Katherine Anne Porter

The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter

Katherine Porter was born in the tiny town of India Creek, Texas, in 1890. Her mother died when Porter was two and her childhood was difficult, though she did grow up with books and culture. She escaped into marriage at age sixteen to a railway porter who beat her; they divorced after ten years, and she worked as an actress, singer, drama critic, and gossip columnist. She nearly died during the 1918 influenza epidemic, a brush with death that turned her hair white. Her powerful novella Pale Horse, Pale Rider (1940) drew on this harrowing experience.

From Pale Horse, Pale Rider, in The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter:

“I don’t want to love,” she would think in spite of herself, “not Adam, there is no time and we are not ready for it and yet this is all we have…”

In her twenties, she settled in Greenwich Village and began to publish stories. She continued to succumb to bad marriages, one to a deadly dull man from Connecticut (after a miserable year, she sneaked out early one morning to catch a train back to New York), and her last to a graduate student who discovered during the wedding that she was twenty years his senior. They were often taken for mother and son, the marriage was a complete disaster, and they were quickly divorced.

Unable to bear children after a hysterectomy, Porter directed her energies toward her dark, meticulously crafted, and increasingly acclaimed stories. She eventually won both a Pulitzer and a National Book Award. Her enormously successful only novel, Ship of Fools (1962), with its half-million-dollar movie sale, brought her the first financial stability of her life.

ALSO RECOMMENDED:

Ship of Fools. Porter’s only novel, published when she was seventy-two, follows a group of cruise ship passengers bound for Germany in 1931, and represents society at large in that era.

Orange Champagne Punch

In Pale Horse, Pale Rider, when Miranda is ill, Adam brings her orange juice and takes care of her.

1 cup fresh orange juice

1 cup maraschino cherry juice

1/2 cup dark rum

1/2 cup brandy

1 bottle chilled Champagne

Lime peel for garnish

Maraschino cherry for garnish

In a large punch bowl or pitcher stir orange juice, cherry juice, rum, and brandy to blend. Refrigerate thirty minutes. Add Champagne just before serving. Garnish with lime peel and cherry. Serves 6.