Hear Harlan Greene discuss his new book, “Porgy’s Ghost,” at the Charleston Library Society on November 20
With temperatures cooling in November, the literary scene is heating up. And this month’s Charleston Literary Festival is the natural evolution of other November anniversaries.
On November 17, 1920, the local incorporation of the Poetry Society of South Carolina and its resultant activities brought an end to the dearth of artistic expression caused by the Civil War. This movement of poets, playwrights, and novelists did not just celebrate Charleston’s literary legacy but infused it with new life, winning two of its members Pulitzer Prizes (Julia Peterkin for fiction and Robert Lathan for editorial writing) and spawning new cultural institutions. The society brought acclaimed authors like Carl Sandburg, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Gertrude Stein to town and helped to light the way to the much larger Southern Literary Renaissance that produced luminaries such as William Faulkner and Eudora Welty.
At the same time, it ushered in the literary production that has taken Charleston to all quarters of the globe. Porgy, DuBose Heyward’s novel about Black people living in Catfish Row, started appearing in magazine installments in the fall of 1925, with The Bookman Magazine officially announcing its availability in November. The tale, featuring a disabled protagonist named Porgy, took white and Black Americans by storm with its sympathetic view of disenfranchised and dismissed African Americans.
Two years later, through the adaptation by Heyward’s wife, Dorothy, the book became a trailblazing Broadway sensation. In its 1935 operatic form as Porgy and Bess, a collaboration between the Heywards and George and Ira Gershwin, the story started its meteoric ascent to where it stands today: a world classic.
Millions of people who have never walked the streets of Charleston are familiar with the timeless tale of a street beggar fighting his fate for an elusive love, a story that Dorothy Heyward lifted to a more transcendent ending allowing the hero to personify all our loftiest desires, as he leaves Catfish Row to defy the odds in search of happiness. The characters Porgy, Bess, Maria, Sporting Life, and Crown have long outlived their authors and many of the actors and opera singers who brought them to life. They, in their way, are timeless, as they reach a milestone: this November, they celebrate the 100th anniversary of their debut.
