Customer Reviews

Pale Horse, Pale Rider

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Katherine Anne Porter displays the human experience with turns of phrase that catch your breath. The awkward spinster cousin blooms "like a dry little plant set out in a gentle rain" when her critical mother leaves the room. A woman delirious with influenza falls into a sleep "that was not sleep but clear evening light in a small green wood..."

I thought Flannery O'Connor had ruined all other southern short fiction writers for me, but Porter meets O'Connor's deft character portraits, with their keen knowledge of mannerisms and their psychological depth, as well as O'Connor's ability to surprise the reader with moments of recognition: Miranda's girlhood experience feels like my girlhood experience, across generations and geography. Even Mr. Thompson's story feels like it could have happened in one's own family, like the story grandparents and great aunts and uncles half-tell and subtly refer to while the turkey roasts in the oven and everyone steals nuts off the pecan pie.

I agree with others who are astonished that this book is not part of the literary canon in the U.S. It is a stunning, gorgeous example of short fiction. With the impenetrable heaps of "literary fiction" from contemporary writers, marketed to ridiculous heights, I'm finding old gems like this one soothing to my constantly inundated reader's mind. Read it. And writers, take note.

I first read this book about thirty-five years ago, as a young teenager. At the time, I didn't really know what it was about, lacking the historical background to understand World War I, and having no knowledge whatsoever of the widespread influenza epidemic of 1918. Nevertheless, the memory of Porter's shimmering prose somehow stayed with me, leading me to read the story once again, this time as an adult, and to finally comprehend it better. In fact, I have reread it several times over the years, always profoundly moved by the experience. Recently, after the events of September 11, 2001, I found myself thinking again of the story, and hauled it out of the library for still another reading. It is more beautiful and meaningful than ever. It has the powerful force of deeply felt, true experience.

I think the author that Katherine Anne Porter is most often compared to is Thomas Mann. Both wrote their best known work in the novella form and both use a highly distilled prose which is rich in symbols. Death in Venice and Pale Horse Pale Rider(both dealing with plagues of some sort) are two of the best novellas you are likely to come across, both appear in most novella collections(even though Porter didn't much care for that word). Porter evokes another author though as well, Mary Shelley, in Pale Horse Pale Rider. Being a male reader who doesn't read a lot of female authors I am always struck by something in authors like Dickinson and Woolf and Porter and Plath which is that distanced perspective, the writing seeming to come from somewhere outside of life, real life being only a memory. This may be a personal point of view only but in Pale Horse the main character Miranda, even before the epidemic hits, seems the perfect example of this phenomenon as she seems not to very much want to participate in the life around her. She may be tempted into something resembling life by her lover Adam but still she seems to be sleepwalking. So it is not all that surprising that when death does enter her chamber so to speak it is received as not an altogether unwelcome guest. Miranda's dream or vision is so well written and the pace of it so well sustained throughout that you feel you have accompanied her through it. One of those sequences you never quite forget. The coming to life again segment(Shelley)is also quite astonishing and strangely, eerily beautiful. The other two tales are good too but this is the one you will remember. There are many great romantic and symbolist(especially) paintings that you will feel you understand or have a strange communion with after having read this.

Katherine Anne Porter writes like a lapidary; each sentence is like a polished jewel, every word is perfect. "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" is a compilation of three novellas: "Old Mortality", seen through the eyes of Maria and Miranda Rhea, two children home for the weekend from their stultifying boarding school, is the tale of the family black sheep, a beautiful young cousin of easy virtue who continues to fascinate and frustrate her extended family long after her early death; "Noon Wine" shows us a Texas family torn apart by the guilt of the father who murdered a man in what may or may not have been self-defense, and "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" brings Miranda back again as a young woman disillusioned too many times, whose relationship with her lover Adam is threatened not only by his impending entry in to combat in World War One, but even more immediately by the specter of the great flu epidemic of 1918 that is sweeping through the population, leaving more death in its wake than any war ever fought. Porter writes sparingly, but she packs a world of emotion and feeling into every paragraph. This relatively short book is one of the giants of American fiction.

This book clearly deserves more than five stars.

Pale Horse, Pale Rider is one of the finest American novels of all time. Long before nonfiction books about dying and coming back to life became popular, Katherine Anne Porter wrote this brilliant story about life and death during the influenza epidemic near the end of World War I. Unlike any other book I have read on this subject, she successfully captures the perspective of the beauty of death eclipsing the beauty of life. The book further develops this theme to explain how our perspective shifts back towards favoring life, as the memory of death retreats.

Like all great novels, this one transcends its obvious theme into a broader one -- the meaning of the inevitable death that ends each of our lives . . . and what life means in this context. One of the fascinating plot complications that she uses in this book is showing how "duty" to life usually means increasing the likelihood of death. As a result, you see death more visibly in front of you through this book than you ever will in every day life.

