Ship of Fools

by Katherine Anne Porter

The story takes place in the summer of 1931, on board a cruise ship bound for Germany. Passengers include a Spanish noblewoman, a drunken German lawyer, an American divorcee, a pair of Mexican Catholic priests. This ship of fools is a crucible of intense experience, out of which everyone emerges forever changed. Rich in incident, passion, and treachery, the novel explores themes of nationalism, cultural and ethnic pride, and basic human frailty that are as relevant today as they were when the book was first published in 1962.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Historical Fiction, Poetry, Literature, Novels, American

497 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1962

About the author

Katherine Anne Porter was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist. She is known for her penetrating insight; her works deal with dark themes such as betrayal, death and the origin of human evil.
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherin...

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some books are undying… Fools are undying too…

I am the firste fole of all the hole nauy
To kepe the pompe, the helme and eke the sayle
For this is my mynde, this one pleasoure haue I
Of bokes to haue grete plenty and aparayle
I take no wysdome by them: nor yet auayle
Nor them preceyue nat: And then I them despyse
Thus am I a foole and all that sewe that guyse…

Books do furnish a room. Do they? There is no need to read them…
There is no end to foolishness, nonsense, stupidity, absurdity, lunacy, silliness, idiocy, imprudence, rashness, imbecility, fatuity and daftness in this world.
The great scholar Sebastian Brant had sorted out and classified all human follies, gathered all fools together, put them on a ship and set them sailing…

Ye care for no shame, for heuen nor for hell
Golde is your god, ryches gotten wrongfully
Ye dame your soule, and yet lyue in penury.

Avarice doesn’t pay. Fashion is for fools. Bad manners are disgusting and mannerisms are preposterous, scandalmongers are wicked dolts… On and on…

Howe beit I stoup, and fast declyne
Dayly to my graue, and sepulture
And though my lyfe fast do enclyne
To pay the trybute of nature
Yet styll remayne I and endure
In my olde synnes, and them nat hate
Nought yonge, wors olde, suche is my state.

There’s no fool like an old fool.
Half a thousand years elapsed. The ship sails on.

[Kenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The place you are going towards doesn’t exist yet, you must build it when you come to the right spot.”
Ship of Fools ~~~ Katherine Anne Porter



The idea for Ship of Fools originated in a voyage that Katherine Anne Porter took from Mexico to Europe in 1931. Some of the passengers she encountered on the ship became the models for the characters in Ship of Fools. Porter began work on the novel in 1941 and it took her twenty years to complete. Said Porter of the voyage ~~ We embarked on an old German ship at Vera Cruz and we landed in Bremen twenty-eight days later. It was a crowded ship, a great mixture of nationalities, religions, political beliefs, all that sort of thing. I don’t think I spoke a half-dozen words to anybody. I just sat there and watched — not deliberately, though. I kept a diary in the form of a letter to a friend, and after I got home the friend sent it back. And, you know, it is astonishing what happened on that boat, and what happened in my mind afterwards. Because it is fiction now.



It has been said that Porter wishes to convey that salvation is an illusion, and evil is inevitable. I disagree. I feel Porter was more insightful than this and more spiritually open as she neared the end of her life ~~ she was 71 when the book was published and it was to be her only completed novel during her lifetime. Instead, I think Porter was saying salvation is available to us only if we give up our illusions.



Ship of Fools is set aboard the Vera, a passenger freighter, as it makes a twenty-seven-day journey from Veracruz to Germany in the summer of 1931. On board, Germans, Americans, Spaniards, and Mexicans, ranging from the peasant class to the drug-addicted aristocracy, bicker, fight, love, and philosophize. The theme of the novel is the passengers' unavailing withdrawal from a life of disappointment, seeking a kind of utopia, and, without knowing what to do next, setting out for a long voyage to pre-World War II Europe ~~ a world of prejudice, racism and evil.

[Jon Nakapalau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Get on board this ship and head for damnation - adultery, envy, gambling, gluttony, greed, hatred, and other sins - always looking for a crew. The sad fact is that we never seem to see this; we keep sailing into damnation - lost upon the waves of folly that take us nowhere. A classic that should have a much wider readership than it does.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

ARC for review - reissue.

This book is everything.

I understand that it's got an overall GR rating of 3.7, but this is also the type of book to be assigned in literature classes and it won't be for everyone (hey, even To Kill a Mockingbird has some one star ratings and I think that we, as a public, can agree that those people are crazy, right?). And I can understand why it might not appeal to some readers - it's long, it's old (published in 1962, but takes place in 1931), there are about a million characters and all the action (or inaction) takes place over a thirty day ship voyage from Mexico to Germany and is based on a similar voyage taken by Porter.

And I loved everything about it. Well, it took a few days before I could get the Robert Palmer song out of my head, and that was annoying, but that's hardly the fault of Katherine Anne Porter. Probably.

And even if it was her fault, I could forgive her, because she has created a masterpiece here - her dialogue, her description and her creation of an entire world on the second-rate Vera - I was often reminded of Paul Bowles.

The cast of characters may appear daunting (there are probably around forty named characters in the book, plus others who appear only briefly) but Porter manages to give life and color to each one - even the wonderful Bebe the bulldog has a distinct personality (an amazing achievement when so many authors struggle with one or two). Some are fairly bad, few are truly good and Porter strips everything away so that the reader sees the real person beyond the sex, race, nationality or class.

So, the plot. What happens? A ship's voyage, like so many others, shaded by what 1930s Mexico and Cuba were and what Germany was on the way to becoming. That's it. No murder to solve, no big event occurs, just many lives of people who normally might not have such close (or any) contact, but that ship life forces together. At the same time it's about everything in the world - life, death, family, love, hate, sex (both for love and money), honor, race, religion, class, youth, sacrifice, age, guilt and sin - a microcosm of our world.

I found myself highlighting way too many portions to list them all here, but I can't recommend this highly enough - I just wish I hadn't waited so many years to read it, and I'm glad it's being reissued so that it, hopefully, finds a new generation of appreciative readers.

[Diane Barnes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Back in the day, you know, like 2 months ago, whenever I went to a ballgame or concert or local entertainment venue, my favorite thing to do before tip-off or curtain rising, was people watch. So much fun to watch them unobserved, making assumptions, categorizing and criticizing, pronouncing unheard judgements on people you knew nothing about. Harmless fun and almost better than the show itself. Of course, now that I'm "social distancing", this book seemed to serve the same purpose.

1931, a passenger/cargo ship bound for Germany from Vera Cuz, Mexico, carried an assortment of highly unlikable passengers and crew, and I got to watch them from the deck chairs on the promenade, their seats in the dining room and at the Captain's table, their small cabins, and even to tag along on some shore excursions while in overnight ports. The Germans were the most obnoxious, with their sense of superiority over the rest of mankind, and especially their hatred of Jews, but they didn't like the Americans very much either. Neither did I, to be honest. There were a smattering of other nationalities and religions, all hating each other for one reason or another. I only got through these 500 pages because of my propensity for people watching, and really wanting these people to get what was coming to them. Some of them did.

3 stars because: This book was long, this book was dense, these people were most unpleasant. The prose and the dialogue were wonderful and the only reason I finished. I've had this on my shelf since 2012, and was determined to get it read. Comes under the heading "not a pleasant read, but very happy to have read it".

[Paul Haspel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The “ship of fools” that Katherine Anne Porter built and launched in 1962 has, in its maritime engineering, an old and honourable pedigree. The term goes back to German humanist Sebastian Brant’s 1494 book Das Narrenschiff (“The Ship of Fools”), a work that uses 112 chapters of densely packed rhyming couplets to set forth different forms of human foolery. Brant suggests that all of us are fools – passengers and crew on a captainless ship that is sailing inexorably toward a fool’s paradise. Almost 500 years later, Porter, drawing upon both Brant’s poetic conceit and an actual ocean voyage that she once made from Mexico to Germany, sought to mix elements of realistic drama with aspects of Brant’s allegorical intent; and the result, Porter’s novel Ship of Fools, makes for an uneven but unquestionably interesting literary voyage.

