Ship of Fools: A Novel

This is one of the best novels I’ve read. Almost every page contains a jewel of English expression. The freshness and vigour of its cynicism reminded me of Celine’s Journey to the End of the Night, but while his book retreats into the narrator’s inner world, Porter’s work is a study of clashing personalities. It’s also deeply compassionate, without a speck of sentimentality. It is 1931. The initial setting, Mexico’s “pestilential” port town of Veracruz, introduces the themes of social class, rage, inertia and ennui. One brief scene covers the antics of three pets, a monkey, cat and parrot, foreshadowing the further theme of confinement and of a shared suffering that begets no fellow-feeling. Then we set off on a mediocre German vessel carrying passengers and cargo from Mexico to Europe, pressing together different people of very different backgrounds, lifestyles and personalities. The ship and its journey provide the framework for the story. There are so many characters in play that the author provides a list of them; they are linked up like dominoes by fragile romances, antipathies, and shared cabins. Overseeing all is the German captain, a bitter, stunted, snobbish woman-hater, and of course he despises Jews. He is supported by the ageing ship’s doctor, who is a generally decent conservative. Of the passengers, Herr Hutten is a pontificating scholar. His loyal Frau holds him up, while he holds her down; together they dote on their child-replacement bulldog. Even less happy are the Baumgartners. The wife, a subtle piece of work, has drained their boy of all self-confidence. Her husband has sunk into self-destructiveness; she seems to conspire with him to deepen this moral ruin. Also desperately unhappy is Elsa Lutz, teen daughter of a dull Swiss couple. She shares a cabin with the trim, snappy, spunky Jenny, to whom she confides, in baffled anguish, the fact that no boys like her. Jenny offers bland false optimism but inside she “felt an anxious tenderness, as if she had been asked for help she was not able to give. What hope was there for the discouraged young face with its double chin, the crease of fat like a goitre at the base of the throat… And inside, there groped blindly, the young innocence and the longing, the pained confused limited mind, the dark instincts winding upon themselves like snails.” Jenny herself, nervy and restless, is entangled with David, who is dried up and emotionally constipated from his harsh religious upbringing; they torture each other in their joyless relationship, precarious yet endless. Jenny also flirts briefly with the handsome and gentlemanly Wilhelm Freitag, a German of good breeding whose social standing has been almost capsized by marriage to a French Jew, whom he is coming back to collect. David meanwhile shares with the Texan William Denny, obsessed with ladies of trade but unwilling to shell out a cent for sex. Like several other men Denny hangs around the edges of a group of four female Spanish dancers, pimped out by their sinister, wasp-waisted husbands; hanging off the group are the two scary children Ric and Rac. Then there is Herr Reiber, a short fat bald anti-semite with a pig-snout nose, and his girlfriend of sorts, the hysteric Lizzi: tall and gangly, “screaming like a peahen”, in Freitag’s mind a “half-witted rattle”; she “embodied to the last trait and feature everything the Captain found most positively repellent in womankind.” Lizzi shares with the dainty Mrs Treadwell: a 45-year old, attractive but single. Overprotected in childhood then brutalised in marriage, her past has left her vague, reserved and remote, less suited than most to Lizzi. “Perhaps the worst thing about her undesirable cabin mate was the extraordinary vulgarity of her talk about Jews. It cropped up no matter what the topic and gave Mrs Treadwell a creeping chill of distaste”. This is by no means a complete list of characters or themes covered in the novel. Though not a political book, it is of course set against the looming nightmare in Europe. Seen through a modern lens it has much to say about racism and sexism, without being didactic to the slightest degree. As a study of humanity it is unrelentingly skewed toward the cynical, but I found it absolutely hilarious.

I liked it, which was more than I could say about the characters on the Vera. If you like a book in which the plot unfolds, skip this one. If you like the characters to unfold and unravel before your eyes, read it. Prepare to be uncomfortable. You will see a lot more of yourself than you’d wish on these pages.

This novel is an allegory representing discord in Europe in the 1930s leading up to WWII. It is long, complex, and has many characters - and thankfully a character list. The story takes place on the ship Vera as it sails from Veracruz, Mexico to Bremerhaven, Germany, overloaded with a mismatched, dysfunctional, and diverse group of passengers. It's well written, and has in depth characterization with interiority revealed by the omniscient narrator. Plot tension is adequate. That said, to me the characters felt stiff, way too stiff to care about. Still, I became engaged with the story, and even felt confined and trapped, as Europe must have felt in the 1930s, which is what Porter must have intended.

Some people write only one book, and one is all they need.To Kill a Mockingbird, Conspiracy of Dunces, and Black Beauty come to mind. The books are so perfect in their completeness that to add another would be wrong. How do you follow perfection? Anything else they write after the one, would be second best. This wonderful book tells the story of the first-class passengers on a German cruise ship, the S. A. Vera, sailing from Veracruz, Mexico, and Bremerhaven, Germany, in 1931. Each passenger and ship's officer is delineated in scrupulous detail. The narrative drifts in and out of each of their lives as the ship slowly moves closer to its destination. Apparently Ms. Porter never learned the rule that one doesn't change point of view in the middle of a paragraph. Virginia Woolf knew it, I'm sure, but chose to disregard it. The book has a claustrophobia feel to it. There is nowhere to go to escape the other passengers. Nowadays cruise ships are behemoths, carrying up to 4,000 passengers. There are many opportunities to avoid an unpleasant fellow passenger. This was not so in 1931. Meals were all taken at the same time with the same table companions. One ran into the same people over and over again while on deck. One learned more that one wanted to know about fellow-passengers. The book is a fascinating exploration of characters from the revolting children Ric and Rac who like to throw things overboard, to the mysterious and engaging Condesa, who rates a compartment all herself. Ms. Porter shows each character with its faults and strengths in loving detail. By the end of the voyage one doesn't want the ship to dock but keep on sailing.

i liked jumping from the passengers, sort of like daily life and bumping into different people. Interesting how the author tries to get inside the heads of men and women. Realizing how she started working herself in the pre-equal rights era. Too hard to describe all the characters in this review. Potter certainly covers a variety, a little society for three weeks on a boat sailing from Mexico to Europe. Famous for her short novellas, this took her years to write and pull all the characters together. Can't believe they made a movie from it.

