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Pale Horse, Pale Rider: Three Classic Southern Gothic Tales of Pandemic, War, and Memory
The classic 1939 collection of three short novels, including the famous title story set during the flu epidemic of 1918. From the gothic Old South to revolutionary Mexico, few writers evoke such a multitude of worlds, both exterior and interior, as powerfully as Katherine Anne Porter. This sharp collection of three short novels includes “Pale Horse, Pale Rider,” Porter's most celebrated story, where a young woman lies in a fever during the influenza epidemic, her childhood memories mingling with fears for her boyfriend on his way to war. Also included is “Noon Wine,” a haunting story of tragedy and scandal on a small dairy farm in Texas, and “Old Mortality,” a story of discovering family truths and self-discovery. Pale Horse, Pale Rider unites the finest work from one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century.
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1939
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About the author
Katherine Anne Porter
154 books351 followersKatherine 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...
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherin...
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October 28, 2020
Reading Road Trip 2020
Current location: Colorado
I've been humored by how many readers on here have cracked open Stephen King's The Stand during this pandemic, but now I know that I've read a worse book during quarantine, and it was by accident.
Worst book to read during a pandemic: Pale Horse, Pale Rider.
In a true moment of irony, you might be amused to learn that I was originally going to read Peter Heller's The Dog Stars for my home state of Colorado (a novel which starts out at a location just minutes from my house), but it's a dystopian story centered around a flu pandemic, and I wasn't in the mood.
Ha. Hahahahahahahaha.
I wasn't in the mood!
Well, neither was Miranda (she of the gathering storm), a journalist, who is sick and tired of WWI, the propaganda surrounding an unpopular war and injured American soldiers on the streets.
And, what's with all of these sick people lately? What's up with this new, weird influenza thing?
Miranda is incredibly modern and snarky, and she has cleverly navigated her way around a male-dominated newspaper office, and she surprises herself by falling in love with a man who has just enlisted with the army and is hoping to see some fighting before the war ends.
She assumes he's a dead man, as most of the men are not returning, so she counts her enchanted days with him as numbered days:
“Don't you love being alive?” asked Miranda. “Don't you love weather and the colors at different times of the day, and all the sounds and noises like children screaming in the next lot, and automobile horns and little bands playing in the street and the smell of food cooking?”
“I love to swim, too,” said Adam.
“So do I,” said Miranda; “we never did swim together.”
God, how I wanted Miranda to bring him up onto the mesa and rip off the buttons of his uniform, one by one, with her teeth.
Instead, she starts to feel funny and the next thing she knows, she's in the sick ward with the dead and the dying, watching the randomness of who lives and who doesn't, and not knowing why:
The road to death is a long march beset with all evils, and the heart fails little by little at each new terror, the bones rebel at each step, the mind sets up its own bitter resistance and to what end?
If you've ever had influenza and/or a bad fever, you will know that Ms. Porter was no stranger to these symptoms. This is, hands-down, the most emotionally draining account of illness I've ever encountered in a novel, and a short novel to boot.
And that is why this story is the worst one to read during a pandemic. It's tender and painful and no unicorns or rainbows drift by, ever.
No zombies here, no outlandish scenarios, just one woman's battle to survive a pandemic, while bodies are being covered with sheets all around her.
Ms. Porter was a contemporary of F. Scott Fitzgerald's. They wrote similarly and were both masters of short fiction.
This is one Western lady writer who knew right where to place the tip of her boot.
Current location: Colorado
I've been humored by how many readers on here have cracked open Stephen King's The Stand during this pandemic, but now I know that I've read a worse book during quarantine, and it was by accident.
Worst book to read during a pandemic: Pale Horse, Pale Rider.
In a true moment of irony, you might be amused to learn that I was originally going to read Peter Heller's The Dog Stars for my home state of Colorado (a novel which starts out at a location just minutes from my house), but it's a dystopian story centered around a flu pandemic, and I wasn't in the mood.
Ha. Hahahahahahahaha.
I wasn't in the mood!
Well, neither was Miranda (she of the gathering storm), a journalist, who is sick and tired of WWI, the propaganda surrounding an unpopular war and injured American soldiers on the streets.
And, what's with all of these sick people lately? What's up with this new, weird influenza thing?
Miranda is incredibly modern and snarky, and she has cleverly navigated her way around a male-dominated newspaper office, and she surprises herself by falling in love with a man who has just enlisted with the army and is hoping to see some fighting before the war ends.
She assumes he's a dead man, as most of the men are not returning, so she counts her enchanted days with him as numbered days:
“Don't you love being alive?” asked Miranda. “Don't you love weather and the colors at different times of the day, and all the sounds and noises like children screaming in the next lot, and automobile horns and little bands playing in the street and the smell of food cooking?”
“I love to swim, too,” said Adam.
“So do I,” said Miranda; “we never did swim together.”
God, how I wanted Miranda to bring him up onto the mesa and rip off the buttons of his uniform, one by one, with her teeth.
Instead, she starts to feel funny and the next thing she knows, she's in the sick ward with the dead and the dying, watching the randomness of who lives and who doesn't, and not knowing why:
The road to death is a long march beset with all evils, and the heart fails little by little at each new terror, the bones rebel at each step, the mind sets up its own bitter resistance and to what end?
If you've ever had influenza and/or a bad fever, you will know that Ms. Porter was no stranger to these symptoms. This is, hands-down, the most emotionally draining account of illness I've ever encountered in a novel, and a short novel to boot.
And that is why this story is the worst one to read during a pandemic. It's tender and painful and no unicorns or rainbows drift by, ever.
No zombies here, no outlandish scenarios, just one woman's battle to survive a pandemic, while bodies are being covered with sheets all around her.
Ms. Porter was a contemporary of F. Scott Fitzgerald's. They wrote similarly and were both masters of short fiction.
This is one Western lady writer who knew right where to place the tip of her boot.
May 2, 2021
1) She almost has a whole different style for every one of these 12 stories. That was impressive.
2) Two of them will be officially entered into the list of My All Time Favourite Short Stories at a ceremony to take place at 4pm this coming Thursday. Refreshments will be provided.
3) It must be admitted that while she is always assured, lyrical, accurate and compassionate, she doesn’t lose much sleep over plots. This will not bother some readers but it might bother you. It kind of a little bit bothered me now and then, but I wouldn't admit that in public.
4) This has nothing to do with the quality of the stories here but Katherine Anne Porter had an interesting life. She eloped at 16, he turned out to be violent so she ran away from that guy at 24 and then was diagnosed with TB and spent two years in a sanatorium but they found it wasn’t TB, it was bronchitis, but anyway at 28 she caught the Spanish flu and nearly became one of the 50 million who died from that; at 30 she got involved with the Mexican leftist revolutionary movement; then age 40 she married another guy and divorced him 8 years later and immediately married another guy who divorced her within three years when he found out she was 20 years older than him, which it seems he had not realised. At age 72 she published her one and only novel Ship of Fools and after 30 years of enormous praise from the critics and miniscule sales (probably exactly the same for all other great short story writers) suddenly she had a HIT and it was made into a movie in 1965 starring Vivian Leigh in her last performance and Simone Signoret – Sidney Kramer directed it – and finally age 90 she died in 1980. A few ups and downs, you might say. I am always much more encouraged to read an author who had a turbulent time of it than one who became an associate professor of comparative literature at age 27 and currently teaches creative writing at Yale.
2) Two of them will be officially entered into the list of My All Time Favourite Short Stories at a ceremony to take place at 4pm this coming Thursday. Refreshments will be provided.
3) It must be admitted that while she is always assured, lyrical, accurate and compassionate, she doesn’t lose much sleep over plots. This will not bother some readers but it might bother you. It kind of a little bit bothered me now and then, but I wouldn't admit that in public.
4) This has nothing to do with the quality of the stories here but Katherine Anne Porter had an interesting life. She eloped at 16, he turned out to be violent so she ran away from that guy at 24 and then was diagnosed with TB and spent two years in a sanatorium but they found it wasn’t TB, it was bronchitis, but anyway at 28 she caught the Spanish flu and nearly became one of the 50 million who died from that; at 30 she got involved with the Mexican leftist revolutionary movement; then age 40 she married another guy and divorced him 8 years later and immediately married another guy who divorced her within three years when he found out she was 20 years older than him, which it seems he had not realised. At age 72 she published her one and only novel Ship of Fools and after 30 years of enormous praise from the critics and miniscule sales (probably exactly the same for all other great short story writers) suddenly she had a HIT and it was made into a movie in 1965 starring Vivian Leigh in her last performance and Simone Signoret – Sidney Kramer directed it – and finally age 90 she died in 1980. A few ups and downs, you might say. I am always much more encouraged to read an author who had a turbulent time of it than one who became an associate professor of comparative literature at age 27 and currently teaches creative writing at Yale.
October 27, 2020
4.5 stars
Despite the fact I’d previously enjoyed a short Christmas story by Katherine Anne Porter, I believed the two of us weren’t destined to be kindred spirits when I attempted to read her full length novel, Ship of Fools, several months ago. However, some enlightened friends here convinced me not to give up on her entirely until I try more of her short fiction. Once again, just like mother, they knew best.
This collection consists of three separate stories, though the first and the third are tied together, extremely loosely, through one character appearing in both. The middle story is not related to the others at all.
“Old Mortality”, set in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, drew me in immediately with its expressive writing. Do you remember as a child ever thinking about someone older than you, perhaps even worshipping them as they impressed your young imagination so intensely? As you matured, did your bubble burst when reality struck and you discovered that things are not always what they seem? Stories about people are often the stuff of legends, especially when they are spun by those adults that want to emphasize a certain image for one reason or another. For sisters Maria and Miranda, this person of extravagant ‘myth’ was the subject of a photograph, their deceased Aunt Amy. Various family members relished in the telling of Aunt Amy’s stories as counterbalanced with those of an elder cousin Eva, who was scorned as an ‘old maid.’ This left a lasting impression, particularly on Miranda. How this affects her through her childhood years and into young adulthood is deftly explored by Porter. I’ll say one thing for certain, I felt an affinity for the spirited Miranda. I can relate, dear Miranda.
“She resented, slowly and deeply and in profound silence, the presence of these aliens who lectured and admonished her, who loved her with bitterness and denied her the right to look at the world with her own eyes, who demanded that she accept their version of life and yet could not tell her the truth, not in the smallest thing.”
“Noon Wine” was an eerie little story that surprised me. Set on a Texas dairy farm, in many ways it was the darkest, most brutal of the set. Not what I would have expected from such surroundings! There’s an ominous tone throughout, and right from the beginning you feel the tension swelling straight to the dramatic conclusion. The characterizations are fantastic and help add to the sense of foreboding. When a stranger comes to town, the reader has the uneasy vibe that something is amiss.
“Mr. Thompson saw a narrow-chested man with blue eyes so pale they were almost white, looking and not looking at him from a long gaunt face, under white eyebrows.”