Porter lived a life as interesting as any of her literary works. Born in Indian Creek, Texas, and educated in San Antonio, she early developed an interest in Mexican life and culture, and lived for quite a while in Mexico. Her conversion to the Roman Catholic faith may have intensified her interest in themes of guilt and human frailty – themes that come through strongly in books like Flowering Judas and Other Stories (1935) and Pale Horse, Pale Rider (1939). So strongly had Porter established herself as a writer of short stories and short novels that Ship of Fools, a 670-page novel, represented quite a dramatic departure from her previous approaches to fiction writing. Truly, she was sailing in a new direction, to an unfamiliar destination.

Before the ship of fools can begin its journey, the reader must join the passengers and crew at Veracruz, Mexico, the port from which the Lloyd North German lines vessel Vera will travel to Bremerhaven, Germany, over the course of about one month in the late summer of 1931. The passengers and crew, most of whom are German, look forward to leaving Veracruz: two of the passengers recall a popular saying among the German community in Mexico, to the effect that “Mexicans loathe the Americans, despise the Jews, hate the Spaniards, distrust the English, admire the French, and love the Germans” (p. 110). The novel’s narrator says of the people on board the Vera that “All believed they were bound for a place for some reason more desirable than the place they were leaving” (p. 23).

The Vera, whose title translates (ironically) as “Truth,” is described by the book’s narrator as “a mixed freighter and passenger ship, very steady and broad-bottomed in her style, walloping from one remote port to another, year-in-year-out, honest, reliable and homely as a German housewife” (p. 34).

There are 930 people on board the Vera as it sails out of Veracruz. We can’t possibly talk about them all. For purposes of this review, some of the most important people on board include the following, as described in a list of dramatis personae at the book’s beginning:

• “Ship’s Captain Thiele.”

• “Dr. Schumann, ship’s doctor.”

• “La Condesa, a [Spanish] déclassée noblewoman who has lived many years in Cuba; political exile being deported from Cuba to Tenerife.”

• “Frau Otto Schmitt, recently widowed in Mexico.”

• “Herr Siegfried Rieber, publisher of a ladies’ garment trade magazine.”

• “Fräulein Lizzi Spöckenkieker, in the ladies’ garment business; from Hanover.”

• Arne Hansen, a Swede who is described as being “at feud with Herr Rieber.”

• Herr Professor Hutten, “Former head of a German school in Mexico, and his wife”

• Herr Karl Baumgartner, “Lawyer from Mexico City – hopeless drunkard”, with “his wife Greta, and their eight-year-old son”

• “Herr Willibald Graf, a dying religious enthusiast who believes he has the power of healing”, with “Johann, his nephew and attendant”

• David Scott and Jenny Brown, “Two young [American] painters living together, on their first voyage to Europe.”

• Mary Treadwell, “a woman of forty-five, divorced, returning to Paris.”

• A Spanish zarzuela company, “singers and dancers who call themselves gypsies, returning to Spain after being stranded in Mexico”

• And, in steerage, “Eight hundred and seventy-six souls: Spaniards, men, women, children, workers in the sugar fields of Cuba, being deported back to the Canaries and to various parts of Spain (wherever they came from) after the failure of the sugar market.”

The ship, in short, replicates the class divisions and cultural tensions of the time in which the voyage is being made, from the poverty and political instability of Mexico to the menace of Weimar Germany’s fragile democracy that is crumbling under the pressure being applied by Hitler and the Nazis. It is with a bitter sense of irony that Part I, “Embarkation,” is prefaced with a quote from Baudelaire: “Quand partons-nous vers le bonheur?”, meaning “When shall we set sail toward happiness?” (p. 13)

Once the Vera is properly at sea, the reader gets to start learning about the people on board and their relationships to one another – and they are, by and large, a thoroughly disagreeable lot. American painters David Scott and Jenny Brown have a dysfunctional, codependent relationship that could keep TV’s Dr. Phil shouting “You gotta git over yourselves!” for an entire season’s worth of ratings sweeps. Jenny and David are constantly criticizing each other’s artwork, morals, and basic philosophy of life, only to make up afterward so they can begin the cycle again.

Jenny, thinking about David, looks back to the beginning of their relationship at one point, and reflects on how “She had believed that his contemptuous dismissal of all her friends was the sign of a discriminating taste and judgment superior to her own. Now it seemed to her that David watched and listened so narrowly for the fallacy, the blind spot, the small but certain marks of weakness and vulgarity in others because finding them soothed his own fear, lulled his deep uncertainties about his own qualities” (p. 195). These memories lead Jenny to an unhappy realization that “The past is never where you think you left it: you are not the same person you were yesterday” (p. 197).

Other passengers betray other forms of foolery. The widowed Frau Schmitt, accompanying her husband’s body back to Germany, is appalled by the Spanish zarzuela company, and tries to couch her own cultural prejudices in terms of Christian charity: “She had always believed so deeply that human beings wished only to be quiet and happy, each in his own way; but there was a spirit of evil in them that could not let each other be in peace. One man’s desire must always crowd out another’s, one must always take his own good at another’s expense. Or so it seemed. God forgive us all” (p. 204).

Later, Frau Schmitt, a Catholic, gets into an awkward conversation about religion with Frau Baumgartner, a Protestant, and is embarrassed by the exchange. “Even with the best will in the world, with nothing but kindness in your heart, Frau Schmitt felt again for the thousandth time, how difficult it is to be good, innocent, friendly, simple, in a world where no one seems to understand or sympathize with another; it seemed all too often that no one really wished even to try to be a little charitable” (p. 213).

The Baumgartners, with their safe and conventional religious beliefs, later end up in another quarrel, this time with the Swede Hansen, a dedicated Marxist who savours the opportunity to shock the Baumgartners with his political philosophy. “Civilization,” Hansen says, “let me tell you what it is. First the soldier, then the merchant, then the priest. The merchant hires the soldier and priest to conquer the country for him. First the soldier, he is a murderer; then the priest, he is a liar; then the merchant, he is a thief – and they all bring in the lawyer to make their laws and defend their deeds, and there you have your civilization!” (pp. 216-17)

Another dysfunctional couple on board the Vera are Herr Rieber, a dedicated Nazi, and Lizzi Spöckenkieker. Rieber, a dedicated Nazi who is married, is hoping for a sexual liaison with Lizzi; Lizzi, whose lack of attractiveness is repeatedly emphasized throughout the novel, wants simply to enjoy the feeling of being pursued by a man. The two collaborate on an errand of intolerance against Wilhelm Freytag, a German man who is returning home to his Jewish wife. Rieber and Lizzi object to Freytag sitting with them at the Captain’s table, stating that Freytag “had no right to be there. Perhaps not a Jew himself – though they had no proof that he wasn’t except his own word – but he was known – indeed, he declared it at table before everybody – that he had Jewish connections of a most intimate nature – in fact a wife!” (p. 307)

The ship’s doctor, Dr. Schumann, is acutely conscious of his own frailty, as he has a heart condition that he knows could kill him at any moment. That awareness colours his observations of life on shipboard, as when he notes the interest of the awkward young Johann in the equally young but more knowing Concha, one of the Spaniards:

Dr. Schumann, passing on his way to the steerage to attend another birth, paused to look at them with pleasure and pure generous joy in their freshness of beauty – how could such beauty come out of such dinginess and poverty as theirs? For he knew their origins, and no doubt their natures were as poor and shabby as their lives, yet there they went, as perfectly formed as champion-bred race horses, the look of longing and uncertainty in their faces as touching as the tears of a wronged child. (p. 404)

Against his will, Dr. Schumann finds himself entering into something of an emotional affair with La Condesa, the political prisoner who has been expelled from Cuba and is bound for exile in Tenerife. He sees, to his sorrow, that his frailty is not only physical but also moral and ethical.

Another of the ways in which Porter explores conflict on this “ship of fools” is through how roommates are arranged. The one Jewish passenger, Löwenthal, is stuck in a room with the pro-Nazi Rieber, who revels in the opportunity for petty acts of anti-Semitic harassment. Freytag, meanwhile, is stuck with the humourless radical Hansen as a roommate, and therefore is stuck listening to Hansen’s political rants. Freytag reflects wearily that people’s “abstractions and generalizations, their Rage for Justice or Hatred of Tyranny or whatever, too often disguised a bitter personal grudge of some sort far removed from the topic apparently under discussion” (p. 535).