In this very aptly and correctly titled novel from Katherine Anne Porter, we meet a bevy of characters with various and conflicting backgrounds, ethnicities, ages, beliefs, prejudices, faults, biases and motives as they sail the Vera on their voyage from Mexico to Germany circa 1933. I stuck this one out, even to the bitter end, even though I felt like I was on a month long cruise that I didn’t want to be on. First, I will say Porter’s prose itself is probably one of the aspects I did like about this book. That being said, I didn’t care for much else. The plot structure in Porter’s novel is such that, well, there isn’t a plot structure per se. Much like a boat floating aimlessly at sea, this novel drifts for nearly ninety percent of it with various characters’ exchanges, interactions, quibbles, arguments, banters, squabbles, etc. These episodes repeat and become quite circular throughout, like the circular flow of water going down the drain. During this time we do zoom into focus on certain individuals and begin to understand a bit of their personality makeup (which most likely isn’t much to speak of), and we also come to be enlightened to the inner workings of their minds and their motives in life. Many of the individuals on board are insecure, failed human beings either lacking identity or finding their place in the world. However, as the novel’s title certain suggests, we as an audience are left most often feeling cold, alienated from said moments into character’s perspectives. I get the method to the madness from Porter’s allegory, as she constructs this rather unpleasant little voyage and certainly makes a rather blatant point about illustrating the nature of human evil and frailty and the general narcissistic and nihilistic elements of humankind. If the goal and moral is to create a novel depicting human depravity, degenerate and evil individuals, and just the general bleak aspect of being on board, Porter exceeds with flying colors. But, wow, this one is difficult to endure. At the end of the day, this novel is so unpleasant an experience in so many ways. It has the most unsympathetic cast of characters ever, is entirely (like at least 200 or more pages) too long with a narrative style that moves at the pace of watching grass grow. All this with a message delivered with the subtlety of an oncoming locomotive.

I saw this movie many years ago and parts of it have stayed with me. I never wanted to read the book, but came across it and decided it give it a go. It's a cynical look at humankind, to be sure. There really isn't one person on Porter's ship that I would want to be the company of, but it sort of matched the times we're living in right now-2021. Just coming out of Covid lockdowns. Many people seem to have forgotten how to be civilized--they act up in stores and on airplanes and tried to take over our nation's capital. Porter's characters would be right at home here, in the USA at this time in history. If you're looking for a book with a moral or a lesson learned, this one isn't for you. It merely tells what happens on the ship's voyage and it ends when they reach their destination. No one learns a thing, and you get the feeling they'll all get off the ship and just continue on with their lives completely unaware of how despicable they are.

I was assigned this book in my high school English class. Now let me say I was an avid reader and I enjoyed most of the books assigned. I was looking forward to this - 500 pages I would have it done way before the due date. I was so wrong. After trying 5 times to get past page 50, I spoke with the teacher. No changing. Keep trying. My mom tried- she made it to page 100. So it wasn't just me. Dad tried - didn't make it to page 30 (not surprising, he likes westerns) again talked to the teacher. Nope, no changing. Parents took me to a bookstore, bought the CliffNotes version and I did my report on that. I stood up, read my report, gave an honest review (told them I never made it past page 50, neither did my mom and that it might just be the end of my love for reading) and told them I had used CliffNotes. I got a C (which was somewhat surprising- but Mom said I had tried and she wasn't worried about it as long as I told them it was, in the end, a CliffNotes report) I have tried again (last year) to read this book. It most definitely is the book and not me (or maybe it's a combination of the 2). This book is excellent for curing insomnia or for realizing that maybe you really weren't as bored as you thought. It also makes a good doorstop or bookend.

Ein facettenreicher Reise-Roman, die Geschichte einer Seereise und deren so unterschiedlicher Passagiere. Ein Buch, das nie langweilig wird, was bei dem großen Umfang einiges sagen will. Sicherlich ein Buch, dass man auch noch ein zweites Mal lesen kann. Man lernt sehr unterschiedliche Menschen kennen erfährt zudem viel über die Zeit kurz vor der Machtübernahme von Hitler und den Beginn der Judenverfolgungen.

A classic

This is a really well written book that is enjoyable to read. I wholeheartedly recommend it. The characters are well drawn and the story slowly unfolds in an unpredictable and always interesting way. I subsequently watched the film version which to me did not do justice to the subtleties and emotional power of the book.

This is overly long, especially for modern tastes. I found it difficult to sympathise with any of the characters or find interest in any of their thoughts, deeds and mishaps. The novel was written decades after the events but, if it is accurate, shows well the snobbery, conventionality and conformity, and, racism of the time. There are far better novels to read, try one of those!

Classic novel from 1930's. Good insight into people and their prejudices.