Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980)

5 STARS for "The Source," " The Witness," and "The Old Order" - 2 stars for the rest with
really slow plots and no characters to connect with.

The book begins by displaying a stereotypical narrative of lazy and watermelon eating negroes,
then quickly advances to the opposite with the tales of Grandmother and Aunt Nannie.

Nannie originally was gifted to Grandmother as a slave, then emancipated.
Their friendship and sewing were a joy to read, as was Nannie's eventual freedom to live alone and happy.… (més)

This book contains 3 short novellas (as so described) from a very famous, highly regarded author who died in 1980. It was the first of her works I had read, and I was impressed & glad this had been recommended to me. Each of the 3 stories is interesting, and the last was fantastic.

Here is a wonderful composition of words in Pale Horse, Pale Rider, by Katherine Anne Porter: “It is like turning a corner absorbed in your painful thoughts and meeting your state of mind embodied, face to face.”


That is the quality of writing and insight I found here.… (més)

I haven’t previously read anything by this author, and hope not to read any more stories by her.

I will first admit that from the beginning I didn’t like this story – I liked nothing about it.

Neither did I understand the point of it.

Laura is the protagonist. She is visited by Braggioni almost every night; he strums his guitar and sings to her.

Laura is tired when she comes home and wants to lie down but she doesn’t say so; she says “Have you a new song for me this evening?” (She sounds like a woman who loves too much.)

Laura listens “with pitiless courtesy”. “--- she does not smile at his miserable performance.”

Braggion is sensitive to slights and it is dangerous to offend him.

He is a skilled revolutionist with an excess of self-love.

He has a “gluttonous bulk”.

There is a “disunion between her way of living and her feeling of what life should be”.

It is not explained how Laura comes to end in this situation with the unwanted visits of the obese, singing Braggioni, and why she cannot do something to get rid of him.

She is in Mexico, where she teaches children English. She visits prisoners and brings them food, cigarettes, money and messages.

The author states that the “scarlet blossoms” of the Judas tree are “dull purple”. How can they be both?? But we are not told where the Judas tree is.

The scrawny Braggione is a poet and a leader of men. How can he be both scrawny and have a gluttonous bulk? Or perhaps he once was scrawny and later grew gluttonous and obese?

He has “good food and abundant drink”. He has a wife. He confesses “One woman is really as good as another for me, in the dark.”

Braggione loves pistols, cannon and, best of all, dynamite.

We are told that Eugenio’s body has not yet been discovered by the guard, but we have not been introduced to Eugenio, and don’t know who he is.

It turns out Eugenio had taken tablets given to him by Laura, all of them. Why does she give him tablets that can kill him, whoever he is?

Braggioni’s wife weeps constantly – he is the cause of all her sorrows. I would also weep constantly if I were married to Braggioni.

This is such a confused story: we are not told things clearly.

Yet it was much appreciated when first published and probably still is. In 1966 the author received a Pulitzer Prize.

In the final paragraph Laura has a dream where she is told to leave the house. She reaches for Eugenio’s hand. The Judas tree is in the dream and sets her upon the earth and finally to a sea that is not water but a desert of crumbling stone.

Eugenio says he is taking her to Death and they must hurry as it is a long way off. He strips the “warm, bleeding flowers” from the Judas tree and Laura eats the flowers greedily. Eugenio calls her ”Murderer” and ”Cannibal!”

I assume the dream means she quickly has to get away from Braggioni, but she is going to Death, nonetheless. And I fail to understand the significance of the Judas tree.

Read the story at your peril!… (més)