As mentioned above, some of the fools on board the ship of fools seem to be more self-aware than the other fools. One of the more self-aware fools is Mary Treadwell. On this second reading of Ship of Fools, I found myself wondering if Mrs. Treadwell might be, on some level, a stand-in for Porter herself. After all, Mrs. Treadwell is an American, like Porter; she is divorced, as Porter was at the time of her journey; she is bound for Paris, as Porter was on her original 1931 cruise.

And Mrs. Treadwell engages in some elaborate reflections on identity, on illusion versus reality – themes that might be quite familiar to readers of other Porter works like Pale Horse, Pale Rider. At one point, after returning from a bizarre shipboard party organized by the Spanish dancers, Mrs. Treadwell applies elaborate, exaggerated makeup that makes her feel as if she looks like one of the Spanish dancers – something very out of character for her. Those reflections get her thinking about character generally, as suddenly her makeup disguise seems “a revelation of something sinister in the depths of her character. Mrs. Treadwell had…hardly suspected she possessed a character in the accepted sense of the word, and had never felt the lack of one. It was rather late perhaps to discover there were depths in her, where were hidden all sorts of unpleasant traits she would detest in anyone else, much more in herself” (p. 601).

The first time I read Ship of Fools, I found it pointless and interminable. I found the characters uniformly unappealing, and their dramatic situations impossible to care about. I could see why so many critics dismissed the novel as a maritime equivalent of the 1932 film Grand Hotel – a high-gloss soap opera that brings a group of disparate characters together so that one can watch them all react to each other. Indeed, partway through my first reading of Ship of Fools, I was hoping against hope for the arrival of an iceberg, or a tidal wave, or a rogue U-boat from the First World War – something, anything, to put us all out of our collective misery.

This time, however, I read Katherine Anne Porter’s 1962 Ship of Fools in the light of an earlier reading of Sebastian Brant’s 1494 Ship of Fools – and reading it in those terms changed my response to Porter’s book. Brant emphasizes, throughout Das Narrenschiff, that for all of his erudition, he is as much of a fool as anyone else. In the first chapter of his book, titled “Of Useless Books,” he looks round at his well-stocked library and states that “Of splendid books I own no end,/But few that I can comprehend”, concluding that “I’m the first [fool] here you see.”

We are all fools, in other words, and the closest approach to wisdom we can make is to perceive our own folly.

Such an outlook, I cannot help thinking, would appeal to Porter’s Roman Catholic sensibility; and as I read her Ship of Fools in those terms, I find myself differentiating among the “fools” on board the Vera. Some of the characters – Dr. Schumann, Mrs. Treadwell, Wilhelm Freytag, Jenny Brown – at least try to look clearly at unpleasant truths about themselves and their behaviour. Others, like Rieber and Lizzi, cannot be bothered – and those are the characters that we see rapidly sinking into the absolute moral abyss that is Nazism.

Of course, it is by no means a certain recommendation of the excellence of a 1962 American novel that one must first read a 1494 book of German allegorical poetry in order to fully appreciate it.

My own feeling is that, in Ship of Fools, Katherine Anne Porter was trying to bring together four not-easily-reconciled narrative and thematic lines: (1) a dutifully chronicled record of a ship journey that Ms. Porter once took from Mexico to Germany; (2) an homage to Brant’s Das Narrenschiff; (3) a commentary on human foolishness and folly generally; and (4) an allegory for the rise of Nazism.

All of this makes Ship of Fools rather top-heavy, and questionable in terms of seaworthiness; but it is never dull. My own sense is that Porter achieved her greatest heights of literary excellence through her short stories and novellas. One senses how very, very hard she worked on Ship of Fools; and if it does not represent the peak of her literary success, there is no question that – like the 1965 film adaptation by Stanley Kramer, with a great cast that includes Vivien Leigh, Oskar Werner, Jose Ferrer, Lee Marvin, Elizabeth Ashley, and George Segal – it will get you thinking.

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Katherine Anne Porter's powers of perception are so keen that she's the kind of person I would never want to have around as a friend. Everything would be stripped down in her gaze, leaving little room for cherished illusions.

The book captures this perfectly: She simultaneously depicts the short-comings of a world on the brink of World War II and scrutinizes those flaws that are endemic to all cultures and times. The meanness and arbitrary ways in which people subdivide who they consider equals are examined with Porter's scalpel.

Be prepared for some discomfort: You may see a few habits of your own on display. Her ability to portray the human condition is stellar, and really shows that you don't need to fall back on gratuitous sex and violence to tell a compelling story.

[Luís · Rating 3 out of 5]

You have to pay attention to the characters' names: there are a lot of them, and you get a bit lost. However, despite this flaw, the story's stage is fascinating—relations between travelers returning home against the background of the first beginnings of Nazism.

[Lorna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ship of Fools was the only novel written by Katherine Anne Porter that purportedly took twenty years to write. It was published in 1962 and was based in large part on a voyage taken by Katherine Anne Porter from Mexico to Europe in 1931 and many of the characters in her book were patterned after some of the passengers she had observed on her journey. It has been said that Ms. Porter wrote a friend each day about the events taking place during her voyage. Written in diary form, it was returned to Ms. Porter by her friend and relied upon in the writing of this book. In the Author's Note, Ms. Porter captures the essence of her book in these words:

"The title of this book is a translation from the German of 'Das Narrenshchiff,' a moral allegory by Sebastian Brant first published in Latin as 'Stultifera Navis' in 1494. I read it in Basel in the summer of 1932 when I had vividly in mind the impressions of my first voyage to Europe. When I began thinking about my novel, I took for my own this simple almost universal image of the ship of this world on its voyage to eternity. It is by no means new--it was very old and durable and dearly familiar when Brant used it; and it suits my purpose exactly. I am a passenger on that ship."

-- Katherine Anne Porter, Ship of Fools

The North German Lloyd S.A. Vera, embarked on its journey from Veracruz, Mexico destined for Bremerhaven, Germany from August 22 to September 17, 1931. In addition to the German crew, the passengers included German, Swiss, Spanish, Cuban, Mexican, and American travelers in first class, and all harboring varied dreams and motivations for their journey. In steerage there were hundreds of Spanish workers being deported from the sugar cane fields of Cuba. Historically, there is a sense of rising German nationalism and anti-Semitism as Adolf Hitler was beginning his rise to power. There is a foreshadowing of World War II as Europe is becoming more and more unstable as it heads toward fascism. While there is a sense of pessimism throughout much of the book, I found it to be a brilliant piece of literature complete with an examination of the human condition with all of its vagaries but also with a sense of hope. Katherine Anne Porter has become one of my favorite authors as I have been reading her many collections of short stories as well.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dies Büchlein schrieb Sebastian Brant
und hat’s „Das Narrenschiff“ genannt.
Fünfhundert Jahr und ein paar mehr,
die sind vergangen schon seither.
Die Sprache klingt, was nicht hat Wunder,
In meinen Ohr’n recht fremd mitunter.
Darob ich kurzerhand entschied
den Text zu nehmen, der mir blieb:
von H. A. Junghans übersetzt
und übertragen in das Jetzt.
Dort sind die Reime alle da,
und auch der Inhalt, so ich sah.
Mit Fußnoten verseh’n die Zeilen,
luden sie ein dort zu verweilen.
Die Bibel, altes Testament,
war, wie es scheint, Brants Fundament.
Und auch die Griechen von Ovid,
hat er zitiert in seinem Lied.
Dabei geht’s hier vornehmlich um
die Dummheit und das Narrentum.
Will gar nicht viel darüber schreiben
was diese Narren alles treiben.
Nur soviel sei gesagt hierbei:
Es ist für jeden was dabei.
Auch ich sah ein, an mancher Stelle,
ging’s nach Herrn Brant, führ ich zur Helle.
Man kann’s verstehn. In jener Zeit
war’s Höchste Gottesfürchtigkeit.
Seitdem hat sich geändert viel,
doch Narrheit treibt wie eh ihr Spiel.




This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

[booklady · Rating 5 out of 5]

Katherine Anne Porter’s Ship of Fools* is based on sea voyage the author actually took in 1931 from Mexico to Germany. It then took her 20 years to write this novel based on her experience. It is known as her masterpiece and it is.

The title is also apropos. It is a huge cast of crazy characters. The ship’s crew and first class passengers are mostly from Germany; but there is also: a corrupt Spanish zarzuela company; a political exile noblewoman, La Condesa, who is being deported from Cuba to Tenerife; a group of Mexicans; six Cuban medical students; a Swiss couple and their daughter; a few Americans; a Swede; and in steerage 876 Spanish souls—workers, men, women and children—being deported back to the Canaries and various parts of Spain because of the failure of the sugar market.

