Katherine Anne Porter was a master of the short story. Her characters were depicted with clarity and detail and her figurative, symbolic language and long sentences lent the tales a poetic air. They dealt with themes like betrayal, isolation, guilt, and human nature. Porter's life greatly influenced her writing. Most of her work takes place in the south-west USA, where she was brought up. The three stories contained in Pale Horse, Pale Rider are narrated by the fictional character of Miranda, whose life greatly resembles Porter's own. She was not widely known or successful until her first and only novel, Ship of Fools, was published. While this novel brought her notoriety and made her financially stable, it was incredibly hard for her to accomplish because of its length.

Life

Born Callie Russell Porter, she was one of five children belonging to Harrison Boone and Mary Alice Porter. She was born in Indian Creek, Texas on 15 May, 1890 and when her mother died in 1892, her paternal grandmother, Catherine Anne Porter, took the children into her home. They lived with Catherine and she raised them until her death in 1901, when Porter was 11. She was then taken to a convent school, where she was educated. But at 16, Porter ran away to marry John Henry Koontz of Inez, Texas. Their marriage ended nine years later in 1915 when she decided to become an actress.

Porter spent her early twenties moving back and forth between Texas and Chicago, supporting herself by working as an actress, singer and later, a secretary. During this time, she contracted tuberculosis and while recovering, she decided to become a writer. In 1918, she took a job with the Rocky Mountain News and moved to Denver, where she nearly died in the great influenza epidemic of that year. She moved to New York in 1919 to pursue a career as a journalist and became interested in revolutionary politics in Mexico. She spent the next few years travelling between there and New York. During this time, she worked as a journalist, a publicist for a film company, and a ghostwriter for the book, My Chinese Marriage. She also published three children's stories in Everyland Magazine under the pen-name of Katherine Anne Porter, after her grandmother. She married four more times in her life, but remained childless. From 1948 to 1958, Porter taught at Stanford; the University of Michigan; the University of Liège, Belgium; Washington and Lee University; and the University of Texas. In 1959, she moved to Washington to write Ship of Fools, a novel which provided her with both fame and fortune. At the age of 87, she suffered a disabling stroke and was unable to work. She died in a nursing home in College Park, Maryland on 18 September, 1980 at the age of 90.

Stories

Katherine Anne Porter's stories spoke of the futility of love, loss, betrayal and solitude.

One story of betrayal is Flowering Judas. It tells of a young American woman during the Marxist Revolution in Mexico. She aids the cause of Marxism and helps the political prisoners, but is not fully dedicated, feeling instead numbed and disillusioned. She turns down all the suitors who are attracted to her and 'cannot make a true commitment to life'. At the end, the reader is invited into one of her nightmarish dreams, in which she eats the blossoms of a Judas tree. This symbolises betrayal – her own betrayal of herself and the cause for which she works. She feels damned because she lacks empathy and trust for religion and the world.

Pale Horse, Pale Rider, is narrated in a modified stream-of-consciousness form by Miranda, a young woman who visits hospitals to cheer up wounded soldiers. She dislikes the job and is depressed by all the injured, unfriendly soldiers. Miranda falls in love with Adam, a healthy, innocent, and handsome young soldier. But then she becomes very ill with influenza and delirious, dreams about the jungle, which symbolises death, but from which she manages to escape. She finally recovers by sheer force of will, only to find that her Adam has died from the influenza he caught while caring for her, and also that the war has ended.

The Jilting of Granny Weatherall is a story of the last day of an old woman's life, also told in stream-of–consciousness style. It is rather hard to follow at times, as Granny Weatherall drifts in and out of consciousness. She is a stubborn and feisty old woman and as she lies dying, she looks back over her life in a random, confused sort of way. She thinks about her husband, John, who is dead and how hard her life has been without him. She remembers raising her children alone, tending to them when sick, managing servants and raising a farm without a man to support her. She is proud of her child-raising skills and the fact she never lost a child except for Hapsy, her last. She hopes she can see Hapsy and John, though she doesn't think John will recognise her, being as old as she is. She thinks about her first love, George and how he jilted her. She remembers waiting for him in her white dress with a veil and how he never came. 'What does a woman do when she has put on the white veil and set out the white cake for a man and he doesn't come?' As Granny Weatherall enters the final stage before dying, she feels the darkness of death and realises she is alone.

List of Works

Books

• Flowering Judas and Other Stories (1930)
• Pale Horse, Pale Rider (1940)
• The Leaning Tower and Other Stories (1944)
• The Days Before (1952)
• Ship of Fools (1962)
• The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter (1965)
• Collected Essays and Occasional Writitngs (1970)

Short Stories

• Maria Conception (1922), originally published in The Century Magazine New York, then in Flowering Judas and other stories
• The Martyr (July 1923), originally published in The Century Magazine New York
• Virgin Violeta (1924), originally published in The Century Magazine New York
• He (1927), originally published in New Masses, then in Flowering Judas and other stories
• Magic (1928), originally published in transition then in Flowering Judas and other stories
• Rope (1928), originally published in Second American Caravan then in Flowering Judas and other stories
• Theft (1929), published in Flowering Judas and other stories
• The Jilting of Granny Weatherall (1929), originally published in transition then in Flowering Judas and other stories
• Flowering Judas (1930), originally published in Hound and Horn then in Flowering Judas and other stories
• The Cracked-Looking-Glass (1932), published in Flowering Judas and other stories
• Hacienda (1934), published in Flowering Judas and other stories
• The Downward Path to Wisdom (1939)
• Old Mortality (1937), published in Pale Horse, Pale Rider
• Noon Wine (1937), published in Pale Horse, Pale Rider
• Pale Horse, Pale Rider (1940), published in Pale Horse, Pale Rider
• The Source (1944), published in The Leaning Tower and other stories
• The Journey (1944), published in The Leaning Tower and other stories
• The Witness (1944), published in The Leaning Tower and other stories
• The Circus (1944), published in The Leaning Tower and other stories
• A Day's Work (1944), published in The Leaning Tower and other stories
• The Grave (1944), published in The Leaning Tower and other stories
• The Circus (1944), published in The Leaning Tower and other stories
• The Last Leaf (1944), published in The Leaning Tower and other stories
• The Old Order (1944), published in The Leaning Tower and other stories
• The Fig Tree (1960)
• Holiday (1960)

Essays

• The Necessary Enemy (1948)
• The Days Before (1952)
• A Defense Circle (1954)
• The Never-Ending Wrong (1977)

Awards

• O Henry award (1962), for Holiday
• National Book Award (1966), for The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter
• Pulitzer Prize (1966), for The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter
• Gold Medal Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1967), for Fiction
• Three nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature