Pale Horse, Pale Rider

I too had once been immured as Maria and Miranda. In the cloister of Folsom Library, where on the second floor tables were laid out in pairs in rows, I spent my first autumn in university reading Katherine Anne Porter's "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" - the trio, not the short-long, for Kate would have spit at the description "novella". (Which in itself is an interesting discussion, and I take her side: "novella" is nebulous and the short/long axes are plenty descriptive: short-shorts are hardly a page and have just one interesting thing, setting, character, theme e.g Borges' stories, long-shorts are most people's definition of short stories, are less than ten pages and have space for one arc e.g Capek's stories, short-longs perfectly describe the stories in the discussed trio, or that of Henry James', of various themes but necessarily constrained, and long-longs are the wilderness, from "As I Lay Dying" to "Ulysses". One may divide a book by its chapters or cantos, as we do for Dante, into short-shorts, longs etc. I think it's a good system, though "novella" is historical.)

Thus I've been reading "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" for a decade. I used to read it religiously, at least once a school year. Something about the prisoning winter, and surprisingly tender spring, of upstate New York made it companionable. For Katherine's birthday I had the pleasure of revisiting it, which I shall take the opportunity to do in the future; it's an awfully quick read, and the matter is rather clear. Which is partially a complaint, in this fourth-or-fifth reading.

I'm always fascinated with dates when analyzing someone's work. "Noon Wine" has been published in 1936 (Katherine is 46 years of age), "Old Mortality" in 1937 and the titular "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" in 1938. This is significant to me because the dates match my enjoyment of the material: in ascending order.

"Noon Wine" weathered the worst: it has the smell of a toy, toy characters, toy world, toy scenario, though I understand that was partially the effect. Amusingly, I had once thought it was the most interesting of the three stories. The Thompsons feel like characters in a Spielberg film, in the worst way, Mr. Thompson being a stern but well-meaning grump and Mrs. Thompson so helplessly weak and ethical, both trying to raise their children to be proper men. Mr. Helton, the fairy-tale helper who invigorates their farm, is essentially E.T. And it is indeed a fairy tale, given the emptiness of the Texas they inhabit, where no other characters intrude. What makes the short-long interesting is the twist, when it is discovered Helton had once been determined insane and is intended to be captured, though he has ingratiated himself to the family short of a decade. This is the titular noon wine: when a man, i.e. Thompson, although it really extends to every character in the story, is given a good thing, they draw so much from it until they don't realize it's gone, or perhaps find out they never had so much of it as they had thought. Little pieces of reality, of Helton's insanity, of Thompson's own self-delusion, are sobering agents for a long inebriated period, after which a man wakes up finding himself naked before his God. But, again, the re-read felt like a toy, and Thompson's ultimate decision feels more fit for an Orson Welles flick; it doesn't feel proper for literature, which has the time to explore complex thought.

For an 18-year-old something in the American Northeast - cold, cynical, Puritanical and sore about it - "Old Mortality" shook me. Porter's recollection of memories overwhelming the reality, and then identity, of a growing girl resonated entirely with mine. Somehow Porter's South had hints of the rigid social hierarchy of Asian culture. "Old Mortality" at its heart is about our tendency to elevate our memories over reality (which works very well with "Noon Wine"). Porter spins a fine yarn about a deceased relative of Maria and Miranda's, embellishing it with the romance and omission typical in the speech of a family member: brother, mother, lover. She then spends the rest of the narrative tearing it down, introducing reality to such an extent that we begin to be doubtful of the story - but isn't the story so wonderful, that we prefer to believe it? - but not enough to dismiss it completely. In this, too, the story feels a bit like a toy, for two reasons, one biased and unbiased. My biased take is that stories about children don't interest me all too much, because authors lavish time trying to get the audience to understand the child's misunderstandings. Yes, I know what a bildungsroman is, and I find them horribly boring. Same for "Portrait of an Artist, as a Young Man", same for "Catcher in the Rye", I think the only one I truly like is Stendhal's "Le Rouge et le Noir", because it is saying so much more than the character's perspective. If literature appeals to the intellect, unfortunately there is not much intellect in a child, especially if the child is adjudged by an adult (author). My unbiased take is that the last act, that of an adult Miranda and her aunt Eva arguing, goes on for far too long, though it is necessary. Eva demolishes the stories Miranda had been hearing all life long, but does so in a way that the demolishing is suspect; this, too, is another way that adults lie through memory. But Eva seems to be such an excessive stereotype of a feminist that we groan and say, "On with it," understanding fully well, within the first three pages of her introduction, why she says and believes so and so and so. "Old Mortality" is less of a toy because the scenario and characters, for the most part, are real.