As the reader we are given a privileged position—to watch the antics of this voyage, an allegory for Life.

At first I thought it would be difficult to keep track of so many characters, but it wasn’t. Porter creates memorable people. Maybe it was the title, but I kept thinking of Erasmus’s Praise of Folly. In one way or another they all seemed to be seeking or already epitomize all that Folly represented: freedom from care, youth, vitality, self-love, pleasure-seeking, flattery and escape into illusion. Unfortunately, there isn’t enough time for the characters to fully develop, but they are distinctive enough to know and make you want to know them more, despite their obvious shortcomings. Well anyway I did. The voyage was too short for me. Not for the passengers however. Hmmmm... Wonder if that says something about me?

Although satirical, the situations are realistic and the characters recognizable. Very thought-provoking. This would be an EXCELLENT book group read! I KNOW I will read this again. 5 stars.

* A movie by the same name was made in 1965. Do NOT see it; they ruined the book!


August 27, 2017: Thought one of my friends here on GRs wrote an intriguing review of this but now I can't seem to find out who it was or where it is? Have somehow missed Katherine Porter up until now, more's the pity, but her book's description was so compelling I decided to check it out. So far, 78 pages in, it is all I hoped it would be!

[Antoinette · Rating 5 out of 5]

Copy of book courtesy of Net Galley for an honest review.
A masterful novel that cannot be rushed through. The novel takes place in 1931 on an ocean liner sailing from Mexico to Germany. On board, we have an eclectic group of people- Germans, Americans, Spaniards, Cubans, Swiss and 1 Swede.Throughout the book, I felt like an invisible bystander- I, with the author, moved from one group to another, eavesdropping on their conversations. The author spares no one in this aptly titled "Ship of Fools". Each person dislikes others based on their religion, class, nationality, gender; Each person feels they are the educated one while the other is the fool- but really they are all fools and foolish in their own way.
This was a German ship, pre World War II, with all the underlying animosities towards Jews already building. This book is an excellent depiction of that time.
It is in itself a metaphor for people blithely sailing into World War II.
An outstanding novel!!

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Jenny glanced around and said, “Everybody looks tired. It’s just the same as we were in Veracruz, or in Havana. We all remember we’re strangers and don’t like each other. We’re all on our way somewhere else and we’ll be glad to see the last of each other. God, I’d hate to think I’d ever get even a postcard from anybody on this ship again, as long as I live!”

And, that, my friends, is precisely how I felt about this book. I despised every single passenger, not a sympathetic human being among them; there was nothing that really resembled a plot; and it was at least twice as long as was necessary, due to constant repetition.

I tried reading this many years back and abandoned it before I had given it any real chance. It was a finalist for the National Book Award. I assumed the problem was mine. Having now read all 500+ pages, I had it right the first time.

[Paul Haspel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The ship-of-fools archetype – the concept of a poorly-led society as a ship that has a fool for a captain and more fools for its crew and passengers, and therefore is bound for disaster – goes back as far as Plato’s Republic. But that image received one of its most famous elaborations in a satirical poem, published in 1494 by a German humanist who saw European society sinking into all kinds of folly. While much has changed in the 500-plus years since Sebastian Brant set down his ideas in verse, the propensity of human beings to behave foolishly remains unchanged. Welcome to Das Narrenschiff – the Ship of Fools. All aboard!

Born in Strasbourg, to a family of innkeepers, Brant excelled in the study of philosophy and law at the University of Basel in Switzerland. His extensive reading in both classical and Christian texts nourished his composition of The Ship of Fools – a document that, with its sharp satirical edge and accompanying woodcuts dramatizing different kinds of foolery, immediately attracted a wide and appreciative audience.

Brant was writing in a time of great and dramatic change; Columbus had made his first voyage to the New World just two years before, and the Protestant Reformation would be revolutionizing ways of life and thought across once-all-Catholic Western Europe within just a couple of decades. Accordingly, this German humanist with a satirical bent found that there were even more subjects than usual to satirize – more fools whose folly he could discuss.

The diligence with which Brant is going to pursue his nautical metaphor throughout The Ship of Fools is apparent from the beginning; the cover of this Dover Books edition contains one of the 114 woodcut illustrations that originally accompanied the book’s publication. This illustration shows a wooden ship crammed with people who all wear a fool’s cap and bells; no one seems to be steering the ship, and the ship is flying a flag that reads “Ad Narragonia” – in Brant’s formulation, “To the Paradise of Fools.” So, if you’ve ever tried to warn a friend or family member that their poor decision-making is going to lead them to a “fool’s paradise,” Brant knows how you feel.

In the prologue to Das Narrenschiff, Brant wastes no time clearing the decks and stowing away the sails and cordage for his ship-of-fools’ voyage:

Hence I have pondered how a ship
Of fools I’d suitably equip –
A galley, brig, bark, skiff, or float,
A carrack, scow, dredge, racing-boat,
A sled, cart, barrow, carryall –
One vessel would be far too small
To carry all the fools I know,. (p. 57)

In compiling the passenger manifest for his ship-of-fools, Brant makes a point of including himself on the list. The very first chapter is titled “Of Useless Books,” and Brant assures the reader that “I’m the first one here you see/Because I like my library./Of splendid books I own no end,/But few that I can comprehend” (p. 62). In fact, I think Brant is being a bit too hard on himself; no doubt he comprehended quite well whatever was being discussed in whatever books he owned in his library.

But the point that Brant is trying to make is that a person with a large library can be conceited, self-important, intellectually arrogant – and he wants his readers to enjoy reading, and seek knowledge, without falling prey to intellectual pride. Otherwise, one risks experiencing, in a symbolic sense, the fate of King Midas from Greek mythology: “My ears are covered up for me;/If they were not, an ass I’d be” (p. 63).

From there, Brant goes on to examine the wide variety of foolishness of which foolish human beings are capable. I was not surprised to encounter Chapter 13, “Of Amours,” considering how closely the medieval church focused on sexual behaviour. In support of his claim that “Who sees too much of woman’s charms/His morals and his conscience harms” (p. 91), Brant invokes a wealth of classical personages undone by love in one way or another: Venus and Mars, Circe, Calypso, Dido, Medea, Pasiphaë, Phaedra, Scylla, Hyacinth, Sappho, the Sirens, Pan, Danaë, Echo, Thisbe, Atalanta, Bellerophon, and Ovid. Biblical examples also abound: David and Bathsheba, Samson and Delilah, and Joseph. Ach du Lieber, Herr Doktor Brant! You certainly did do your homework.

But ein Moment, bitte, Doctor Brant. Didn’t you have seven children? Didn’t you love them, and didn’t you love your wife who bore those children for you? Perhaps it’s a good thing that you saw and appreciated one woman’s charms.

Just as in “Of Amours,” Brant often seems anxious to demonstrate his scholarly bona fides. In Chapter 19, “Of Idle Talk,” he concludes with a rhyming couplet to the effect that “Silence is good, I always teach,/But better still is rightful speech” (p. 107). In support of that thesis, he cites some authorities that one might expect – Demosthenes of Athens, for example, famed for the way he overcame a speech impediment by giving speeches to the sea after filling his mouth with pebbles. But Brant also cites other authorities who might be lesser-known – Sotades of Maroneia, for example, when he writes that “Sotades few words spoke in vain,/Yet got to jail as though he’s slain” (p. 107).

It took a quick visit to Wikipedia for me to learn that Sotades, who was proficient in the “art” of writing obscene satires in verse, made the mistake of turning his poison pen against the Egyptian pharaoh Ptolemy II Philadelphus, and was jailed for it. This translation of The Ship of Fools has some helpful footnotes, but sometimes these footnotes do little more than provide the title for a religious or classical text that the contemporary reader may or may not have read. Sometimes, therefore, readers may have to do a bit more digging on their own.