The story begins with a young woman reporter who is concerned over the chance of losing her job because she has refused to buy a Liberty Bond. She feels she cannot afford it, and she doesn't want to buy one any way. The reason she cannot afford one is due to have been demoted for refusing to write a story about a young woman that another paper ran. As she races from social event to social event, while scribbling her short columns in between, she longs for a personal life and a future. She is attracted to a young man in the Army who is awaiting shipment abroad. She knows this relationship is hopeless. He will be gone in a few days. Also, on the front, people with his job of clearing mines usually die quickly. Against this potential for romance is an influenza epidemic that is taking many lives. Our heroine finds herself feeling a little under the weather. What happens next is described in some of the greatest writing about illness since Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past.

This is quite a short novel, so you can read it quickly. I suggest doing it in one sitting, if possible. In that way, the cadence of the inner voices of this story's progression will have a much stronger effect on you. I do recommend reading this on a weekend, though, early in the day. You might not sleep too well if you wait until late at night.

After you have finished reading this novel, I suggest that you consider how you view death. Consider the event from several perspectives: emotional, intellectual, as an ending, and as a beginning. Also, look at other peoples' deaths as well as your own. If you do this carefully, I think you will see new perspectives that will be helpful to you.

I remember how surprised I was when I first met people who saw death as an opportunity to happily celebrate the life of one of their friends. When I thought about my own reaction to that, I realized that I needed to spend some time thinking more about death. The results were very worthwhile for me. I hope they will be for you, as well.

See beauty in all the light around you!

In PALE HORSE, PALE RIDER, Katherine Anne Porter creates a world of two universes; one contains the semi-autobiographical life of Porter's alter-ego, Miranda, who is seen first as a very young girl in the first novella, "Old Mortality," then later as an adult woman in the third entrant, "Pale Horse, Pale Rider." The third novella is "Noon Wine," which is linked to the other two in its focus on a protagonist whose choice of life is severely restricted by the need to conform to society's restrictions. In these three long short stories, Porter elaborates on themes and character types that had previously appeared in her short stories. Porter most often examines the innermost recesses of the human mind that cause her protagonists to encounter spiritual and physical isolation even as they attempt to reach out to end their disconnection. These attempts at finding a soul mate are at first rebuffed, but in their continual probing for like-minded life mates, they achieve a near Faulknerian level of endurance even as they fail.

In "Old Mortality," Porter becomes young Miranda, who has heard of the almost mythical attributes and deeds of her aunt Amy. In Miranda's mind, her aunt is the apotheosis of all that she herself could be. Porter suggests that much of the accepted myth of the American south is similarly grounded on a no questions asked basis. Later as Miranda matures, her growth is seen as both physical and spiritual, but her sphere of newly-won perceptive vision comes at a heavy cost. She learns what happens when brute reality collides with delicate myth. In the second part, Miranda meets the husband-lover of Amy, whose appearance, actions, and words disrupt her connection to the past. This disconnect is deliberately shaded so that the reader is not quite sure whether Porter intends a discrediting of the past or merely a modifying of its accepted interpretation. In the third part, Miranda is further distanced from her idealized view of Amy when she talks to her cousin Eva, who has a definite grudge against Amy, the result of which leaves Miranda feeling that the immortality of myth is itself a myth. Stories and legends then must be measured against the mortality of those who lived them and those who told of them.

In "Noon Wine," Porter tells of a tragedy that begins in the past, assumes a myth that becomes self-sustaining, then encounters a reality that causes pain for all concerned. A Texas farmer named Thompson hires a roustabout Olaf Helton as a field hand. Helton works hard, well, and uncomplainingly. Thompson is more than pleased with Helton but is puzzled by Helton's harmonica, upon which he never plays more than one single tune. One day, a bounty hunter appears with a tale that disrupts Thompson's idyllic view of Helton. The bounty hunter, Homer Hatch, tells Thompson that Helton is an escapee from a lunatic asylum where he was committed for murder. Thompson ironically and unwittingly kills Hatch to protect Helton, an act for which he is tried and exonerated in court. The trial is so devastating to Thompson that he kills himself in depression. Both Thompson and Miranda are faced with disruptive reminders from the past, and the results cause pain to them and their families.

In "Pale Horse, Pale Rider," Porter brings back Miranda as an adult newspaperwoman during the First World War. She falls in love with Adam Barclay an army officer that brings to mind the ill-fated romance between Amy and Gabriel. Both lovers are stricken with the flu epidemic and Adam dies, leaving Miranda grief-ridden. The best Miranda can hope for is to reestablish her spiritual center in a world that is hostile to her very attempt. In all three novellas, Porter precisely captures the essence of those who face moments of crises when they begin to see that the ground underneath their feet is not as solid as once believed.

I was unfamiliar with Katherine Anne Porter before reading this book and am now glad I picked it up. Porter has an amazing way with words and with characterization. With only a few sentences you feel as if you know the people in her stories. This book contains 3 short novels of which I think Pale Horse, Pale Rider is the best. Miranda is a young woman working at a newspaper during the last year of the first world war and of the tragic flu epidemic which killed millions. She goes from show to show every evening writing reviews for the paper, never sure why she bothers. She is alive, but not living. She dines and dances with a soldier she loves but knows the relationship is pointless as he is being shipped overseas in a few days. Then she contracts the flu and the end is a harrowing description of the effects of the disease.

