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Book
Katherine Anne Porter · 1930
A collection of three interconnected short novels—"Old Mortality," "Noon Wine," and "Pale Horse, Pale Rider"—exploring themes of memory, mortality, and American life, with the title novella set during the 1918 influenza pandemic and World War I.
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What this book knows
Mortality, fever-dream, and doomed love reveal how war and illness strip identity down to its irreducible, mortal core.
mortality
Too many people have been born here, and have wept too much here, and have laughed too much, and the dead are so many they crowd you to the very door.
PHPR-RC-092They haven't got a bed. They haven't even got a baby crib. Kneeling before the fireplace, he began carefully to set kindling sticks in the shape of an Indian tepee.
PHPR-RC-122grief
There were two hearts carved on a tree, pierced by the same arrow—yes, and yet they were alive, and were us, you understand.
PHPR-RC-126Miranda envied them. She envied that girl. At least she can weep if that helps, and he does not even have to ask, What is the matter?
PHPR-RC-117trauma-and-survival
They stood while a funeral passed, and this time they watched it in silence. Miranda pulled her cap to an angle and winked in the sunlight, her head swimming slowly.
PHPR-RC-103In early October, nearly dies in hospital during the Spanish flu pandemic; claims near-death experience of euphoria, 'what the Christians call the beatific vision.'
PHPR-RC-1426 published passages · book excerpt · research analysis
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