Some of Brant’s reflections provide insights into the outlook or zeitgeist of the German society of his time. I liked it, for example, when Chapter 92 on “Presumptuousness of Pride” featured Brant indulging in an understandable bit of pride regarding the growth of higher learning in the German states; he notes that whereas “Once men thought learning could but ay/Be sought at Athens far away,” but then says how glad he is that, in his time, higher education is found “now here too on German ground” (p. 300). But there is Ärger im Paradies (trouble in paradise), as Brant feels obliged to report that “Our only failing’s love for wine,/To it we Germans do incline,/And good hard work is rarely done” (p. 300). Well, to be fair, those sweet white wines from the Rhine and Mosel are awfully good…

Translator Edwin Zeydel points out that Brant’s moralism was altogether based in prior authority, whether Biblical or classical; if divine authorities or great ancient thinkers said that something was bad, then that was good enough for him. Additionally, “While Luther, Zwingli, Erasmus, Reuchlin, and Hutten sought to dethrone existing authority, and to establish new standards, Brant revered and defended the accepted traditions” (pp. 7-8). I suppose that, if carriages had had bumper stickers back in the 15th century, Brant’s carriage might have had a bumper sticker reading Gott hat es gesagt, ich glaube es, und damit ist die Sache erledigt (“God said it, I believe it, and that settles it”).

Such considerations come to mind when reading Chapter 61, “Of Dancing,” wherein Brant writes that “dance and sin are one in kind,” and adds that “The dance by Satan was invented/When he devised the golden calf” (p. 204). Wirklich, Herr Doktor Brant? Really, Doctor Brant? Did not King David dance? Is his dancing not recorded in the Bible? Similarly, in Chapter 63, “Of Beggars,” Brant claims that “beggars very rarely [have to] fast” (p. 209). History records that the states of 15th-century Germany did not have a social-welfare system comparable to that of the modern and prosperous Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany). A sense of Christian charity might bring to mind a realization that, in Brant’s time as in our own, some people who beg do so because they have no other recourse.

Brant also has his limitations in terms of religious ecumenism. He seems to have had no problem with an economic system that forced Jewish businessmen to lend money at interest, and denied them other career paths. To lend money at interest was considered “usury” by the church, and Brant’s only concern with regard to money-lending is if Christian businessmen engage in it! And he even calls for a renewed Crusade to “liberate” the Holy Land from Muslim control, notwithstanding all the bloodshed and cruelty and horror and futility of all those prior Crusades.

In fairness to Brant, however, I must mention that, when in later life he achieved political power, becoming chancellor of Strasbourg, he permitted Protestants to preach there, his conservative Catholicism notwithstanding. Considering the times of religious disputation in which he lived, even that degree of religious tolerance must be recognized.

Overall, now that we’re back in port, I find myself reflecting that The Ship of Fools makes for an interesting metaphorical voyage – sometimes interesting, sometimes troubling. In spite of the limitations of the author’s world-view, the work does provide a salutary reminder that we all have a predilection for foolish behaviour. If we can be aware of our own tendency to be foolish, then perhaps we can avoid taking a seat on the Narrenschiff the next time it embarks.

[Stratos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Κολακευτικές κριτικές ομς μου φάνηκε κάπως υπερτιμημένο. Ενδιαφέρουσες οι σημειολογικές παρατηρήσεις κι ένα τέλος χωρίς ουσιαστικό μήνυμα.

[Vasil Dakov · Rating 5 out of 5]

В сатиричната поема "Корабът на глупците", германският хуманист Себастиан Брант осмива нравите и пороците на своето време - както сред обикновените хора, така и сред духовници, учени и аристократи. Книгата се счита за едно от най-важните предреформаторски произведения в немската литература. Повлиява по-късно и други сатирични творби, включително „Похвала на глупостта“ от Еразъм Ротердамски.

[Manybooks · Rating 2 out of 5]

German (well actually Alsatian) Catholic humanist and theologian Sebastian Brant's 1494 satirical allegory Das Narrenschiff (The Ship of Fool in its English translations) basically consists of a prologue, one hundred and twelve brief satirical poems and an epilogue, and is considered by many scholars a classic of so-called Fool's Literature (Narrenliteratur). I had to read Das Narrenschiff for a graduate level reading course, and used both it and Erasmus of Rotterdam's Lob der Torheit (In Praise of Folly), along with Hermann Bote's more secular, often intensely funny, at times even rather scatological masterpiece Till Eulenspiegel for a term paper contrasting and comparing different types of 15th and 16th century satire in Germany (in Europe). And while this comparison and contrast was, indeed, a very enlightening and thought-provoking process, of the three main (and above-mentioned) satires I read for my term paper, Das Narrenschiff was the one I most definitely personally enjoyed the least. For while the individual poetic interludes do read smoothly and easily enough (and especially if they are rendered into standard modern German) and without too much unnecessary description and adornment, there is also an unfortunate repetitiveness of both style and content, and enough so to lead to tedium and annoyance (at least that has always been my personal experience and opinion with regard to Brant's work).

But much more problematic and in my opinion unfortunately rather symptomatic is that Sebastian Brant really (and herein very much unlike Erasmus of Rotterdam, to whom he is often scholarly compared) has absolutely no or at the very best only a tiny and minuscule sense of humour, whilst also and sadly lacking both humility and humanity, repeatedly and viciously lashing out with an ever increasing holier than thou attitude and iron fist at the perceived weaknesses and vices of his time (but concurrently, while being massively and vigorously critical of even minor peccadilloes, presenting himself in his role as narrator to be somehow sovereignly above and beyond both misbehaviour and criticism, almost as though Brant as narrator were God and God were Brant). And when one then considers the generally gentle, humane and even loving criticism of foolish, of human behaviour in general used by Erasmus in his Lob der Torheit (an almost tender, often intensely funny satire that not only seems to praise folly but shows that everyone, even he himself, is prone to the same), Sebastian Brant really does tend to become, I am sorry to say, increasingly simply a nasty little pedant who strives to only ridicule and chastise, not with gentleness, not with understanding, but with a heavy and powerfully stinging proverbial switch (one that outs Brant, his description and consideration as a humanist notwithstanding, really not as all that humanistic, not as all that humane, but rather as very much much the opposite, and also renders the author's Das Narrenschiff as basically humourless and thus not nearly as enjoyable for pleasure reading as other late Medieval, early Renaissance satiric literature examples).

And while one can thus easily perceive and much appreciate the differences between the on the surface at least somewhat similar satires of Sebastian Brant and Erasmus of Rotterdam, the differences between Sebastian Brant and Hermann Bote, the differences between Das Narrenschiff and Till Eulenspiegel are actually and often in many ways considerably MORE obvious and glaring. For while both of these works are definitely always intensely critical of contemporary society, Herman Bote's satire is generally not only massively and even laugh-out-loud hilarious, it is also often similarly critical of the main character, of Till Eulenspiegel himself, even as the latter exposes and presents a distorted mirror of society and its often decadent, falsifying and hypocritical behaviours and world views (whereas in Das Narrenschiff, Sebastian Brant's anonymous narrator is only ever critical, never really all that funny and also never considers himself as an entity, as a human being, also being possibly guilty of foolishness and blameworthy behaviour). And in and with this here attitude, both Hermann Bote and Erasmus of Rotterdam are actually also very much akin and alike (with their tendency towards universal criticism of everyone, including their main characters, their main narrators, something that I personally have found much if not actually completely missing in action within Das Narrenschiff), although Erasmus' Das Lob der Torheit is of course much less scatological and vulgar than Bote's Till Eulenspiegel often has the tendency to be, but both works do, in my humble opinion, rise far far above and beyond Brant's Das Narrenschiff

Although Sebastian Brant's Das Narresnschiff is thus interesting and enlightening from a literary history point of view, I cannot and will not really consider recommending it, especially for any type of pleasure reading (although I do admit that the accompanying woodcuts by none other than Albrecht Dürer are spectacular and an amazing visual treat). And while I do in fact have always much enjoyed satire, Sebastian Brant's type of satire is basically just a monotonous, droning, usually inherently dictating and painful, slogging list of human frailties, with not much hope either (and as already mentioned, the implied both implicit and even explicit moral superiority of the narrator is simply not at all my proverbial cup of tea). However, if you are still interested in a perusal of Das Narrenschiff, there do seem to be a rather goodly number of more than adequate English translations available (including some very decent dual language English/German offerings).

