Book of the Month: Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter (1939)
Critical Evaluation
“The three short novels that make up Pale Horse, Pale Rider — Old Mortality, Noon Wine, and the title story itself — ask in turn the three questions that, as the critic Mark Schorer put it, humankind has always asked: What were we? What are we? What will we be?
Old Morality addresses the first of these: It is a coming-of-age story about the self-deceptions that can turn a family’s history into both romance and burden.
Noon Wine shows how the easygoing past can be transformed in an instant into a terrible present — not arbitrarily, not accidentally, but as the result of the accumulation of the trivial flaws, misjudgments, skewed intentions that make us human. It is a Greek tragedy set on a South Texas farm at the turn of the last century.
But it is where we find ourselves in this century that makes the title story of Porter’s collection one that must be read.”
Why Libraries Should Stock “Pale Horse, Pale Rider,” NPR.org. October 23, 2006.
First Excerpt
““Bells Screamed all off key, wrangling together as they collided in midair, horns and whistles mingled shrilly with cries of human distress; sulphur-colored light exploded through the black windowpane and flashed away in darkness. Miranda waking from a dreamless sleep asked without expecting an answer, “What is happening?” for there was a bustle of voices and footsteps in the corridor, and a sharpness in the air; the far clamour went on, a furious exasperated shrieking like a mob in revolt.
The light came on, and Miss Tanner said in a furry voice, “Hear that? They’re celebrating . It’s the Armistice. The war is over, my dear.” Her hands trembled. She rattled a spoon in a cup, stopped to listen, held the cup out to Miranda. From the ward for old bedridden women down the hall floated a ragged chorus of cracked voices singing, “My country, ’tis of thee…”
Sweet land… oh terrible land of this bitter world where the sound of rejoicing was a clamour of pain, where ragged tuneless old women, sitting up waiting for their evening bowl of cocoa, were singing, “Sweet land of Liberty-”
“Oh, say, can you see?” their hopeless voices were asking next, the hammer strokes of metal tongues drowning them out. “The war is over,” said Miss Tanner, her underlap held firmly, her eyes blurred. Miranda said, “Please open the window, please, I smell death in here.””
Second Excerpt
“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.'”