Pale Horse, Pale Rider

The titular "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" is a triumph. My Harcourt edition, in its sleeve, states Porter deserves to be in the same ranking as Henry James. Fair enough; "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" is James-esque, in the best way possible.

I would refrain from writing anything if I thought the whole trilogy was bad, because I have attached a lot of sentiment to it. Ironically, I have made a whole mythology of "Pale Horse, Pale Rider", given that the short-longs are about romanticization and self-deception. I can't say anymore it is critical in my development as a writer, though I can certainly say it still influences what a writer should look like: an observer, above a thinker, proselytizer, editor. The first two short-longs possess the quality of having been written by a human being: "Old Mortality" comes from Porter's own growing pains and "Noon Wine", I imagine, comes from her journalistic interest in morality. In them is a thorough reflection on the human soul, and has none of the accoutrements of someone affecting to look intelligent. Writing requires a closeness to the soil, and no matter what I can say about the short-longs in the trio, Porter's writing has a perspective that is interested in dirt, and the beauty of the earth. This she takes from Colette, whom she called greater than Gide or Proust (and she's right). (I suspect my current disinterest in the prose is a result of my current interest in American poetry.)

I had always thought the titular "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" was good, but not great, in my mythology. It returns back to Miranda, who works for a newspaper during the first World War (the "great" war). She traverses empty American streets with a lover, only to catch the Spanish flu.

The story, then, that takes place in the most industrialized of the trio's worlds, comes across to me as the most natural and least toy-like: it doesn't take place anywhere, except in the human soul.

This quality was most surprising in the re-read as, very early, Katherine easily switches between third-person and first-person prose. This is the most James-esque attribute of the writing. There are things happening outside of Miranda, but just as important are the things happening inside of her, as she processes the meaning of the war and her relationship to the world, nay, her destiny as a human being.

Her fluid transitions between the first- and third-person help tremendously in her one innovation to prose: "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" is at once a look-forward and a look-backward. Something I had not realized from previous reads was that Miranda was omniscient, or, at least, oracular. The prose suggests she is repeating her memories, recounting events with the knowledge of how they end. This must have confused me in earlier reads because I do recall this short-long was the most difficult to understand of them. She knows of Adam's ultimate fate and she knows of her own fate, yet she remembers it all the same - given the absolute tragedy and pain she endures, this says a lot about her character. I've never seen any writer attempt this without giving away that they were doing it. The effect is eye-opening, with Adam depicted, at once, as a man, a true vulnerable man, and a symbol for a loss of innocence; Katherine allows Miranda her naivete as she, in the future, is resigned to her fate. And the impetus makes perfect sense as well, as Miranda would not have the ability to process the events emotionally as they were happening. Ironically this makes "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" the most fairy tale-like of her stories, but rendered so appropriately that it feels all too real.

The other surprising quality of the story is that Porter allows herself to be critical of America's participation in the war, observing the behavior of bond salesmen, Red Cross girls, soldiers and American newsmen. On all of their faces, she sees the shadow of the eponymous pale rider crossing over them. It is a world obsessed with death, and so it stands that Miranda too thinks constantly of death - but as a human being, she attempts to convert death into life, through Adam, through herself. This is the principal conflict of the story, that of trying to find life after so much suffering (which works perfectly after the conclusion of "Noon Wine").

I'll also venture to say "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" is where Katherine is at her bravest. "Noon Wine" impresses as film, and "Old Mortality", at the time of publication, would likely be dismissed as a woman's sentimental education, albeit in the proper form. The last of the three dares to offend, in a milieu where Faulkner is still unread and "Finnegans Wake" still unpublished. It is surreal, plotless, egotistical, and female, all qualities which would offend a traditional critic. It is the story in which she allows herself most her voice, in its full, feminine maturity. This is why literature is compelling: after so many decades, the author shows.

In retrospect, "Pale Horse, Pale Rider", the trilogy, not the story, is the reason why Katherine, after all these years, is still a dominant voice in my head: it reveals a human more than anything, in its imperfections. Actually, the trilogy is more like the famous "March of Progress"; it reveals an author beginning in a crawl, brow bent over her material and finding things worthy of writing about, and in her final form finally asserting herself, back straight and head held high, fully set in her powers. (Another reason, likely, is that she corresponded with Ford Madox Ford, who also lives in my head.) Porter was a lot of things; she's an American original, due to that.