[George K. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Δεν μπορείτε να φανταστείτε με πόση μανία έψαχνα το συγκεκριμένο βιβλίο, που είχε κυκλοφορήσει στα ελληνικά μέσα στη δεκαετία του '70 από τις εκδόσεις Δαρεμά (σε μετάφραση Δημήτρη Π. Κωστελένου). Το άτιμο δεν το έβρισκα με τίποτα! Και ξαφνικά, οι εκδόσεις Κλειδάριθμος, το Καλοκαίρι του 2020, το εκδίδουν σε νέα, φρέσκια μετάφραση, με υπέροχο εξώφυλλο. Ε, φυσικά το άρπαξα την πρώτη μέρα κυκλοφορίας του, μονάχα που έπρεπε να περάσουν σχεδόν δυο χρόνια από τότε, μέχρι τελικά να κάτσω να το διαβάσω. Φαίνεται, περίμενα την κατάλληλη στιγμή για να το απολαύσω όπως του αξίζει. Και τα κατάφερα: Βρήκα την κατάλληλη στιγμή και το απόλαυσα στον απόλυτο βαθμό! Μιλάμε για ένα εξαιρετικό μυθιστόρημα, χορταστικό και άψογα γραμμένο, οξυδερκές, αιχμηρό και με πολύ καλή αίσθηση του χιούμορ, με τη συγγραφέα να κρίνει και να κατακρίνει τα κακώς κείμενα της εποχής του Μεσοπολέμου, δημιουργώντας ένα μωσαϊκό χαρακτήρων, μέσω των οποίων οι αναγνώστες παίρνουμε μια εικόνα από τις κοινωνικές, πολιτικές, οικονομικές, ταξικές και φυλετικές συνθήκες της εποχής (η όλη ιστορία διαδραματίζεται Αύγουστο-Σεπτέμβριο του 1931). Με απόλυτο έλεγχο του υλικού και των χαρακτήρων της, η συγγραφέας καταφέρνει να δημιουργήσει έναν ολόκληρο κόσμο, ή μάλλον έναν μικρόκοσμο, όπου οι άνθρωποι είναι γεμάτοι πάθη, νευρώσεις, κρυμμένες επιθυμίες και ανομολόγητους φόβους που βγαίνουν σιγά-σιγά στην επιφάνεια, με το πέρασμα των ημερών και με την καθημερινή και φυσικά αναπόφευκτη αλληλεπίδρασή τους εντός του πλοίου, χωρίς να λείπουν οι ίντριγκες, οι διαφωνίες, οι τσακωμοί, οι έρωτες και τα κουτσομπολιά. Ναι, ναι, σίγουρα είναι ένα μυθιστόρημα με αργούς ρυθμούς, με πολύ μπλα μπλα, με πολλές λεπτομέρειες στις περιγραφές των σκηνικών, των γεγονότων και των χαρακτήρων, απαιτεί χρόνο και συγκέντρωση από τον αναγνώστη, αλλά προσωπικά το κατευχαριστήθηκα, από την πρώτη μέχρι την τελευταία σελίδα. Και ειλικρινά σας λέω, δεν ήθελα με τίποτα να τελειώσει, ακόμα και όταν μιλάμε για ένα μυθιστόρημα εξακοσίων και πλέον σελίδων. Τι να σας πω, θα μου λείψουν όλοι αυτοί οι τύποι και όλες αυτές οι τύπισσες που γνώρισα στο βιβλίο (έστω κι αν δεν συμπάθησα σχεδόν κανέναν!), θα μου λείψει το σκηνικό του πλοίου και όλη αυτή η απίθανη ατμόσφαιρα, αλλά πάνω απ' όλα θα μου λείψει η (κατά την ταπεινή μου γνώμη) υπέροχη και απολαυστική γραφή της Πόρτερ. Φυσικά, δεν αποκλείω το ενδεχόμενο στο μέλλον να ξαναδιαβάσω το βιβλίο, ενώ επίσης οι εκδόσεις Κλειδάριθμος έχουν σκοπό φέτος τον Ιούνιο να βγάλουν κι άλλο βιβλίο της, το "Χλωμό άλογο, χλωμός αναβάτης", το οποίο φυσικά περιμένω πώς και π��ς. Υ. Γ. Η ομότιτλη ταινία του 1965, σε σκηνοθεσία Στάνλεϊ Κράμερ, ευτυχώς ανήκει στη συλλογή μου και σίγουρα θα τη δω μέσα στη χρονιά.

[Andrew]

You ever stayed at a hostel in your twenties, and had a circle of people, all drinking beer and generally having a good time, all of you of different nationalities, getting along? Then some Belgian or Swede or something or other says something slightly horrific about refugees, or about how America has no culture because it is a nation of immigrants. Or a Japanese guy tells you that the actions of the Japanese army in mainland Asia in World War II were fully justified. Or a fellow American tells you how much they would rather be eating at Sonic.

Katherine Anne Porter is something of a wonder, and she's not getting much attention these days. Sure, her work was an indirect influence (via Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, etc.) on so much frankly mediocre perennial-Pulitzer-candidate realism being done today. In the Flannery O'Connor vein, she's got a lot of fuck-you in her, and while her shorter work is perhaps more distilled... 190 proof, uncut fuck-you, Ship of Fools lasts a full 500 pages, and is much more fluid. There's no one main character, there's just conversations among a massive cast of Spaniards, Germans, Americans and more in the years before World War II, and so it reads almost like The Magic Mountain as set on the high seas. Being Porter, she doesn't pull any punches, with each character generally being some combination of emotionally stunted, violently prejudiced, arrogantly proud of their own petty social position, ignorant, and naïve.

[Carol Storm · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely love this book! Katherine Anne Porter was a Southern writer who wrote tons of short stories with only one or two characters set in her own distinctive world, but in this epic novel she creates a huge cast of characters from all nationalities and races and shows all of their turbulent adventures aboard a cruise ship just before World War II.

What's so amazing about this book is that it explores one theme over and over, the idea that we can never really know anything about the people around us. On board this ship are rich and poor, men and women, Mexicans and Germans, (and Americans) and all of them are blind to each other's real natures. The most loathsome people carry secrets of great beauty. The most admirable people turn out to be weak and corrupt. The people headed for damnation sometimes turn out to be better than we think, and the nice people sometimes don't get what they deserve.

Read this book, it's a forgotten masterpiece and you won't regret it. Oh, and whatever you do don't watch the 1965 movie with Lee Marvin and Vivien Leigh!

[Hux · Rating 3 out of 5]

Life, you see, is like a ship, you see, and it's travelling towards the future and the passengers are, like, on a journey and, like, the world is moving towards something with people on it, you see, and they're on a ship that's just like life. And that's about it. But with lots of characters (too many in fact) none of which are especially interesting and none of which experience any meaningful conflict or growth.

I really wanted to like this but it never once gripped me. It reminded me a lot of Perec's Life: A User's Manual but where that book uses an apartment to, like, you know, represent life, this uses a ship and both are ultimately a little dull. Set in 1931, the ship sails from Mexico to Germany, stopping off at Cuba, then all the way to Tenerife, before dropping in at Spain and England. As beautifully as Porter writes (and she does), it's all in service of a slightly bloated and almost soap opera-esque narrative that never really accomplishes anything. Occasionally, Porter throws in some discussion of antisemitism (there are dark clouds over Europe, you know) and tries her best to make the piece more substantial than it actually is by such devices but it never really works and always comes across as melodramatic and trivial. Like I said: a soap opera ....

Tune in next week to find out if David and Jenny can put their differences aside, if La Condesa breaks doctor Schumann's heart, if chubby Elsa will find love. In an all new exciting episode of... THE LOVEBOAT!!!

While I normally prefer books without a plot, at the very least you need to give me some kind of intrigue, some degree of conflict or antagonism. But instead it's lots of polite conversations, lots of characters meeting for breakfast, for dinner, drinking with the captain, etc. It just never reaches the heights which Porter clearly intended, never becomes the epic philosophical work that explores the human condition with profound insight and character using the boat as a metaphor for life. It just never gets there. The only exciting moment of the book was when the children Ric and Rac (two little shits) throw the poor dog Bebe overboard. A Basque man dives in to save the dog (successfully) but dies in the process. Don't worry, this isn't a spoiler and that's the point I'm making; because nothing interesting happens to the main characters in this book so when a man dramatically saves the dog and dies in the process, that is the first (and last) time we ever hear anything about him. That was his entire role in proceedings. All the other people on this boat are just extras, filling in scenes as the 20 main characters (you'll forget half of them) continue with their mundane journey and conversations.