The final story, “Pale Horse, Pale Rider”, brings Miranda back into the picture. This story is semi-autobiographical in nature, as both Miranda and Katherine Anne Porter suffered from life-threatening cases of Spanish influenza. Back in January, I was laid up with an energy-sapping case of the flu. Miranda’s experiences, as so intensely described in this piece, were vaguely familiar. The feverish haze through which one views life for a period of time, and the distorted sense of reality are not something I’d wish to go through ever again. Fortunately, I never caught a glimpse of that pale rider but Miranda sure did. My now fever-free but 2020-dazed mind nearly forgot to convey that a love story added to this brilliant sketch as well. Miranda and her young beau just freshly enlisted in the war both left me gasping for breath.
“Now if real daylight such as I remember having seen in this world would only come again, but it is always twilight or just before morning, a promise of day that is never kept.”
Yes, Miranda. This is exactly how I feel upon waking most mornings these days.
Despite the fact I’d previously enjoyed a short Christmas story by Katherine Anne Porter, I believed the two of us weren’t destined to be kindred spirits when I attempted to read her full length novel, Ship of Fools, several months ago. However, some enlightened friends here convinced me not to give up on her entirely until I try more of her short fiction. Once again, just like mother, they knew best.
This collection consists of three separate stories, though the first and the third are tied together, extremely loosely, through one character appearing in both. The middle story is not related to the others at all.
“Old Mortality”, set in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, drew me in immediately with its expressive writing. Do you remember as a child ever thinking about someone older than you, perhaps even worshipping them as they impressed your young imagination so intensely? As you matured, did your bubble burst when reality struck and you discovered that things are not always what they seem? Stories about people are often the stuff of legends, especially when they are spun by those adults that want to emphasize a certain image for one reason or another. For sisters Maria and Miranda, this person of extravagant ‘myth’ was the subject of a photograph, their deceased Aunt Amy. Various family members relished in the telling of Aunt Amy’s stories as counterbalanced with those of an elder cousin Eva, who was scorned as an ‘old maid.’ This left a lasting impression, particularly on Miranda. How this affects her through her childhood years and into young adulthood is deftly explored by Porter. I’ll say one thing for certain, I felt an affinity for the spirited Miranda. I can relate, dear Miranda.
“She resented, slowly and deeply and in profound silence, the presence of these aliens who lectured and admonished her, who loved her with bitterness and denied her the right to look at the world with her own eyes, who demanded that she accept their version of life and yet could not tell her the truth, not in the smallest thing.”
“Noon Wine” was an eerie little story that surprised me. Set on a Texas dairy farm, in many ways it was the darkest, most brutal of the set. Not what I would have expected from such surroundings! There’s an ominous tone throughout, and right from the beginning you feel the tension swelling straight to the dramatic conclusion. The characterizations are fantastic and help add to the sense of foreboding. When a stranger comes to town, the reader has the uneasy vibe that something is amiss.
“Mr. Thompson saw a narrow-chested man with blue eyes so pale they were almost white, looking and not looking at him from a long gaunt face, under white eyebrows.”
The final story, “Pale Horse, Pale Rider”, brings Miranda back into the picture. This story is semi-autobiographical in nature, as both Miranda and Katherine Anne Porter suffered from life-threatening cases of Spanish influenza. Back in January, I was laid up with an energy-sapping case of the flu. Miranda’s experiences, as so intensely described in this piece, were vaguely familiar. The feverish haze through which one views life for a period of time, and the distorted sense of reality are not something I’d wish to go through ever again. Fortunately, I never caught a glimpse of that pale rider but Miranda sure did. My now fever-free but 2020-dazed mind nearly forgot to convey that a love story added to this brilliant sketch as well. Miranda and her young beau just freshly enlisted in the war both left me gasping for breath.
“Now if real daylight such as I remember having seen in this world would only come again, but it is always twilight or just before morning, a promise of day that is never kept.”
Yes, Miranda. This is exactly how I feel upon waking most mornings these days.
January 23, 2014
O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory? such soothing words. the afterlife as a just reward - Jesus has taken the sting of death away; the victory that lies beyond the grave - for all those who love Him. but alas, there is no such savior, no such leavening of pain, no embracing of the afterworld in the three novellas that comprise Pale Horse, Pale Rider.
"Old Mortality"
first: death is a mask, a veil, a shadow cast long and dark... it reshapes those it has taken, makes them more than themselves, makes them grand symbols of what has been and what you could never be. they tower over their children and their children's children; death has given them a terrible glamour and death has reshaped memories. death is a snare in that first tale, it catches and it keeps. it takes some away while it clutches the living to its bosom, it captures their memories so their paths move never forward but always behind, always in contemplation and replication of the past. brave Miranda! idiosyncratic girl. that idiosyncrasy could save her, that yearning to be apart, to be different. she sees through those veils. they aren't just veils, or memories or rituals, or quaint pictures on the mantle or keepsakes in the attic... they are obsessions, they doom her family, death smothers them with wistful sighs. go, Miranda, escape! leave that living death behind! Miranda is diffident in her own way, callous even, but you root for that escape. I liked her story, I respected "Old Mortality" but I did not love it. I felt very little connection to it on a personal level and I thank my parents for that, they are the children of Miranda, each escaped their terrible and shadowy families, each fled: little of the past obsesses them. the lives and deaths and obsessions of my ancestors mean virtually nothing to me. I'm a modern sorta guy, rootless. I read this as if I were reading a story of fantasy.
"Noon Wine"
second: death is a sudden thorn in the side, a surprise bite from an animal that you did not know was beside you. it's just a thorn, it's just a bite, it's what happens, right? wrong. the bite itches and burns: you scratch that bite: it becomes infected. all you are, all you were, all you could be... reduced to that awful and painful infection. your life seeps out of you like pus. and you die, all because of a random bite. "Noon Wine" carefully and calmly sets up its story, its living & breathing characters. it makes you care for them, in its own hard way. unlike the stories that surround it, Porter's life had little in common with this portrait of dairy farmers. but you wouldn't know that from reading it, so thoroughly and completely does she imagine these lives. she does not condescend to these characters. she does something else: she destroys them, and with a terrible sort of randomness. I can see myself as Mr. Thompson, his quick and angry act, a terrible reaction, that ax; a sudden thorn in the side, a surprise bite - they happen. but it was hard for me to envision an itch afterwards, a scratching to an infection to a death. sometimes people have to die. right? I wouldn't scratch that itch, I did what I did and now it's time to move on. or so I say to myself, imagining myself as different, condescending to him and his family, their reactions, their horror. but how would I know? I've never killed a man, not yet at least.
"Pale Horse, Pale Rider"
and last: death rides beside us, always! it is not something to escape; it is our partner, our guide; it is a sudden bite and it is a velvety shadow; it will transform us and take us, one and then the other. "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" is a work of perfection. not a phrase, not a word out of place. it moves from vivid dream to prosaic reality, to hallucination, and then to a new, cold-eyed reality. death is present in every crevice of this story. Miranda returns; she is full of life and yet she dreams of death. not of making her own death! death is separate from but yet still connected to her, not an idea but a thing, a real thing. in the beginning of this story, death rides beside her but as a glamorous stranger. the time, the people, the place: world war one is coming to a close; a 'lady reporter' and a soldier about to be deployed are deeply in love; there is an outbreak of influenza in Denver. the novella is swooningly romantic and the novella swooningly despairs. but it breaks through it, in its own way. Miranda emerges but as someone truly different. someone better? no, someone harder, someone deeper. not better and not worse but different. the Miranda of "Old Mortality" has been obliterated; it is as if she never existed. who is this new Miranda who has seen death up close, who has lived and loved and lost and died and been reborn... who has made death her friend? why, she has become Katherine Anne Porter, of course.
"Old Mortality"
first: death is a mask, a veil, a shadow cast long and dark... it reshapes those it has taken, makes them more than themselves, makes them grand symbols of what has been and what you could never be. they tower over their children and their children's children; death has given them a terrible glamour and death has reshaped memories. death is a snare in that first tale, it catches and it keeps. it takes some away while it clutches the living to its bosom, it captures their memories so their paths move never forward but always behind, always in contemplation and replication of the past. brave Miranda! idiosyncratic girl. that idiosyncrasy could save her, that yearning to be apart, to be different. she sees through those veils. they aren't just veils, or memories or rituals, or quaint pictures on the mantle or keepsakes in the attic... they are obsessions, they doom her family, death smothers them with wistful sighs. go, Miranda, escape! leave that living death behind! Miranda is diffident in her own way, callous even, but you root for that escape. I liked her story, I respected "Old Mortality" but I did not love it. I felt very little connection to it on a personal level and I thank my parents for that, they are the children of Miranda, each escaped their terrible and shadowy families, each fled: little of the past obsesses them. the lives and deaths and obsessions of my ancestors mean virtually nothing to me. I'm a modern sorta guy, rootless. I read this as if I were reading a story of fantasy.
"Noon Wine"
second: death is a sudden thorn in the side, a surprise bite from an animal that you did not know was beside you. it's just a thorn, it's just a bite, it's what happens, right? wrong. the bite itches and burns: you scratch that bite: it becomes infected. all you are, all you were, all you could be... reduced to that awful and painful infection. your life seeps out of you like pus. and you die, all because of a random bite. "Noon Wine" carefully and calmly sets up its story, its living & breathing characters. it makes you care for them, in its own hard way. unlike the stories that surround it, Porter's life had little in common with this portrait of dairy farmers. but you wouldn't know that from reading it, so thoroughly and completely does she imagine these lives. she does not condescend to these characters. she does something else: she destroys them, and with a terrible sort of randomness. I can see myself as Mr. Thompson, his quick and angry act, a terrible reaction, that ax; a sudden thorn in the side, a surprise bite - they happen. but it was hard for me to envision an itch afterwards, a scratching to an infection to a death. sometimes people have to die. right? I wouldn't scratch that itch, I did what I did and now it's time to move on. or so I say to myself, imagining myself as different, condescending to him and his family, their reactions, their horror. but how would I know? I've never killed a man, not yet at least.
"Pale Horse, Pale Rider"
and last: death rides beside us, always! it is not something to escape; it is our partner, our guide; it is a sudden bite and it is a velvety shadow; it will transform us and take us, one and then the other. "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" is a work of perfection. not a phrase, not a word out of place. it moves from vivid dream to prosaic reality, to hallucination, and then to a new, cold-eyed reality. death is present in every crevice of this story. Miranda returns; she is full of life and yet she dreams of death. not of making her own death! death is separate from but yet still connected to her, not an idea but a thing, a real thing. in the beginning of this story, death rides beside her but as a glamorous stranger. the time, the people, the place: world war one is coming to a close; a 'lady reporter' and a soldier about to be deployed are deeply in love; there is an outbreak of influenza in Denver. the novella is swooningly romantic and the novella swooningly despairs. but it breaks through it, in its own way. Miranda emerges but as someone truly different. someone better? no, someone harder, someone deeper. not better and not worse but different. the Miranda of "Old Mortality" has been obliterated; it is as if she never existed. who is this new Miranda who has seen death up close, who has lived and loved and lost and died and been reborn... who has made death her friend? why, she has become Katherine Anne Porter, of course.
September 28, 2024
I added these 3 “short novels” to my TBR list at the end of last year, after reading the review of a GR Friend. When I started the first story, Old Mortality, I initially wondered whether I had made a mistake in choosing the book. Two young sisters, Maria and Miranda, aged 12 and 8 when the story opens in 1902, are told family stories about their father’s sister Amy, who died as a young woman after only a few weeks of marriage. Amy is presented as having been renowned for her beauty, style and intelligence, though to me she didn’t seem the most attractive of individuals.