Noon Wine is the second strongest in my opinion, detailing a small Texas family dealing with the aftermath of the father murdering a man. It may have been in self defense, but it might not have been, you are left with the question and the family is left with the guilt and shame.

Old Mortality tells of the sad life of Gabriel through the eyes of his two young nieces. The woman he loves puts him off for a lengthy time while flirting with other men. Finally, though she doesn't love him, marries him and dies 6 weeks later. Gabriel never completely recovers.

These novels are beautiful and sad, filled with complex characters trying to get through each day while figuring out why they are doing it.

By the time I came along, Katherine Anne Porter was known as the author of the blockbuster SHIP OF FOOLS, the inspiration for the blockbuster movie of the same name. She was pop, or so I presumed, never having read the book or seen the movie. After reading PALE HORSE, PALE RIDER, I realize I was missing out on a lot by dismissing her as such. This book is a perfect trio of novellas, each crafted from a tradition that emphasized the classic architecture of fiction--plot, character, voice, dialogue, setting, title, symbolism, theme and, especially, vision.

All three stories were historic fiction when Porter published them in the 1930s. She is looking back on the visitable past, the remains of the 19th century as they pressed upon the earliest years of the 20th. The first story, "Old Mortality," explores the weight of a family legend upon an extended family, especially one little girl. The next, "Noon Wine," visits a poor Texas farmer who hires a mysterious, harmonica playing stranger, a Swede from the north, who quietly saves the farm, only to be outed years later by a bounty hunter as an escaped mental patient. The last, the title story of the collection, returns to the young girl of "Old Mortality," now a young career woman who witnesses the homefront of World War I and the killer flu of 1918. Porter nails the era, the South, the nation and all of humanity in stories that build and explode in ways that postmodern fiction never does. Each is a stand alone story but they sing to one another and make the experience of reading one after the other that much more satisfying. Porter makes the attention to character, to detail, to the expression of creative vision seem effortless.

To say more is to spoil the experience of reading this volume. Go for it.

Pale Horse, Pale Rider is the collection of Katherine Anne Porter's three short novels that was first published in 1939, offering three pieces of fiction that very much helped to make and secure Porter's reputation as one of this country's best short fiction writers. Calling these pieces "short novels" may be a bit of a stretch for most readers, however, and it may be more appropriate to look at them as "long short stories." After all, the book is only 150 pages in length.

Porter herself weighed in on the question and seems to have preferred the term "short novels" asking of readers and critics, "please do not call my short novels Novelettes, or even worse, Novellas. Novelette is classical 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 books by their right names..." However we choose to categorize these stories, it is easy to see why they are still being read today, almost seventy years after they were first published, and why they solidify Porter's reputation.

The first and last stories in Pale Horse, Pale Rider share a main character, Miranda, who is portrayed in "Old Mortality," the first story, as a child growing up in the shadows of her almost legendary Aunt Amy, a beauty who died young but still seems to be the family "star." Miranda and her sister spend much of their childhood trying to unravel the legend of their aunt's life and to make some sense of all the family personalities involved in her history, including that of their own father. As is always the real strength of Porter's fiction, this story is filled with interesting characters and astute observations about the dynamics of family life.

The book's last story, "Pale Horse, Pale Rider," centers again on Miranda, now a young newspaper columnist struggling to make a living completely on her own during the trying times of World War I. Porter captures the home front atmosphere well, including the often overzealous characters who tried to shame their fellow citizens into buying war bonds they could not always afford and the friction between the young men still at home and the women who had been left behind by their own soldier husbands, sons and boy friends. But her story centers on the flu epidemic that so devastated the world during the war years. Her description of the surreal dreams and confusion Miranda experiences in her struggle to survive an attack of the flu is an intense, and sometimes tiring, experience for the reader.

But it is the middle short novel, "Noon Wine," that is my favorite. "Noon Wine" takes place on a tiny Texas farm between 1896 and 1905. As the story opens, the farm is going nowhere and its owner resents the fact that his sickly wife has insisted upon expanding into the dairy business. Even on such a small scale, this lazy man is not at all happy with the daily requirements of tending to his milk cows. His savior arrives in the person of a foreign drifter willing to work for low wages while practically running the farm for its owner. Several years later when a stranger comes to the farm asking questions about the drifter, events suddenly go out of control to the extent that lives are changed forever. Nothing that happens is black and white and Porter does a remarkable job in presenting all the gray tones involved in the situation.

Pale Horse, Pale Rider is an impressive collection that should not be missed by Katherine Anne Porter fans. At the very least, pick up a copy of the book long enough to read "Noon Wine." You will be happy that you did.

this beautiful book impressed me greatly. it alone securely establishes katherine anne porter as one of the very best american prose writers of our century, in the company of faulkner, hemingway, o'connor, fitzgerald, west, and pynchon. this is american LITERATURE