This book could have been so much more. It's worth reading (and I would still recommend it) but it all falls a little flat in the end. If you liked Life: A User's Manual then you might like this. I found both to be books that were desperately trying too hard and failed quite badly. Oh well.

[Kathryn in FL · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF at 10%

Katherine Anne Porter is a respected author and I liked her writing style. She is very observant and reveals their character by description, behavior and conversation.

Unfortunately, these travelers for the most part came across as so annoying that I didn't have any interest in traveling with them from Mexico to Europe. They were super unappealing. Most seemed to have very high esteem of their value to the world and very superior based on race/culture and heritage. While I may have enjoyed it a bit more in my 20's, I just find them to unsympathetic to learn more about them in my 50's (yes, I'm that old, it is a shock to me too! lol). I hope that they learned important lessons during their voyage. These people are based on fellow passengers along the same route Ms. Porter once took. Such a shame she had to put up with them. I assume that these folks are even more eccentric and droll than those she traveled the seas with. She got to disembark eventually when she reached her destination. I chose to depart early.

I would consider another book by Ms. Porter (from the library) but I'm unlikely to pick this up again (even though I bought it new).

[Tristram Shandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

„I Have Seen All This Before, Over and Over, Only Never Until Now Did I See It on a Ship.”

Dr. Schumann’s resigned words make it quite clear that Katherine Anne Porter’s famous novel “Ship of Fools” is not really about people on board a ship in the year 1931, but about our involuntary voyage through life – all the more so as the ship’s name is Vera.

Writing this novel took twenty years of Porter’s life, from 1940 to 1960/61, which is reflected to a certain extent in the episodical character of the story. Instead of devising a continuous plot, Porter has confined herself – if this be the right word – to presenting us with carefully elaborated character snapshots, rich in psychological detail, that somehow result in unpretentious, yet highly artistic real-life stories.

Some examples needed? We have, for instance, the tragic story of Dr. Schumann, a down-to-earth and rather conservative Heidelberg physician and a married man, working as the ship’s doctor, who reluctantly falls in love with La Condesa, a jaded and immoral declassée noblewoman who is being deported to Tenerife for political reasons. Then there is another love story, not so much tragic as mundane, between David and Jenny, two wanna-be painters, with all its offs and ons. Wilhelm Freytag, who has married a beautiful Jewess and suffers from discrimination by both the Jewish and the German communities, is on his way to fetch his wife and her mother to start a new life in South America – his love story is purposely presented as cheaply melodramatic by Porter, as Freytag comes over as a rather narcissistic man.

Sorrow, often its dearly embraced form of self-pity and self-abasement, plays another important role in the ongoings on board the Vera, as for example in Elsa, the ugly duckling who despairs of her prospects with regard to her love life, in recently widowed Frau Schmitt, who regards herself as a lone, unprotected and helpless woman in a hostile world, in Herr Glocken, the ostracised disfigured hunchback, or in the lachrymose, remorse-ridden drunkard Baumgarten, who fails to take up responsibility for his family. Next to sorrow, we have lust – for example in the case of the yet innocent Johann, who is kept short financially by his half-mad uncle, and that of the lecherous Mr. Denny –, the forlorn indifference of Mrs. Treadwell, greed and contempt in various forms and – last, not least – hypocrisy.

Apart from the first class passengers, there are the poor and huddled masses that have no faces and no names, and if they have, they are quickly forgotten, even if their bearer has lost his life in the effort of saving a drowning dog. These social losers are marvelled at by the first class passengers from their privileged upper deck’s position, creating a sense of fear of things to come, as for example the ragged boy who, at the end of the voyage, yells triumphantly that once again the likes of his have multiplied and are now larger in number than at the beginning of the journey.

It would be quite hopeless an undertaking to try and comment on all the various characters and episodes that Porter’s keen imagination has begotten – according to herself, she has partly drawn them from her experiences during an actual voyage in 1931. Although some characters and their feckless frolickings and battles might seem entertainingly ridiculous, Porter also makes a point of hinting at the rise of National Socialism, when she describes, for instance how Freytag is ousted from the captain’s table, once it is publicly known that his wife is Jewish. Frau Rittersdorf, a social hypocrite par excellence, and her ideas of legalizing euthanasia and of German superiority may well represent the German Bürgertum, which was largely unable to resist Nazi propaganda and ideology. Herr Rieber, the editor of a nationalistic newspaper, stands for Social Darwinism and racism in their crudest form, as the following short extract may prove:

“Herr Rieber and Frau Lizzi Spöckenkieker pranced onto the deck, and Lizzi screamed out to little Frau Otto Schmitt, whose tender heart was plainly to be surmised in her soft pink face: ‘Oh, what do you think of this dreadful fellow? Can you guess what he just said? I was saying, Oh, these poor people, what can be done for them? and this monster […] said, I would do this for them: I would put them all in a big oven and turn on the gas. Oh’, she said weakly, doubling over with laughter, ‘isn’t that the most original idea you ever heard?’
Herr Rieber stood by smiling broadly, quite pleased with himself. Frau Schmitt went a little pale, and said in a motherly, severe tone, ‘There may be such a thing as too much originality – for shame, I don’t think that is funny!’ Herr Rieber’s face fell, he pouted.”

Porter’s account of Captain Thiele’s psyche, who dreams of mawing down insurgents with a machine gun as the one way of showing what stuff he is made from, gives us the kind of authoritarian character Nazism could rely on. Of course, most of this is an ex-post argumentation, and I do not really know whether undisguised anti-Semitism was as wide-spread and socially accepted in Germany as the account of Freytag and his wife’s humiliation and ostracism seems to imply* – but I give Porter the benefit of the doubt, all the more so as her novel is anything but one-dimensional.

Porter’s novel, to sum it all up, is a brilliant book, whose pessimism and pitilessly realistic fathoming of human nature – after all, there are hardly any likeable characters on board – may depress you, but then you should nevertheless hold on to your ticket and not leave this “Ship of Fools”.

By the way, the somewhat saccharine film version by Stanley Kramer does not do the book justice by half.

* For a knowledgeable and well-founded study on modern German anti-Semitism cf. Helmut Berding, Moderner Antisemitismus in Deutschland, Frankfurt/M. 1988.

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such elegant savagery! Set on a cruise ship traveling from Mexico to Germany in the early 1930s. An enviably seamless omniscient narrator carries us through this meticulous study of human frailties. It's an ensemble book, too--a rare feat: no single protagonist--and it works. (This was given to me as a masterwork to contemplate as I revise my own, far poorer, fleet of vices.) The book takes its time without lagging, painstakingly rising to violence--every kind of subtle violence.

I found Porter's eye for human interiority unfailingly astute. She makes giant actions out of minute shifts in mood. This skill reminded me a few times of Jane Austen, but Porter wields a much broader and bolder scope on human drama. She renders male characters with equal depth and nuance, but I'd say her lapidary interest & sheer insight into those nuances comes off to me as a particularly female skill. I doubt this book could be written by a man. She's a master of nuanced contempt without passing (fully) into misanthropy. There's a lot of compassion here, but even the best characters are fascinatingly, horridly flawed.

Here's one of my favorite lines of unconscious contempt. It's for a young American painter, made more savage still by the German, married male character thinking it without any reflection whatsoever, and without any emphasis from the narrator. "She was pleasant to dance with, and it was rather piquant, the way a curious innocence, naivete, a priggish little moral earnestness rose now and then to the surface of their light chatter, like cloudy bubbles on a pool, causing you to wonder what strange fish swam below, or what drowned thing was sending up gaseous signals from the bottom."

Yeow! I love it.

[Daniel Villines · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ship of Fools captures that time, long ago, when being at sea was a necessity. There was no other way to cross oceans and a voyage could take weeks to arrive at a final destination. And because of this need, the types of people that congregated in close quarters on board a ship at sea was diverse. Ship of Fools captures the mood and diversity of passengers at sea during this bygone era.

The book's strength resides in the various mind-sets of its eclectic group of passengers. While they come from different backgrounds, different professions, and different places, they all posses that common human trait that becomes readily apparent when diversity is forced upon individuals for prolonged periods of time: pride, in all of its sad manifestations.