Although the story is only around 50 pages, it’s divided into the three parts, the second opening two years later with the girls at boarding school. They have a chance encounter with Amy’s former husband Gabriel, who turns out to be somewhat different from the dashing beau they had pictured wooing their idealised aunt. In the last section, an 18-year old Miranda travels to a family funeral, and meets an older cousin who gives her a new version of Amy’s character and life story. In the end, I thought this was excellent, a story about generational differences, how families preserve memories, and the loss of childhood innocence.
The second story, Noon Wine, opens in 1895, with a struggling Texas dairy farmer who employs a taciturn drifter after the latter comes to the farm looking for work. This routine, everyday decision turns out to have major consequences a long way into the future. As with the first story, there is an aspect of how the past affects the future. An absolutely compelling tale.
Pale Horse, Pale Rider once again features the character of Miranda from Old Mortality. We are now in 1918 and at the beginning of the flu pandemic. Miranda is working as a journalist and in the early part of the story is being bullied at work about not having bought war bonds, the story exploring a theme of conformity which was also covered in the first two tales. Miranda spends her free time with an engineering officer about to be sent to France, and between the war and the epidemic, the subject of death is much on her mind. She comes down with the flu, which causes her to hallucinate and eventually to lapse into a coma. This story was apparently very autobiographical. The author was affected by the flu in this way, and had a relationship with a soldier at the time. It was pretty interesting to read a story about the flu pandemic, written by someone who not only lived through it but who was herself infected. I won’t deny that the experience of the recent pandemic heightened my interest in the one from a century ago, though I think the flu pandemic was more devastating in the proportion of the population it killed.
A very high quality collection.
Although the story is only around 50 pages, it’s divided into the three parts, the second opening two years later with the girls at boarding school. They have a chance encounter with Amy’s former husband Gabriel, who turns out to be somewhat different from the dashing beau they had pictured wooing their idealised aunt. In the last section, an 18-year old Miranda travels to a family funeral, and meets an older cousin who gives her a new version of Amy’s character and life story. In the end, I thought this was excellent, a story about generational differences, how families preserve memories, and the loss of childhood innocence.
The second story, Noon Wine, opens in 1895, with a struggling Texas dairy farmer who employs a taciturn drifter after the latter comes to the farm looking for work. This routine, everyday decision turns out to have major consequences a long way into the future. As with the first story, there is an aspect of how the past affects the future. An absolutely compelling tale.
Pale Horse, Pale Rider once again features the character of Miranda from Old Mortality. We are now in 1918 and at the beginning of the flu pandemic. Miranda is working as a journalist and in the early part of the story is being bullied at work about not having bought war bonds, the story exploring a theme of conformity which was also covered in the first two tales. Miranda spends her free time with an engineering officer about to be sent to France, and between the war and the epidemic, the subject of death is much on her mind. She comes down with the flu, which causes her to hallucinate and eventually to lapse into a coma. This story was apparently very autobiographical. The author was affected by the flu in this way, and had a relationship with a soldier at the time. It was pretty interesting to read a story about the flu pandemic, written by someone who not only lived through it but who was herself infected. I won’t deny that the experience of the recent pandemic heightened my interest in the one from a century ago, though I think the flu pandemic was more devastating in the proportion of the population it killed.
A very high quality collection.
November 8, 2024
Pale Horse, Pale Rider is according to Katherine Anne Porter three short novels. It was first published in 1939 and considered to be some of her best writing, appearing separately in various publications such as The Southern Review.
The first novella or short novel is Old Mortality. I loved this story about two young sisters and their involved family and family legends and myths. As the sisters Maria and Miranda try to sort through all of the family's folklore to determine what is the myth and what is the truth of their family, we learn much as they are growing up. Maria and Miranda are fascinated with the beautiful and haunting portrait of their father's sister, Aunt Amy. There is also a lot of mystery surrounding Amy.
The second short novel is Noon Wine, a tale of a family whose lives are forever changed on their small dairy farm in south Texas when a drifter is hired and over the years making himself indispensable and valued by the Thompson family. Again, there is a sense of mystery and intrigue surrounding the reclusive Mr. Helton.
The third novella is Pale Horse, Pale Rider taking place at the height of the Great War. Miranda has come to Denver, Colorado where she is working for a local newspaper as a reporter when she contracted the Spanish flu. At that time the Spanish influenza had become a raging pandemic with catastrophic loss of life in 1918. There is also a beautiful love story with a soldier on leave before his deployment overseas. While I can't find anything specific to indicate that it is the same Miranda as in Old Mortality, I think there is enough to indicate so, and I would like to believe that it the same Miranda.
The first novella or short novel is Old Mortality. I loved this story about two young sisters and their involved family and family legends and myths. As the sisters Maria and Miranda try to sort through all of the family's folklore to determine what is the myth and what is the truth of their family, we learn much as they are growing up. Maria and Miranda are fascinated with the beautiful and haunting portrait of their father's sister, Aunt Amy. There is also a lot of mystery surrounding Amy.
"They loved to tell stories, romantic and poetic, or comic with a romantic humor; they did not gild the outward circumstance, it was the feeling that mattered. Their hearts and imaginations were captivated by their past, a past in which worldly considerations had played a very minor role. Their stories were almost always love stories against a bright blank heavenly blue sky."
"The little girls loved the theater, that world of personages taller than human beings, who swept upon the scene and invested it with their presences, their more than human voices, their gestures of gods and goddesses ruling a universe. But there was always a voice recalling other and greater occasions."
The second short novel is Noon Wine, a tale of a family whose lives are forever changed on their small dairy farm in south Texas when a drifter is hired and over the years making himself indispensable and valued by the Thompson family. Again, there is a sense of mystery and intrigue surrounding the reclusive Mr. Helton.
Revelation 6:8: "And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him."
The third novella is Pale Horse, Pale Rider taking place at the height of the Great War. Miranda has come to Denver, Colorado where she is working for a local newspaper as a reporter when she contracted the Spanish flu. At that time the Spanish influenza had become a raging pandemic with catastrophic loss of life in 1918. There is also a beautiful love story with a soldier on leave before his deployment overseas. While I can't find anything specific to indicate that it is the same Miranda as in Old Mortality, I think there is enough to indicate so, and I would like to believe that it the same Miranda.
August 29, 2023
Katherine Anne Porter is a master of the short story and the short novel (her term for a novella), but not so much the novel (Ship of Fools, while fascinating in many ways, is a mess overall). Pale Horse, Pale Rider collects three of Porter’s short novels—Old Mortality, Noon Wine, and Pale Horse, Pale Rider—and represents the pinnacle of Porter’s achievement. It’s a masterpiece, one of those works in which not a word is out of place, not a word mis-chosen. It’s as carefully wrought as a sonnet.
Two of the short novels—Old Mortality and Pale Horse, Pale Rider—concern Miranda Gay, a character who appears in a number of Porter’s works. In graduate school one of my professors said that William Faulkner became “Faulkner” the artist when he discovered the character of Quentin Compson. Something similar could be said of Porter’s discovery of Miranda, a character who in many ways resembled Porter herself (or at least the version she presented to the world) and whose experiences dovetail closely, though not exactly, with Porter’s own.
In Old Mortality we follow Miranda’s early childhood into young adulthood, focused particularly on how she as well as others in her family both shape and are shaped by the family legend of one of their mysterious ancestors, Amy, whose amatory exploits were, well, legendary. The family idolizes Amy, and her ghostly presence so overshadows Miranda’s upbringing that nothing she ever does or achieves (including her looks) holds a candle to Amy’s. The past, in other words, completely overshadows the present, a rather bleak situation for a child growing up. There are cracks in Amy’s and other of the family’s legends, and they become more apparent as the short novel develops. Eventually, Miranda, after having fled the family and eloped, vows to live her own life, to forget her past and her family ties. She’s found herself. Or has she? Old Mortality ends ambiguously, in one of Porter’s most wonderful lines, Miranda moving forward “in her hopefulness, her ignorance.”
Pale Horse, Pale Rider picks up Miranda’s story several years later. It’s 1918, and she is living in Denver. It’s a fraught time, with the nation at war abroad and gripped by the Spanish Flu at home (how unsettling it is to read PHPR at the moment when covid-19 is ravaging the world). The world is closing in on Miranda, haunted by the past and pressured by the present. Eventually both she and her lover fall deathly ill with the flu, carrying Miranda into a world that eventually consumes the future: “No more war, no more plague, only the dazed silence that follows the ceasing of the heavy guns; noiseless houses with the shades drawn, empty streets, the dead cold light of tomorrow. Now there would be time for everything.” Let’s hope we emerge from the covid-19 crisis to a brighter world than Miranda’s.
In Noon Wine the scene shifts, away from Miranda to the impoverished Texas farm family of Royal Earle Thompson. The family fortunes take a remarkable change for the better after a stranger, Olaf Helton, a taciturn Swede, shows up on the farm looking for a work. Before long, because of Helton’s industrious, the farm is thriving. And then comes a second stranger, Homer T. Hatch, a bounty hunter in search of Helton. The interactions between Hatch and Thompson are some of the most razor-sharp—and tense—dialogue you’ll ever read, with Hatch beginning politely, almost obsequiously (it’s all a ruse), only revealing his true intentions bit by bit as the two men converse. An unforgettable scene, with the work subsequently moving quickly to a haunting resolution.
I’ve always been particularly partial to Noon Wine, perhaps because one of the best teachers I ever had, Mr. Bruce Lewis, read Noon Wine out loud to our 8th-grade class over several class periods. I was transfixed then, and I am still transfixed. It’s a masterful work in a masterful collection.
Two of the short novels—Old Mortality and Pale Horse, Pale Rider—concern Miranda Gay, a character who appears in a number of Porter’s works. In graduate school one of my professors said that William Faulkner became “Faulkner” the artist when he discovered the character of Quentin Compson. Something similar could be said of Porter’s discovery of Miranda, a character who in many ways resembled Porter herself (or at least the version she presented to the world) and whose experiences dovetail closely, though not exactly, with Porter’s own.
In Old Mortality we follow Miranda’s early childhood into young adulthood, focused particularly on how she as well as others in her family both shape and are shaped by the family legend of one of their mysterious ancestors, Amy, whose amatory exploits were, well, legendary. The family idolizes Amy, and her ghostly presence so overshadows Miranda’s upbringing that nothing she ever does or achieves (including her looks) holds a candle to Amy’s. The past, in other words, completely overshadows the present, a rather bleak situation for a child growing up. There are cracks in Amy’s and other of the family’s legends, and they become more apparent as the short novel develops. Eventually, Miranda, after having fled the family and eloped, vows to live her own life, to forget her past and her family ties. She’s found herself. Or has she? Old Mortality ends ambiguously, in one of Porter’s most wonderful lines, Miranda moving forward “in her hopefulness, her ignorance.”
