Letters: Autobiography, Fiction, and the feud w/ Josie Herbst

Here is the info I have been talking w/you about re: autobiography and fiction. In short, Josie Herbst was writer and good friend of KAP. In an early letter to her (Aug 3, 1934 to Josephine Herbst--note: this is a fragment of a draft, p. 109 in Letters), Porter explains her own approach to using autobiography as a jumping off place for fiction. Ironically, in 1947, Herbst published Somewhere the Tempest Fell, which contains the scene from one of Porter's parties while living in Paris--only the names are changed to fictional ones. To compound Porter's fury with bad writing on the part of her friend, she (Porter) also felt endangered because Herbst had become pro-Stalin, pro-Communist, and was on the FBI watchlist. Porter refused to review the novel. And here is a link to a biography of Porter that discusses her unhappiness with Herbst's "fiction."