There is no escaping the foolishness that pride brings to every passenger. Each passenger cannot avoid seeing themselves in the true light of their own beliefs and their actions are consequently foolish to all but the actor (and those of similar minds). Themes of patriotism and xenophobia are explored alongside more typical human faults such as jealousy, envy, and greed. And while Katherine Porter spares her readers from being judged, the personal guilt of the reader is only a thought away from each foolish act.

As the book progresses, however, this strength-of-theme also becomes its primary weakness. The effect of capturing the somewhat monotonous mood of weeks upon the ocean served to create a similar outlook for the book itself. It seemed to take weeks for both the voyage and the book to end.

[NeDa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Прочетох тази книга заради „запознанството“ ми с Любомир Илиев, гост на Столичната библиотека като преводач на месец ноември 2018 г. За нея той получава Наградата на Съюза на преводачите в България през 1990-та. На срещата рецитираше безупречно и с лекота началото.
Нататък започва дълга изложба от словесни портрети на глупци с невинни и недотам привички. От страниците надничат всякакви типове – комарджии, лентяи, присмехулници, астролози, не са пощадени и тези, които забравят за себе си в усилията си да помагат другиму. Изданието е с безупречен шрифт и подредба на текста, съобразени с гравюрите на Албрехт Дюрер. И все пак най-впечатляващи са римите на Себастиан Брант в превод на Любомир Илиев.

Едва ли има днес страна
да не гъмжи от писмена,
чиято главна цел се смята
спасението на душата.
Да, много книги! Но тогава
защо ли по-добър не става
човекът, а е все тъй лош?
Светът живее в тъмна нощ
и вместо бога да зове,
затъва в страшни грехове.
По улици и по сокаци
сноват рояци от глупаци.
Умувах дълго и реших
да седна и от своя стих
за всички тях и с труд, и с пот
да сътворя глупашки флот,
където вече са събрани
фрегати, шхуни, тримарани,
върху които са приети
глупци с каруци и с карети,
а и с шейни! Но знам добре:
не може той да побере
глупаците от тоя свят,
та някои напред-назад
ще плуват и ще се стремят
на борда да се изкачат
и всеки ще е обладан
от блян да стане капитан.
И взех, че изрисувах всички
глупаци с техните привички,
та ако някой тук не ще
или не може да чете,
да се погледне отстрани,
да се сравни и прецени...

[K.M. Weiland · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I started this, I wasn't impressed: yay, another depressingly cynical demonstration of severely non-heroic characters. But something about it pulled me in. Strangely, the experience reminded me a lot of Thomas Mann's Miracle Mountain, in that it is a leisurely and distanced exploration of flawed humanity. It *is* a generally depressing view of life, but it is rich and deep and thought-provoking.

[Le_Suti · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sebastian Brant hält der Gesellschaft einen Spiegel vor und deckt schonungslos auf, wie wir uns alle zum Narren machen. Und die Thematik war nicht nur im späten 15. Jahrhundert top aktuell, auch heute noch kann man sich in manchen der 112 Kapiteln widererkennen und merkt, wie man sich im Alltag zum Narren macht.

Denn ein jeder wird in seinem Leben einmal auf dem Narrenschiff mitfahren.

[Maria Thomarey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Εκπληκτικό!. Τελικά οι προκαταλήψεις τον άνθρωπο είναι ένα δομικό στοιχείο.

[Larry Bassett · Rating 3 out of 5]

From the trailer of the 1965 movie: “There are many stories here but there is only one Ship of Fools.”

OK, I don’t know what “Quand nous partons vers la bonheur ?” means. So I am feeling stupid and I am not even on page one yet. Any translators out there?

We meet many of the characters fairly quickly. They are a variety thrown aboard a ship on a month long voyage across the Atlantic to Germany from Mexico. There is the normal shipboard class division from First to Steerage but there are dynamic differences between people within First Class. The book is set in 1931.

… He felt again that odd contraction of dislike for her he had felt when he first saw her, before they had even spoken to each other. He put the width of another step between them and said nothing.
Jenny saw this and was curiously chilled by it. You are perhaps making yourself very attractive with this light conversation about the Fall [Adam and Eve], as if you know something you could teach me that I need badly to learn. Maybe I shall fall in love with you, maybe I am in love with you already, the way I fall in love: always with utter strangers and as if I were going under water, and I’ll fall out again as if I were falling off a cliff. I’m glad I don’t know anything about you, except that you have the kind of looks I like – one kind, anyway – and that you are married and anxious for me to be sure you love your wife. Don’t insist – I am happy to believe you. And if I knew you better I might not like you at all – in fact I don’t even like you now. And I can tell you now that you aren’t ever going to like me – you will hate me in fact. There would be something about the whole thing I shouldn’t be able to put up with at all. It doesn’t matter what it might be, and I can’t even imagine what it is. … If we could sleep together without too much trouble and loose ourselves together for a little while, I’d be easy again, I’d be able to see better. It’s only – how did it happen? I’m just starved and frozen out; my man won’t share with me, he wants everything to himself. What is that Spanish saying – “Is this bread good or is it my hunger?” And what’s the other – “What dog will refuse meat that is thrown to him?” But that one of course will be for you.

That early paragraph is our introduction to Jenny, a young woman traveling with her lover David in separate cabins and often in separate worlds. Strange, eh? Let the relationships embark!

And toward the end of the book we have this about David:

David meditated a little on his situation and admitted that it looked hopeless – yet had it ever been anything else? He had never been anywhere but that he wanted to be somewhere else; never in any kind of fix that he wasn’t planning all the time to get out of it. He had never known a girl he could trust, and Jenny was the last straw. But he couldn’t hate her – or not just yet, or not except in fits and starts. Whatever their feeling for each other had become, it could even now be a kind of love, he supposed, but if it was, they’d both be better off without it…. How better, or in what way, he had no idea. As if it mattered.

Put that paragraph together with the earlier paragraph about Jenny, and I think you may see you have the perfect couple. If I could slow down and absorb enough like this, I think I would indeed enjoy the book. But it went too slow and my mind drifted and my eyes scanned along, missing important details. I enjoyed the book in the places I was able to devote full attention and mental space to the book.

Over and over Ship of Fools exposes the differences between what people say and what they think. Explore the reasons why words do not match thoughts and what the consequences are. Watch to see if anyone tries to honestly live out their values in their daily life. This of course assumes that someone has positive values. The first class passengers are predominately German and their anti-Semitism is mercilessly displayed as it is directed against the one Jew on the ship and then against the man whose wife is Jewish. They are required to eat at a separate table in the dining room, segregated from the others. The Jew is stereotypically portrayed as a successful businessman whose goods are ironically made for Catholics.

Here are a few things other GR reviewers had to say:

She simultaneously depicts the short-comings of a world on the brink of World War II and scrutinizes those flaws that are endemic to all cultures and times. The meanness and arbitrary ways in which people subdivide who they consider equals are examined with Porter's scalpel.
Source: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
…
On board, Germans, Americans, Spaniards, and Mexicans, ranging from the peasant class to the drug-addicted aristocracy, bicker, fight, love, and philosophize. The theme of the novel is the passengers' unavailing withdrawal from a life of disappointment, seeking a kind of utopia, and, "without knowing what to do next", setting out for a long voyage to pre-World-War-II Europe, a world of prejudice, racism and evil.
Source: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
…
This is a leisurely paced and highly engaging panorama of humanity by a writer with a gift for creating subtle, picturesque prose and beguiling characters. Porter presents a microcosm of the human comedy in this account of the passengers aboard a ship headed from Mexico to Germany in 1931 whose lives become intertwined in various ways during the voyage, sometimes comically, sometimes heroically, sometimes tragically.
Source: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Ship of Fools has you waiting for the happy ending until the very end. But there is no “they lived happily ever after” for any of the characters as far as we can tell, but instead “. . . what a disgusting life it was!”

It turned out that as a whole I only liked the book a little bit. It had some four star parts but predominantly three for me. It had many, many short vignettes (ranging from one paragraph to several pages) for the entire book as if you were experiencing everything in bits and pieces and are required to sew the small parts together to form the whole. It was too long for me to focus so much on character development and very little action. There was some groping and fighting and crying and yelling if you consider that action but I do not.

Somewhere I have KAP’s The Collected Stories . When I find it I must read some of her short stories since that is where she evidently left her mark.

Ship of Fools got onto my must read list within the past year. I read enough things about it in GoodReads that I wanted to find out what it was all about. It was about three stars!