Pale Horse, Pale Rider picks up Miranda’s story several years later. It’s 1918, and she is living in Denver. It’s a fraught time, with the nation at war abroad and gripped by the Spanish Flu at home (how unsettling it is to read PHPR at the moment when covid-19 is ravaging the world). The world is closing in on Miranda, haunted by the past and pressured by the present. Eventually both she and her lover fall deathly ill with the flu, carrying Miranda into a world that eventually consumes the future: “No more war, no more plague, only the dazed silence that follows the ceasing of the heavy guns; noiseless houses with the shades drawn, empty streets, the dead cold light of tomorrow. Now there would be time for everything.” Let’s hope we emerge from the covid-19 crisis to a brighter world than Miranda’s.
In Noon Wine the scene shifts, away from Miranda to the impoverished Texas farm family of Royal Earle Thompson. The family fortunes take a remarkable change for the better after a stranger, Olaf Helton, a taciturn Swede, shows up on the farm looking for a work. Before long, because of Helton’s industrious, the farm is thriving. And then comes a second stranger, Homer T. Hatch, a bounty hunter in search of Helton. The interactions between Hatch and Thompson are some of the most razor-sharp—and tense—dialogue you’ll ever read, with Hatch beginning politely, almost obsequiously (it’s all a ruse), only revealing his true intentions bit by bit as the two men converse. An unforgettable scene, with the work subsequently moving quickly to a haunting resolution.
I’ve always been particularly partial to Noon Wine, perhaps because one of the best teachers I ever had, Mr. Bruce Lewis, read Noon Wine out loud to our 8th-grade class over several class periods. I was transfixed then, and I am still transfixed. It’s a masterful work in a masterful collection.
September 25, 2008
In this review I'm speaking only on the title piece, a "short novel" according to Porter, but I do have to say that "Old Mortality" (in the same collection) is also nothing short of magnificent. Still, "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" is the one that clings to the nerves, a masterpiece of illness and the implacable rooting after truth. The illness is personal, to be sure; this is the great work out of the influenza epidemic of the late 19-teens, a border-jumping holocaust that no other artist has found a way to work with. The fever scenes are rendered with an intensity and a manipulation of the surreal that also -- can it be? -- tells a story. Porter, that is, brings off her climax in the midst of hallucination. The passage remains, in fact, among the very few finest renderings of hallucination in our literature, precise yet singing. More's the miracle, all this is embedded with gutty singularity in the mind of her heroine (no lesser word will do). That would be the freethinking Miranda, with no Prospero to corral her tempest. Porter's Miranda shares a number of struggles with her author: a young woman writer working freelance and living on a shoestring, trying to honestly dig into the arts and at the same time turn out her heart's inner sediments for her sometime-lover Adam, a reluctant soldier. But Adam also brings with him another of this novella's accomplishments, a mighty theme and a brave one. Adam's been more or less shanghaied into serving in the Army, doing his part for "the War effort," just as he and Miranda are shamed and bullied into making donations and otherwise supporting a fight that they know has been forced onto them by the rich and powerful. The lies that drive these young people into harm's way cohere as a sickness that infects the very spirit of a nation... and here in the midst of Oil War II, the mortal sickness lingers yet. Katherine Anne Porter had more than a breathtaking writerly gift; also she was a Cassandra, a prophet without honor. Even now you can hear the ragged exhale of her pale horse, looming behind all of young and vulnerable America,
September 27, 2020
My last Katherine Anne Porter book was "Ship of Fools", which was overlong and tedious. The three novellas that make up this collection are all excellent, leading me to believe that short fiction is her forte. I've also read some of her short stories in "Flowering Judas", and they were good as well. According to the chronology in the back of my book, her personal life was a mess, so maybe she just didn't have the stamina for longer work.
January 15, 2024
Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter.
They say it is a book of short stories, but the author herself disagreed with this definition: what she wrote was a book of short novels. In the three stories, full of tension as if they announced tragedies (and sometimes they do), Porter's literary style imposes itself in an almost hypnotic way.
They say it is a book of short stories, but the author herself disagreed with this definition: what she wrote was a book of short novels. In the three stories, full of tension as if they announced tragedies (and sometimes they do), Porter's literary style imposes itself in an almost hypnotic way.
August 18, 2022
#WITMonth
Estando os escritores do Sul dos Estados Unidos entre os meus preferidos, estranho o facto de só agora pegar num livro de Katherine Anne Porter, uma autora magnífica de quem pretendo ler tudo o que publicou, o que lamentavelmente não é muito.
Não é habitual numa obra de ficção curta as histórias terem todas a mesma qualidade, mas a cada uma destas três novelas, onde não há uma frase a mais, uma frase que destoe, dou a nota máxima sem hesitar.
Como a imagem do próprio título sugere, estas novelas estão subordinadas ao tema da morte, mas também da doença, tanto mental como física, e do binómio ilusão/realidade.
Katherine Anne Porter, além de todas as virtudes que facilmente lhe atribuo, tem o dom de me fazer lembrar outros autores americanos através dos ambientes que cria.
“Velha Mortalidade”, sobre uma mulher pouco convencional e impetuosa, podia facilmente ser uma história de Willa Cather.
Maria e Miranda, de 12 e 8 anos, sabiam que eram jovens, embora sentissem que tinham vivido imenso tempo. Não tinham vivido somente as suas vidas; a verdade é que as suas memórias, parecia-lhes, haviam começado antes de nascerem, nas vidas dos crescidos que as rodeavam, velhos acima dos 40 anos, na sua maioria, pessoas que não se cansavam de insistir que também elas, em tempos, haviam sido jovens. Custava a crer.
“O Vinho do Meio-Dia”, passado numa quinta onde chega um forasteiro, é tão gótico como as criações de William Faulkner.
- A minha patroa – acudiu Mr. Homer T. Hatch – tinha o arcaboiço duma mula, ah, isso é que tinha. (...) Já morreu, ainda assim. Esse género de mulheres gastam-se mais depressa que as franzinas. Nunca gostei de mulheres que passam a vida a queixar-se. Se tivesse uma dessas, livrava-me dela num instante, olarila, num instante. É como o meu amigo diz: um prejuízo doido, manter uma dessas com vida.
“Cavalo Pálido, Pálido Cavaleiro”, com a intensa vida interior da protagonista e diálogos efervescentes, não ficaria atrás dos melhores contos de Truman Capote.
- Não há nada para dizer, afinal de contas, se acabar agora, porque estive este tempo todo a preparar-me para qualquer coisa que iria acontecer mais tarde, quando o momento certo chegasse. Por isso, agora não tem grande importância.
- Mas de certeza que valeu a pena ter vivido até agora, não é verdade? – perguntou ele, muito sério, como se fosse muito importante saber a resposta.
- Não se tiver sido só isto – repetiu ela obstinadamente.
Estando os escritores do Sul dos Estados Unidos entre os meus preferidos, estranho o facto de só agora pegar num livro de Katherine Anne Porter, uma autora magnífica de quem pretendo ler tudo o que publicou, o que lamentavelmente não é muito.
Não é habitual numa obra de ficção curta as histórias terem todas a mesma qualidade, mas a cada uma destas três novelas, onde não há uma frase a mais, uma frase que destoe, dou a nota máxima sem hesitar.
Como a imagem do próprio título sugere, estas novelas estão subordinadas ao tema da morte, mas também da doença, tanto mental como física, e do binómio ilusão/realidade.
Katherine Anne Porter, além de todas as virtudes que facilmente lhe atribuo, tem o dom de me fazer lembrar outros autores americanos através dos ambientes que cria.
“Velha Mortalidade”, sobre uma mulher pouco convencional e impetuosa, podia facilmente ser uma história de Willa Cather.
Maria e Miranda, de 12 e 8 anos, sabiam que eram jovens, embora sentissem que tinham vivido imenso tempo. Não tinham vivido somente as suas vidas; a verdade é que as suas memórias, parecia-lhes, haviam começado antes de nascerem, nas vidas dos crescidos que as rodeavam, velhos acima dos 40 anos, na sua maioria, pessoas que não se cansavam de insistir que também elas, em tempos, haviam sido jovens. Custava a crer.
“O Vinho do Meio-Dia”, passado numa quinta onde chega um forasteiro, é tão gótico como as criações de William Faulkner.
- A minha patroa – acudiu Mr. Homer T. Hatch – tinha o arcaboiço duma mula, ah, isso é que tinha. (...) Já morreu, ainda assim. Esse género de mulheres gastam-se mais depressa que as franzinas. Nunca gostei de mulheres que passam a vida a queixar-se. Se tivesse uma dessas, livrava-me dela num instante, olarila, num instante. É como o meu amigo diz: um prejuízo doido, manter uma dessas com vida.
“Cavalo Pálido, Pálido Cavaleiro”, com a intensa vida interior da protagonista e diálogos efervescentes, não ficaria atrás dos melhores contos de Truman Capote.
- Não há nada para dizer, afinal de contas, se acabar agora, porque estive este tempo todo a preparar-me para qualquer coisa que iria acontecer mais tarde, quando o momento certo chegasse. Por isso, agora não tem grande importância.
- Mas de certeza que valeu a pena ter vivido até agora, não é verdade? – perguntou ele, muito sério, como se fosse muito importante saber a resposta.
- Não se tiver sido só isto – repetiu ela obstinadamente.
March 27, 2017
Katherine Anne Porter, commemorative postage stamp, 2005, US Postal Service – Michael J. Deas, Oil on Panel
“Cavalo Pálido, Pálido Cavaleiro” é uma pequena “colecção" de três novelas “curtas” da escritora norte-americana Katherine Anne Porter (1890 – 1980) – “Velha Mortalidade” (1936), “O Vinho do Meio-Dia” (1937) e “Cavalo Pálido, Pálido Cavaleiro” (1939).
A produção ficcional de Katherine Anne Porter foi limitada – um romance “A Nave dos Loucos” editado em 1962, que levou vinte e dois anos a escrever, as referidas três novelas “curtas” e um conjunto de contos – que lhe valeram em 1966 o prémio Pulitzer e o National Book Award.
“Cavalo Pálido, Pálido Cavaleiro” engloba três novelas “curtas” magníficas, existindo uma interligação entre a primeira “Velha Mortalidade” e a terceira “Cavalo Pálido, Pálido Cavaleiro”, onde Porter “confere centralidade a personagens e a pontos de vistas femininos, e reescreve o papel sofredor da tradicional heroína romântica”, mulheres que se conseguem libertar das amarras educacionais e das figuras masculinas dominadoras, numa narrativa plena de significados e de simbolismos. “Agora haveria tempo para tudo.”
“O Vinho do Meio-Dia” apresenta-nos um relato devastador sobre segredos e revelações inesperadas, sobre o passado e sobre o presente, com um desfecho absolutamente surpreendente.
October 17, 2020
3.5 stars rounded up.
