fiction, Porter's writing has shown remarkable creative scope. His characters are refreshingly original, yet honest and human, and their stories are told in a style that is at once luminous and subdued. His latest novel, Resident Aliens, was published last September.
Along with fiction, Porter publishes Shakespeare criticism under the pseudonym Joseph A. Porter. He offers both his talents to the Duke community, teaching creative writing and Shakespeare courses in the English department.
Tell me about the short story you'll be reading.
It will appear in the Kenyon Review and it's entitled Scrupulous Amédee. It's the life story of a man born on an island off of the coast of Tunisia. He spends most of his life on the island, and the story takes him all the way to his death and then a little bit after.... He has a somewhat difficult life; he's scrupulous inasmuch as he attempts to play honorably with the cards he's dealt. He's dealt a very strange hand of cards, including what he believes to be the ability to hear supernatural voices.
In a scene in Resident Aliens (set in the mid-'70s) four undergraduates show up at a party held by the main characters, one of whom is their professor, and smoke some marijuana. Do you think that was possible back then, and could such a scene take place today?
It's a somewhat realistic portrayal.... It's a bit exaggerated-some of the characters do a bit more exaggerated versions of things than I remember being the case back then. I don't think something like that could happen today.
How do you balance your roles as both a scholar and writer?
It's not easy. At the beginning, I balanced them by keeping them separate from each other. Now they stay separate without having to keep them separate.... In the beginning, I thought there might be professional difficulty. Shakespearians might think I couldn't be a serious Shakespearian; fiction readers might think I couldn't be a serious novelist because I was committed to doing Shakespeare.
Why did you create a pseudonym for yourself?
I published fiction before I published scholarly work. My given name is Joe Ashby Porter.... When I first published scholarly work, it seemed to me that "Joe Ashby Porter" didn't sound professional enough, so I created a pseudonym for myself: Joseph A. Porter.
Resident Aliens is about French characters, and critics describe it as a very French novel. Would you describe yourself as a Francophile?
I would. I have a work in progress that's a kind of memoir. Its working title is Deep France, and it's about the connection between myself and France that goes back almost as far as I can remember. Even in my youth, in a lost little town in Kentucky, I was interested in France. But my most important anchor is Yves Orvoen. He and I have lived together for 30 years.... Because of him, I go back to France very often.... So yes, I'm very Francophile.
I can't imagine what it must have been like growing up in western Kentucky. I guess you must have been quite an anomaly.
I was an anomaly, maybe quite an anomaly, but I also liked people. I knew how to make myself seem not so anomalous. Maybe my friends thought of me as slightly bookwormish, but in general they thought I was one of the guys.
Resident Aliens relies on the dramatization of everyday events. How do you turn everyday life into a work of art?
The language in which you tell ordinary events, in my view, has to be even better than if you were telling extraordinary events.... For a page to make an invitation to a reader, the writer has to have weighed every single word, every single phrase.
Does teaching writing impact your style?
I learn a whole lot from students' writing-a lot of it is good. I learn by watching students do things I have never thought of doing. In a way my best model for any kind of artist is Shakespeare. He was a complete sort of magpie; he would steal right and left.... I'm a shameless kind of thief from anything I read; a lot of the thievery is unconscious, though. I suppose I steal things like the tone of a student's story; I might use it without even knowing how it was created.
Is Duke a good atmosphere for a writer?
The Duke English department is an extremely nurturing place for fiction writers and poets.... There is no division at all between creative writers and scholars. We support each other, we understand each other. Duke is the only place that makes this kind of thing possible, and I'm very thankful to have landed here.
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