Sometimes the hardest reviews to write are for books you didn’t love but know are brilliant. This was that book for me. It is comprised of three “short novels” written by Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winning author Katherine Anne Porter and published in 1939: ‘Old Mortality,’ ‘Noon Wine,’ and ‘Pale Horse, Pale Rider.’ (Porter insisted these be called “short novels” and not “novellas.”) Each of the three involve complex themes of personal obsession and death/near death giving the reader a morbid peek into the intelligent mind of a fascinating author whose lineage dates back to the frontiersman Daniel Boone. I found all three to be depressing and claustrophobic, but Porter certainly earned her accolades. ‘Noon Wine’ is one of the most psychologically tense stories I’ve read in a very long time - good enough to convince me to sample her short stories. The title piece is particularly heavy and alludes to an African American spiritual based on Revelations’ four horsemen of the Apocalypse: “I looked, and behold, an ashen horse; and he who sat on it had the name Death; and Hades was following with him.” Porter almost died from Spanish flu during the pandemic of 1918, and this longer short novel is considered to be semi-autobiographical and one of her finest works. I’ll end my commentary with a brief, timely passage from that one:
“‘Miranda said, “There’s too much of everything in this world just now . . .” Chuck said, “Tough up, Miranda. This is no time to cave in.’”
Sound advice for us all these days from a pandemic survivor and political activist/journalist, circa 1939.
Sometimes the hardest reviews to write are for books you didn’t love but know are brilliant. This was that book for me. It is comprised of three “short novels” written by Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winning author Katherine Anne Porter and published in 1939: ‘Old Mortality,’ ‘Noon Wine,’ and ‘Pale Horse, Pale Rider.’ (Porter insisted these be called “short novels” and not “novellas.”) Each of the three involve complex themes of personal obsession and death/near death giving the reader a morbid peek into the intelligent mind of a fascinating author whose lineage dates back to the frontiersman Daniel Boone. I found all three to be depressing and claustrophobic, but Porter certainly earned her accolades. ‘Noon Wine’ is one of the most psychologically tense stories I’ve read in a very long time - good enough to convince me to sample her short stories. The title piece is particularly heavy and alludes to an African American spiritual based on Revelations’ four horsemen of the Apocalypse: “I looked, and behold, an ashen horse; and he who sat on it had the name Death; and Hades was following with him.” Porter almost died from Spanish flu during the pandemic of 1918, and this longer short novel is considered to be semi-autobiographical and one of her finest works. I’ll end my commentary with a brief, timely passage from that one:
“‘Miranda said, “There’s too much of everything in this world just now . . .” Chuck said, “Tough up, Miranda. This is no time to cave in.’”
Sound advice for us all these days from a pandemic survivor and political activist/journalist, circa 1939.
October 1, 2020
The three short novels in the book "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" have common themes of mortality and death. The title comes from the Book of Revelation 6:8 where Death was the rider on a pale horse (one of the Four Horsemen of the Apoocalypse.)
The semi-autobiographical title story features a journalist, Miranda, and a soldier, Adam, in the days leading up to his deployment during World War I. The influenza epidemic of 1918 is hitting Denver, and Miranda contracts the disease. She experiences nightmares, fevers, and periods of delirium as she fights the illness. Death, the pale rider, had numerous victims from both the war and influenza at that time.
"Old Mortality" is about the discrepancies between the family legends that are told about a romantic couple, and the reality of the situation. Miranda also appears in this story as an impressionable young girl, and later as a wiser, married, eighteen-year-old woman.
"Noon Wine" is set on a dairy farm in Texas in the 1890s. Royal Earle Thompson's farm is unproductive until he hires a Swede, Olaf Helton. Helton is a responsible man with a strong work ethic who turns the farm around. But he is very odd and silent, and spends his free time playing the same songs repeatedly on his harmonica. Then a stranger comes to the farm looking for Helton, and sets a tragic sequence of events in motion.
All three short novels are very well-written. As I was reading, I was thinking what a great stage play "Noon Wine" could be, and later learned that it was made into a TV film. It was very poignant reading about the influenza epidemic in "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" while we are in the midst of the Covid pandemic.
The semi-autobiographical title story features a journalist, Miranda, and a soldier, Adam, in the days leading up to his deployment during World War I. The influenza epidemic of 1918 is hitting Denver, and Miranda contracts the disease. She experiences nightmares, fevers, and periods of delirium as she fights the illness. Death, the pale rider, had numerous victims from both the war and influenza at that time.
"Old Mortality" is about the discrepancies between the family legends that are told about a romantic couple, and the reality of the situation. Miranda also appears in this story as an impressionable young girl, and later as a wiser, married, eighteen-year-old woman.
"Noon Wine" is set on a dairy farm in Texas in the 1890s. Royal Earle Thompson's farm is unproductive until he hires a Swede, Olaf Helton. Helton is a responsible man with a strong work ethic who turns the farm around. But he is very odd and silent, and spends his free time playing the same songs repeatedly on his harmonica. Then a stranger comes to the farm looking for Helton, and sets a tragic sequence of events in motion.
All three short novels are very well-written. As I was reading, I was thinking what a great stage play "Noon Wine" could be, and later learned that it was made into a TV film. It was very poignant reading about the influenza epidemic in "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" while we are in the midst of the Covid pandemic.
April 25, 2022
I was going to make a few comments about this collection and was going to call them novellas because I didn’t think they were short stories because they were too long, and I didn’t think they were novels because they were not novel length. But then I read the preface to Porter’s Collected Stories and Other Writings, written by Porter herself in 1965 and she had this special request:
• Please do not call my short novels Novelettes, or even worse, Novellas. Novelette is a classic usage for a trivial, dime-novel sort of thing; Novella is a slack, boneless, affected word that we do not need to describe anything. Please call my works by their right names...
OK, will do! 😬
These were three decidedly different short novels...but all were written extremely well. They are stories from another era, but they age well – I still was engrossed by each of them. I will now move on to her short stories.
• Old Mortality (52 pp.) — 3.5 stars
• Noon Wine (60 pp.) — 4 stars
• Please do not call my short novels Novelettes, or even worse, Novellas. Novelette is a classic usage for a trivial, dime-novel sort of thing; Novella is a slack, boneless, affected word that we do not need to describe anything. Please call my works by their right names...
OK, will do! 😬
These were three decidedly different short novels...but all were written extremely well. They are stories from another era, but they age well – I still was engrossed by each of them. I will now move on to her short stories.
• Old Mortality (52 pp.) — 3.5 stars
• Noon Wine (60 pp.) — 4 stars
December 16, 2022
Media vita in morte sumus
Death is all around us, the fathomless dark ocean, on which the dinghy of our life is floating for a while before it will spring its inevitable leak, making us scoop for some time but with no ultimate effect other than postponing the final gush of the dark waters.
Katherine Anne Porter’s collection of short novels Pale Horse, Pale Rider presents us with Death in its various forms. In Old Mortality, Death hovers over two generations of a family in the form of the painting of a beautiful and capricious woman who wanted to live life to its utmost and who still haunts the memories of those who knew her and shapes the imagination of those who didn’t. Two sisters, Maria and Miranda, grow up in the shadow of their dead aunt, listening to their grandmother’s story about her temperamental daughter, about romances and duels, always being compared, to their detriment, with the deceased, while her ex-husband is keeping his new wife in hostage to his first and only love. Years later, Miranda, in a chance encounter, meets another female relative, who tells her a different truth about her aunt, making her aware that Death is a master story-teller and that she had best struggle free from the past and the older generations tales and shared secrets and start life on her own.
In Noon Wine, we encounter Death as a Grim Jester, who pops up from out of nowhere and ruins the life of an ordinary dairy farmer by making a murderer out of him. In the 1960s, when he was a Hollywood outcast, Sam Peckinpah adapted this remarkable story for the TV screen, as an episode for Stage 67, thus overcoming his own premature professional death and paving the way for his future masterpieces.
Pale Horse, Pale Rider, where we see Death as our silent and constant companion, is set in 1918, when the U.S. is making its final effort in what is termed the Great War and when the world is ravaged by the Spanish flu. A young woman called Miranda – she has left her family and taken up work at a newspaper and could well be the Miranda from Old Mortality – has fallen in love with Adam, a young man who has been pressed into the armed forces, and when she comes down with the flu, Adam, whom she hardly knows, begins tending her. When she finally recovers from her disease and her fever dreams, it is only to know that in the meantime Adam has been transferred to the European war theatre, where he has died from the flu. This short novel excels at viewing the throes of disease and the anxiety of the times through the eyes of the heroine in her fever dreams and gives Porter ample opportunity to show her stylistic power. Reading it in 2022 makes the story especially haunting because at least my own country is still riddled with the double hysteria of Covid and belligerence. Witnessing how Miranda is bullied and shamed into buying war bonds, even though her financial resources are extremely limited, and how she struggles to maintain the will to enjoy her life and make sense of it amidst a world that is in a mode of crisis, made me think of the past few years I lived through, seeing how doing as the Romans do has been slowly turned into a moral litmus test and how anyone coming up with doubts, objections and counter-arguments has been framed as a political outcast.
All these three pieces are quite different in tone, and yet they have in common Porter’s fascinatingly deliberate style, her ability to surprise and delight with the aptness and originality of every single word and to make us dive into the minds of her characters and yet keep our distance as stupefied watchers of human drama.
Death is all around us, the fathomless dark ocean, on which the dinghy of our life is floating for a while before it will spring its inevitable leak, making us scoop for some time but with no ultimate effect other than postponing the final gush of the dark waters.
Katherine Anne Porter’s collection of short novels Pale Horse, Pale Rider presents us with Death in its various forms. In Old Mortality, Death hovers over two generations of a family in the form of the painting of a beautiful and capricious woman who wanted to live life to its utmost and who still haunts the memories of those who knew her and shapes the imagination of those who didn’t. Two sisters, Maria and Miranda, grow up in the shadow of their dead aunt, listening to their grandmother’s story about her temperamental daughter, about romances and duels, always being compared, to their detriment, with the deceased, while her ex-husband is keeping his new wife in hostage to his first and only love. Years later, Miranda, in a chance encounter, meets another female relative, who tells her a different truth about her aunt, making her aware that Death is a master story-teller and that she had best struggle free from the past and the older generations tales and shared secrets and start life on her own.
In Noon Wine, we encounter Death as a Grim Jester, who pops up from out of nowhere and ruins the life of an ordinary dairy farmer by making a murderer out of him. In the 1960s, when he was a Hollywood outcast, Sam Peckinpah adapted this remarkable story for the TV screen, as an episode for Stage 67, thus overcoming his own premature professional death and paving the way for his future masterpieces.
Pale Horse, Pale Rider, where we see Death as our silent and constant companion, is set in 1918, when the U.S. is making its final effort in what is termed the Great War and when the world is ravaged by the Spanish flu. A young woman called Miranda – she has left her family and taken up work at a newspaper and could well be the Miranda from Old Mortality – has fallen in love with Adam, a young man who has been pressed into the armed forces, and when she comes down with the flu, Adam, whom she hardly knows, begins tending her. When she finally recovers from her disease and her fever dreams, it is only to know that in the meantime Adam has been transferred to the European war theatre, where he has died from the flu. This short novel excels at viewing the throes of disease and the anxiety of the times through the eyes of the heroine in her fever dreams and gives Porter ample opportunity to show her stylistic power. Reading it in 2022 makes the story especially haunting because at least my own country is still riddled with the double hysteria of Covid and belligerence. Witnessing how Miranda is bullied and shamed into buying war bonds, even though her financial resources are extremely limited, and how she struggles to maintain the will to enjoy her life and make sense of it amidst a world that is in a mode of crisis, made me think of the past few years I lived through, seeing how doing as the Romans do has been slowly turned into a moral litmus test and how anyone coming up with doubts, objections and counter-arguments has been framed as a political outcast.
All these three pieces are quite different in tone, and yet they have in common Porter’s fascinatingly deliberate style, her ability to surprise and delight with the aptness and originality of every single word and to make us dive into the minds of her characters and yet keep our distance as stupefied watchers of human drama.
May 18, 2020
This holds characterizations that are struck deeply. Some of the best I've read in my life to sickness and to the discontent of "not fitting"- as well. All three novellas are brilliant.
January 5, 2021
The last of the three novels ‘Pale Horse, Pale Rider’ is the best in the collection. It is a fever dream of a novel about one woman’s experience with the 1918 flu. It recounts the horror of a deadly pandemic coming on the heels of a major war. The other two novels are also tragedies reflecting life in the American southwest in late 1800s-early 1900s. 3.5 ⭐️ overall rounded up
September 13, 2019
Com a leitura dos dois primeiros contos julguei que seria, para mim, um livro 5*, mas "espalhei-me" no terceiro - supostamente o melhor.
A quem não quiser ir procurar a sinopse, eu facilito:
— "em Velha Mortalidade enredam-se a infância, dominada por histórias de família, e a vida adulta da heroína Miranda, alter ego de Katherine Anne Porter.
— O Vinho do Meio-Dia é uma história de ganância e crime numa quinta do Sul do Texas, inspirada na paisagem de infância da autora.
— Cavalo Pálido, Pálido Cavaleiro revela a mente febril de Miranda [a mesma personagem do primeiro conto], os seus delírios e memórias estilhaçadas, quando, vítima da gripe espanhola, está à beira da morte."
A quem não quiser ir procurar a sinopse, eu facilito:
— "em Velha Mortalidade enredam-se a infância, dominada por histórias de família, e a vida adulta da heroína Miranda, alter ego de Katherine Anne Porter.
— O Vinho do Meio-Dia é uma história de ganância e crime numa quinta do Sul do Texas, inspirada na paisagem de infância da autora.
— Cavalo Pálido, Pálido Cavaleiro revela a mente febril de Miranda [a mesma personagem do primeiro conto], os seus delírios e memórias estilhaçadas, quando, vítima da gripe espanhola, está à beira da morte."
April 30, 2011
“Blue was never my color.” She sighed with a humorous bitterness. The humor seemed momentary, but the bitterness was a constant state of mind.William Gass's Fifty Literary Pillars, which is a list of the 50 books that influenced him most, contains this book: one of only 4 by female authors (the others were Virginia Woolf, Colette, and Gertrude Stein), so I thought I had to check this out.
It's a book of 3 novellas (or long short stories). Immediately I was gripped by the voice in 'Old Mortality': smart and observant with a subtle humor. It reminded me of Elizabeth Bishop's poetry at times. The story itself wasn't that special, but sweet Lord, the telling of it was! You’re led to see the characters one way and then slowly more layers get revealed. The story doesn’t progress chronologically (although it does do that on the surface) but the real story (of the family) progresses along the z axis, deeper and richer, with counter stories laid upon them so that there are multiple versions you can see through. The characters are funny, but dark, and believable. Not much else to say, other than perfect. 5/5
On the positive side, all the stories in this collection are completely different, so she's not like one of those writers who writes the same story over and over again. On the downside, I really loved the first story, so the rest of the collection seemed like a bit of a let-down. I especially missed the humor mixed with the bitterness. Like the quote above, the humor seemed to have left after the first story.
The second story 'Noon Wine' was more of a traditional story. I get the impression that the author had a dark view of knowledge, what can be gained from it and what will inevitably be lost. Or what will be gained against one’s will. Insanity infects Mr. Thompson as if the mere suggestion was all it took. Then, he couldn’t get the facts straight in his head, and the lack of knowledge drives him insaner. 3.5/5
'Pale Horse, Pale Rider' was also really good, with descriptive lines like this:
His eyes were pale tan with orange flecks in them, and his hair was the color of a haystack when you turn the weathered top back to the clear straw beneath.The prose shines, and then takes a wild turn when she goes through the delirium of her illness, mirroring her sick state. A sad story that captures well what it would have been like to be alive and young during the end of the first world war, and when the flu epidemic was spreading. 4/5
October 1, 2020
Three excellent short novels by Katherine Anne Porter, each with very different topics. In Old Mortality, Miranda and her sister grapple with their devotion to their family who idolize and immortalize a mysterious aunt who has passed. They grow up with story after story of how beautiful and perfect they all believed her to be. Stuck in the idea that to be loved and accepted, Miranda must adhere to her familial expectations coming from the memories told over and over rather than make her own choice about her future. Miranda struggles with these two ideas and makes a decision in the end.
In Noon Wine, a prideful and masculine dairy farmer named Royal Thompson hires a Swedish immigrant who has relocated from North Dakota to Texas and is looking for work. Olaf Helton makes a place for himself on this farm with his work ethic. When a stranger arrives asking questions about Mr. Helton, the plot ramps up in a frenzy of mystery leaving questions unanswered and actions ambiguous.
In Pale Horse, Pale Rider Miranda returns living in Denver now, a writer for a newspaper, takes ill with flu during the pandemic of 1918. Porter's gorgeous prose describes her near death encounter, one that Porter herself experienced.
Highly recommend these three novellas.
In Noon Wine, a prideful and masculine dairy farmer named Royal Thompson hires a Swedish immigrant who has relocated from North Dakota to Texas and is looking for work. Olaf Helton makes a place for himself on this farm with his work ethic. When a stranger arrives asking questions about Mr. Helton, the plot ramps up in a frenzy of mystery leaving questions unanswered and actions ambiguous.
In Pale Horse, Pale Rider Miranda returns living in Denver now, a writer for a newspaper, takes ill with flu during the pandemic of 1918. Porter's gorgeous prose describes her near death encounter, one that Porter herself experienced.
Highly recommend these three novellas.
February 21, 2012
How on god's green earth hadn't I picked this up before? A girl I worked with and took classes with in college wrote her senior thesis on Porter's 'feminist' revisions of Faulkner, but I suppose I was so busy with my own thesis & worries about grad school that I didn't pick her up at that time and simply forgot about her until forced to read these three short novels (not "novellas", says Porter!) for a seminar last month. Books remain neglected on my shelves for years & years and nothing is better than to find myself in a state of wonder when finally meeting one as lovely as this.
"Old Mortality" and "Pale Horse Pale Rider" are at least tenuously connected by Miranda, a central character in each. As I recall, there's no tangible evidence that they're the same Miranda, but I think it's more interesting to consider them as such than not to. The first is a kind of coming-of-age tale; two young Southern girls confront their dynastic histories, particularly w/r/t a sexually non-conformist aunt, who was both beloved and despised by her family, and who met a tragic end that seems to have tidied her excesses enough to make her palatable for the 'dark romance' that surrounds her by the time the girls begin hearing stories about her. It seems too easy to suggest that the story transitions from a romanticized nostalgia to jaded realism, when so much of the story appears invested in the meta-politics of tale telling, to boot. Which story can be trusted when imagining the past? Seems to me to be a persistent anxiety in Southern literature, perhaps because of the fraught relationship Southerners have with their own not-so-far past.
"PH, PR" follows Miranda yet again, though now we're in the trenches of WWI and facing an influenza epidemic. Both of these terrors become integral to Miranda's story, for she's being hounded by nationalistic bondsmen and dating a soldier who feels as wary of the 'patriotism' of war as she does. Miranda moreover contracts the flu, and so a great deal of the short novel is in fact hazily stream-of-consciousness, though oddly more Woolf in flavor than Porter's more proximate contemporary, Faulkner. The prose in any case is stunning--do try not to become teary-eyed in those final paragraphs. Though Miranda and her soldier-lover remain fairly shadowy in terms of conventional character development (we learn really nothing of what has come before; only of the ways in which they grapple their presents), there's something quite delicious in this alienation, as though to be trapped in one's present-tense becomes a kind of self-distancing, a disorientation. To live entirely in the moment means, also, to have no past and no future, and, therefore, no coherent sense of stable selfhood. For what is identity except a kind of consistency or development across space and time? So the amputee sort of sensation becomes mirrored for the reader (or for me, I suppose) even as it's played out in Miranda and Adam. A stunning tale, really.
"Noon Wine" merits attention as well, though personally, it seemed somewhat out of place sandwiched between the others. If "PHPR" is somewhat Woolfian and "Old Mortality" feels something like a strange union between Faulkner and Edith Wharton, "Noon Wine" is Flannery O'Connor through and through. Of course, Porter, in point of fact, predates O'Connor, but I didn't think the story would have been out of place in Everything That Rises Must Converge. The end certainly has a kind of shock value in the best possible way, and the buildup instills a sense of lazy indifference, much as O'Connor will set you up so persistently in the mundane only to then demonstrate how fragile any stability in this world will necessarily be.
If you've any interest in Southern literature, read these. Now. Do it! I'm looking forward to working through more Porter, though I hear Ship of Fools is something of a failure. Might read that one next anyhow, if only because I'm curious to figure out why Mad Men has Betty Draper reading it on two separate occasions in the show.
"Old Mortality" and "Pale Horse Pale Rider" are at least tenuously connected by Miranda, a central character in each. As I recall, there's no tangible evidence that they're the same Miranda, but I think it's more interesting to consider them as such than not to. The first is a kind of coming-of-age tale; two young Southern girls confront their dynastic histories, particularly w/r/t a sexually non-conformist aunt, who was both beloved and despised by her family, and who met a tragic end that seems to have tidied her excesses enough to make her palatable for the 'dark romance' that surrounds her by the time the girls begin hearing stories about her. It seems too easy to suggest that the story transitions from a romanticized nostalgia to jaded realism, when so much of the story appears invested in the meta-politics of tale telling, to boot. Which story can be trusted when imagining the past? Seems to me to be a persistent anxiety in Southern literature, perhaps because of the fraught relationship Southerners have with their own not-so-far past.
"PH, PR" follows Miranda yet again, though now we're in the trenches of WWI and facing an influenza epidemic. Both of these terrors become integral to Miranda's story, for she's being hounded by nationalistic bondsmen and dating a soldier who feels as wary of the 'patriotism' of war as she does. Miranda moreover contracts the flu, and so a great deal of the short novel is in fact hazily stream-of-consciousness, though oddly more Woolf in flavor than Porter's more proximate contemporary, Faulkner. The prose in any case is stunning--do try not to become teary-eyed in those final paragraphs. Though Miranda and her soldier-lover remain fairly shadowy in terms of conventional character development (we learn really nothing of what has come before; only of the ways in which they grapple their presents), there's something quite delicious in this alienation, as though to be trapped in one's present-tense becomes a kind of self-distancing, a disorientation. To live entirely in the moment means, also, to have no past and no future, and, therefore, no coherent sense of stable selfhood. For what is identity except a kind of consistency or development across space and time? So the amputee sort of sensation becomes mirrored for the reader (or for me, I suppose) even as it's played out in Miranda and Adam. A stunning tale, really.
"Noon Wine" merits attention as well, though personally, it seemed somewhat out of place sandwiched between the others. If "PHPR" is somewhat Woolfian and "Old Mortality" feels something like a strange union between Faulkner and Edith Wharton, "Noon Wine" is Flannery O'Connor through and through. Of course, Porter, in point of fact, predates O'Connor, but I didn't think the story would have been out of place in Everything That Rises Must Converge. The end certainly has a kind of shock value in the best possible way, and the buildup instills a sense of lazy indifference, much as O'Connor will set you up so persistently in the mundane only to then demonstrate how fragile any stability in this world will necessarily be.
If you've any interest in Southern literature, read these. Now. Do it! I'm looking forward to working through more Porter, though I hear Ship of Fools is something of a failure. Might read that one next anyhow, if only because I'm curious to figure out why Mad Men has Betty Draper reading it on two separate occasions in the show.
April 20, 2018
Nonostante quattro mariti e una salute cagionevole (la tubercolosi) morì a 90 anni.
Un romanzo e tanti racconti più o meno lunghi, un Pulitzer, un National Book Award.e tre candidature al Nobel.
Un numero imbarazzante di anni fa lessi La nave dei folli, il suo solo romanzo.
Forse se ne avessi ricordo potrei dire che la misura a lei più congeniale sono i racconti. La sola cosa che ricordo è che ne fu tratto un film abbastanza deludente.
Questi racconti sono belli.
Antico stato mortale
Una bimba e un’adolescente si trovano i mezzo ai polverosi ricordi di una famiglia e come tutti i giovani vedono tutto vecchio, persone e cose. Solo personaggio che attrae la loro curiosità, quella di Miranda in particolare, è la zia Amy. Forse perché ognuno ne ha un ricordo diverso, forse perché è morta giovane. Forse perché i personaggi si scoprono poco alla volta ed ogni strato porta ad un altro, in verticale.
La scoperta di quella vita lontana convince Miranda a prendere le distanze da tutto e farsi una vita propria, nuova, dove la verità riguarderà solo ciò che accadrà a lei.
Vino a mezzodì
Qui esce il sangue texano della Porter in una storia che ha tutti i sapori del sud.
Una fattoria stentata, un uomo semplice, una moglie dalla salute fragile, due ragazzini da crescere.
Un giorno compare un uomo, Olaf, di poche parole e poche esigenze: un fienile e le sue armoniche.
Passano gli anni nel silenzio dello svedese che è diventato il sostegno della fattoria, ciò che Thompson non è riuscito ad essere.
E dato che puoi abitare nel centro del territorio più solitario del mondo, ma ci sarà sempre chi viene a rovinarti la vita, anche Thompson dovrà fare i conti con una realtà durissima. Il suo mondo che era diventato così scorrevole si spezza: in fondo era stata la follia a creare quella realtà. Ciò che lo distrugge è l’omicidio compiuto o il fatto che neppure quello è servito?
Bianco cavallo, bianco cavaliere
Primo verso di una canzone di cui veniamo a conoscere solo il secondo “non portare via il mio amore.”
Miranda è ormai una ragazza che lavora a Denver in un giornale, anche se alla cronaca mondana ed altre sciocchezze.
La narrazione va qua e là: il lavoro, la presenza ossessiva dei venditori di buoni statali per i fondi di guerra, la vicinanza sempre più cara con un giovane, Adam, che vorrebbe tanto non andare nei campi delle Fiandre, ma non si può, la presenza di quella febbre devastante e mortale che è la spagnola. Per i giovani, in quegli anni, la vita è una trappola.
La morte cavalca accanto a noi sul suo cavallo bianco, ci prenderà una volta o l’altra, prima uno poi l’altro.
La febbre prende Miranda e si apre per lei un viaggio onirico. Sogni, incubi, visioni sono i suoi compagni..
Quando esce da tutto questo, perché lei sopravvive, è un’altra Miranda. Meglio, peggio? Sicuramente diversa.
Forse come tutte le volte che Katherine Anne uscì dai cuoi crolli di salute.
Naturalmente non sono le storie in sé, ma il modo in cui sono raccontate.
Perché questa autrice è scomparsa dal mercato per anni?
Forse la chiave è la parola mercato.
19.04.2018
Un romanzo e tanti racconti più o meno lunghi, un Pulitzer, un National Book Award.e tre candidature al Nobel.
Un numero imbarazzante di anni fa lessi La nave dei folli, il suo solo romanzo.
Forse se ne avessi ricordo potrei dire che la misura a lei più congeniale sono i racconti. La sola cosa che ricordo è che ne fu tratto un film abbastanza deludente.
Questi racconti sono belli.
Antico stato mortale
Una bimba e un’adolescente si trovano i mezzo ai polverosi ricordi di una famiglia e come tutti i giovani vedono tutto vecchio, persone e cose. Solo personaggio che attrae la loro curiosità, quella di Miranda in particolare, è la zia Amy. Forse perché ognuno ne ha un ricordo diverso, forse perché è morta giovane. Forse perché i personaggi si scoprono poco alla volta ed ogni strato porta ad un altro, in verticale.
La scoperta di quella vita lontana convince Miranda a prendere le distanze da tutto e farsi una vita propria, nuova, dove la verità riguarderà solo ciò che accadrà a lei.
Vino a mezzodì
Qui esce il sangue texano della Porter in una storia che ha tutti i sapori del sud.
Una fattoria stentata, un uomo semplice, una moglie dalla salute fragile, due ragazzini da crescere.
Un giorno compare un uomo, Olaf, di poche parole e poche esigenze: un fienile e le sue armoniche.
Passano gli anni nel silenzio dello svedese che è diventato il sostegno della fattoria, ciò che Thompson non è riuscito ad essere.
E dato che puoi abitare nel centro del territorio più solitario del mondo, ma ci sarà sempre chi viene a rovinarti la vita, anche Thompson dovrà fare i conti con una realtà durissima. Il suo mondo che era diventato così scorrevole si spezza: in fondo era stata la follia a creare quella realtà. Ciò che lo distrugge è l’omicidio compiuto o il fatto che neppure quello è servito?
Bianco cavallo, bianco cavaliere
Primo verso di una canzone di cui veniamo a conoscere solo il secondo “non portare via il mio amore.”
Miranda è ormai una ragazza che lavora a Denver in un giornale, anche se alla cronaca mondana ed altre sciocchezze.
La narrazione va qua e là: il lavoro, la presenza ossessiva dei venditori di buoni statali per i fondi di guerra, la vicinanza sempre più cara con un giovane, Adam, che vorrebbe tanto non andare nei campi delle Fiandre, ma non si può, la presenza di quella febbre devastante e mortale che è la spagnola. Per i giovani, in quegli anni, la vita è una trappola.
La morte cavalca accanto a noi sul suo cavallo bianco, ci prenderà una volta o l’altra, prima uno poi l’altro.
La febbre prende Miranda e si apre per lei un viaggio onirico. Sogni, incubi, visioni sono i suoi compagni..
Quando esce da tutto questo, perché lei sopravvive, è un’altra Miranda. Meglio, peggio? Sicuramente diversa.
Forse come tutte le volte che Katherine Anne uscì dai cuoi crolli di salute.
Naturalmente non sono le storie in sé, ma il modo in cui sono raccontate.
Perché questa autrice è scomparsa dal mercato per anni?
Forse la chiave è la parola mercato.
19.04.2018
October 31, 2017
I came to this while looking through the "Literary Pillars" by Gass. I'm a sucker for Southern Gothic, and two-out-of-three of these short novels are absolute killers. "Noon Wine" is canonical, the best 'genre' work I've read in a while. Pick it up, read it, put it down. Then find yourself shell-shocked for the rest of the evening. Sorta like listening to the Bay City Rollers.
December 14, 2022
Το συγκεκριμμένο βιβλίο αποτελείται από τρεις νουβέλες οι δύο εκ των οποίων έχουν τη Μιράντα.
Στην Θνητή Ζωή, παρακολουθούμε την ιστορία ενηλικίωσης της Μιράντας και της αδερφής της και πως οι απόψεις της οικογένειας οδηγούν στη διαμόρφωση των χαρακτήρων. Βέβαια, σε κάθε οικογένεια υπάρχει κι ένα μαύρο πρόβατο κι οι δύο αδελφές μαθαίνουν τα κατορθώματα ώστε να μην τα επαναλάβουν. Στο Μεσημεριανό Κρασί, ο Χέλτον προσλαμβάνεται σε μια μικρή φάρμα με αρκετή επιφύλαξη. Η εργατικότητα του και οι μέθοδοι που χρησιμοποιεί, οδηγούν στην ευημερία της οικογένειας. Ώσπου, μετά από σχεδόν μια δεκαετία, ένας άγνωστος γίνεται η αφορμή να καταστραφούν όλα.
Στην ομώνυμη νουβέλα, συναντάμε πάλι τη Μιράντα αρκετά χρόνια αργότερα, όταν υπάρχει πόλεμος αλλά και η πανδημία της ισπανικής γρίπης ταλανίζει το εσωτερικό της χώρας.
Και οι τρεις νουβέλες είναι καλογραμμένες με ένα σχεδόν υποβλητικό ύφος, με λεπτομερείς αναλύσεις των χαρακτήρων και τη σύνδεση μεταξύ ζωής, αγάπης και θανάτου να φαντάζει από ιδιότροπη έως και ατέρμονη. Η τρίτη νουβέλα μοιάζει τόσο κοντά μας - περιέχει πόνο, πανδημία, θάνατο αλλά εμένα μου άρεσε περισσότερο το μεσημεριανό Κρασί γιατί είχε μια εξέλιξη που δεν την φανταζόμουν και που το στοιχείο της απώλειας υπέβοσκε καθόλη τη διάρκεια μέχρι να γίνει πραγματικό.
Ακόμη κι αν δεν διαβάζετε νουβέλες, αυτή τη συλλογή θέλετε να τη διαβάσετε....
Στην Θνητή Ζωή, παρακολουθούμε την ιστορία ενηλικίωσης της Μιράντας και της αδερφής της και πως οι απόψεις της οικογένειας οδηγούν στη διαμόρφωση των χαρακτήρων. Βέβαια, σε κάθε οικογένεια υπάρχει κι ένα μαύρο πρόβατο κι οι δύο αδελφές μαθαίνουν τα κατορθώματα ώστε να μην τα επαναλάβουν. Στο Μεσημεριανό Κρασί, ο Χέλτον προσλαμβάνεται σε μια μικρή φάρμα με αρκετή επιφύλαξη. Η εργατικότητα του και οι μέθοδοι που χρησιμοποιεί, οδηγούν στην ευημερία της οικογένειας. Ώσπου, μετά από σχεδόν μια δεκαετία, ένας άγνωστος γίνεται η αφορμή να καταστραφούν όλα.
Στην ομώνυμη νουβέλα, συναντάμε πάλι τη Μιράντα αρκετά χρόνια αργότερα, όταν υπάρχει πόλεμος αλλά και η πανδημία της ισπανικής γρίπης ταλανίζει το εσωτερικό της χώρας.
Και οι τρεις νουβέλες είναι καλογραμμένες με ένα σχεδόν υποβλητικό ύφος, με λεπτομερείς αναλύσεις των χαρακτήρων και τη σύνδεση μεταξύ ζωής, αγάπης και θανάτου να φαντάζει από ιδιότροπη έως και ατέρμονη. Η τρίτη νουβέλα μοιάζει τόσο κοντά μας - περιέχει πόνο, πανδημία, θάνατο αλλά εμένα μου άρεσε περισσότερο το μεσημεριανό Κρασί γιατί είχε μια εξέλιξη που δεν την φανταζόμουν και που το στοιχείο της απώλειας υπέβοσκε καθόλη τη διάρκεια μέχρι να γίνει πραγματικό.
Ακόμη κι αν δεν διαβάζετε νουβέλες, αυτή τη συλλογή θέλετε να τη διαβάσετε....
May 9, 2021
Katherine Anne Porter's Pale Horse Pale Rider is a collection of 3 short novels. Her prose is precise and deliberate, which serves these 3 tales.
Old Mortality is a short novel that feels expansive due, in part, to its ranging time frame, 1885 - 1912. Porter explores the theme of illusion vs. reality. She masterfully develops her characters, and they feel entirely real. Amy, an archetypal Southern belle who is long dead, takes center stage for much of the story. She is a family legend that is held up to the young Miranda as the ideal woman.
In the second part, Miranda, now 10, sees some of Amy's story as illusion. Amy's formerly handsome beau Gabriel is now an overweight alcoholic in a bitter second marriage. Miranda sees the glamor of horse racing as an illusion covering the reality of a winning racehorse streaming blood from his nose at the end of the race.
In the third part Miranda meets a cousin, a contemporary and seeming opposite of Amy. Eva is a feminist campaigning for voting rights for women. She shares her version of Amy's story.
Miranda, like many young people searching for their freedom and identity, rejects the versions of the family story that have been presented to her, and she concludes, "At least I can know the truth about what happens to me, she assured herself silently, making a promise to herself in her hopefulnesss, her ignorance."
Noon Wine, the second story, is a masterpiece of sustained emotional intensity. It is the story of 3 men and 2 murders. In it Porter questions the definitions of guilt and innocence. There is just enough ambiguity in the story that I am forced to arrive at my own conclusion about what really happened between Hatch and Thompson.
Pale Horse Pale Rider, the titular story is a semi-autobiographical account of Miranda's contracting the 1918 flu while working for a local newspaper in Boulder, CO with WWI in the background.The story is a mosaic of Miranda’s dreams, conversations with co-workers, relationship with Adam, and descent into illness that results in a near-death experience.
Anyone who has had a high fever will recognize the vivid descriptions of Miranda's delirium. If you have been fortunate enough not to have such an experience, sit back and take in Porter's skillful use of language which impressively invokes this feeling.
Pale Horse Pale Rider is beautifully crafted and sheds insight into the war and the influenza epidemic, both of which serve as metaphors for the quest for meaning and love in Miranda's life.
She closes the story: "No more war, no more plague, only the dazed silence that follows the ceasing of the heavy guns; noiseless houses with the shades drawn, empty streets, the dead cold light of tomorrow. Now there would be time for everything."
Thank you, James, for your recommendation and pointing me to Katherine Anne Porter.
Old Mortality is a short novel that feels expansive due, in part, to its ranging time frame, 1885 - 1912. Porter explores the theme of illusion vs. reality. She masterfully develops her characters, and they feel entirely real. Amy, an archetypal Southern belle who is long dead, takes center stage for much of the story. She is a family legend that is held up to the young Miranda as the ideal woman.
In the second part, Miranda, now 10, sees some of Amy's story as illusion. Amy's formerly handsome beau Gabriel is now an overweight alcoholic in a bitter second marriage. Miranda sees the glamor of horse racing as an illusion covering the reality of a winning racehorse streaming blood from his nose at the end of the race.
In the third part Miranda meets a cousin, a contemporary and seeming opposite of Amy. Eva is a feminist campaigning for voting rights for women. She shares her version of Amy's story.
Miranda, like many young people searching for their freedom and identity, rejects the versions of the family story that have been presented to her, and she concludes, "At least I can know the truth about what happens to me, she assured herself silently, making a promise to herself in her hopefulnesss, her ignorance."
Noon Wine, the second story, is a masterpiece of sustained emotional intensity. It is the story of 3 men and 2 murders. In it Porter questions the definitions of guilt and innocence. There is just enough ambiguity in the story that I am forced to arrive at my own conclusion about what really happened between Hatch and Thompson.
Pale Horse Pale Rider, the titular story is a semi-autobiographical account of Miranda's contracting the 1918 flu while working for a local newspaper in Boulder, CO with WWI in the background.The story is a mosaic of Miranda’s dreams, conversations with co-workers, relationship with Adam, and descent into illness that results in a near-death experience.
Anyone who has had a high fever will recognize the vivid descriptions of Miranda's delirium. If you have been fortunate enough not to have such an experience, sit back and take in Porter's skillful use of language which impressively invokes this feeling.
Pale Horse Pale Rider is beautifully crafted and sheds insight into the war and the influenza epidemic, both of which serve as metaphors for the quest for meaning and love in Miranda's life.
She closes the story: "No more war, no more plague, only the dazed silence that follows the ceasing of the heavy guns; noiseless houses with the shades drawn, empty streets, the dead cold light of tomorrow. Now there would be time for everything."
Thank you, James, for your recommendation and pointing me to Katherine Anne Porter.
July 7, 2022
4.5
Porter, who was primarily a short story writer, is one of the big names of the American South, along with Eudora Welty, Flannery O’Connor and Carson McCullers.
I’ve read Welty’s stories and O’Connor’s stories, and now Porter’s, and hers stands out for their length. She called some of her longer stories short novels. And indeed they do have the breadth of novels. In their stretching of the story form’s scope, in their capaciousness, their psychological depth, and in their focus on rural people and small-town life, they reminded me, thrillingly, of Munro, whose own work is clearly influenced by Porter.
An article described the works of these writers as being “female quest plots.” They represent “the kinds of women most likely to resist hegemonic notions of happiness in favor of unlikely experiences that open them up to new ways of apprehending their lives and identities.” The article also noted that Welty, Porter and Munro share in common the short story “cycle” structure: “By presenting readers with a series of beginnings and endings, it disconcerts preconceptions of character, time, and plot.”
They were stylists and experimenters. Rachel Cusk said of Ginzburg that she gave readers “a new template for the female voice and an idea of what it might sound like.” The same can be said of these extraordinary writers.
This is a ‘selected stories’ volume, and the stories range not only in subject and types of character, but also in geography and culture. Porter was from the South but she also lived in NYC and Mexico, where she had some incredible experiences. This collection showcases Porter’s uncommon ability to master different prose styles and tones and inhabit different worlds.
It’s magnificent. I loved it. A highlight of my year.
———
Note: The journal article referred to and quoted from is by Rachel Lister, and it’s called ‘“Preposterous Adventures”: Affective Encounters in the Short Story Cycle.’ It’s a fascinating, smart, illuminating read.
Porter, who was primarily a short story writer, is one of the big names of the American South, along with Eudora Welty, Flannery O’Connor and Carson McCullers.
I’ve read Welty’s stories and O’Connor’s stories, and now Porter’s, and hers stands out for their length. She called some of her longer stories short novels. And indeed they do have the breadth of novels. In their stretching of the story form’s scope, in their capaciousness, their psychological depth, and in their focus on rural people and small-town life, they reminded me, thrillingly, of Munro, whose own work is clearly influenced by Porter.
An article described the works of these writers as being “female quest plots.” They represent “the kinds of women most likely to resist hegemonic notions of happiness in favor of unlikely experiences that open them up to new ways of apprehending their lives and identities.” The article also noted that Welty, Porter and Munro share in common the short story “cycle” structure: “By presenting readers with a series of beginnings and endings, it disconcerts preconceptions of character, time, and plot.”
They were stylists and experimenters. Rachel Cusk said of Ginzburg that she gave readers “a new template for the female voice and an idea of what it might sound like.” The same can be said of these extraordinary writers.
This is a ‘selected stories’ volume, and the stories range not only in subject and types of character, but also in geography and culture. Porter was from the South but she also lived in NYC and Mexico, where she had some incredible experiences. This collection showcases Porter’s uncommon ability to master different prose styles and tones and inhabit different worlds.
It’s magnificent. I loved it. A highlight of my year.
———
Note: The journal article referred to and quoted from is by Rachel Lister, and it’s called ‘“Preposterous Adventures”: Affective Encounters in the Short Story Cycle.’ It’s a fascinating, smart, illuminating read.
January 24, 2015
While all three novellas in this book are excellent, both "Noon Wine" and "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" quietly tragic, my heart belongs to "Old Mortality." The first story in the collection, it explores how a family's reverence for its past generations tends to be as romantic as it is based in reality. There's tragedy in this story too, but it's the everyday tragedy of unmet expectations.
"Pale Horse, Pale Rider" continues where "Old Mortality" left off, with the story of the family's youngest generation, Miranda, as she falls in love with a soldier and catches influenza during World War I. Her fever dreams are vividly rendered in stream of consciousness, making it sort of difficult at first to establish what is real. The romance at the core of the story is sweet and believable, but what I liked most about this story was how well Porter captured the personal pessimism of the World War I era. Even before the influenza kills one of the two lovers, it is openly assumed between Miranda and Adam that they have no future together, that he will die in the war or she will die of the illness.
The tragedy of "Noon Wine," the unrelated story in the collection, is the most violent and most (questionably) preventable. I saw a lot of echoes of Flannery O'Connor in this story, although it predates O'Connor by almost 20 years.
I would have loved any of these stories on their own. All together, they make for one of my favorite books of the year. I will be seeking out more of Porter's work for sure.
"Pale Horse, Pale Rider" continues where "Old Mortality" left off, with the story of the family's youngest generation, Miranda, as she falls in love with a soldier and catches influenza during World War I. Her fever dreams are vividly rendered in stream of consciousness, making it sort of difficult at first to establish what is real. The romance at the core of the story is sweet and believable, but what I liked most about this story was how well Porter captured the personal pessimism of the World War I era. Even before the influenza kills one of the two lovers, it is openly assumed between Miranda and Adam that they have no future together, that he will die in the war or she will die of the illness.
The tragedy of "Noon Wine," the unrelated story in the collection, is the most violent and most (questionably) preventable. I saw a lot of echoes of Flannery O'Connor in this story, although it predates O'Connor by almost 20 years.
I would have loved any of these stories on their own. All together, they make for one of my favorite books of the year. I will be seeking out more of Porter's work for sure.
November 4, 2023
Porter shows the communion of mutual aid we all engage in, helping each other in different ways as we all stand at the edge of the abyss of death. In the end, though, regardless of our role in that communion, we are alone. Completely alone. Her transcending of existentiality into mysticism in this story is remarkably inspiring. Porter seems to have really comprehended her place in the universe, both human and otherwise.
May 17, 2020
These are really 3 separate novels...all excellent. Pale Horse, Pale Rider is one of the greatest novels about the Great Pandemic of 1918... very relevant for today's world. But don't skip the other short novels- 'Old Mortality' and 'Noon Wine.' They are both beautifully written...and Noon Wine was turned into a movie several times (look online for the 1966 TV version directed by Sam Peckinpah).
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