The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter

Katherine Anne Porter remembers what happens in the adolescent brain, she knows how husbands and wives argue and what about, she knows how poorly drawn is the line between aspiration and realism. Her stories are high on intimacy rather than drama, internal rather than external. There are themes she circles back to in subsequent stories like echoes, revisiting and reconsidering. Sometimes she holds the mirror a little too close for comfort; but that problem lies with me, not her. There are too many stories here to rate all of them, but some of the highlights:

Virgin Violeta - the bitter clash of fantasy and reality in coming-of-age.

The Martyr - contrasts in perception/reputation before and after death.

Rope - a perfect capturing of petty show more marital bickering.

He - the convenience of adopting others' biases.

The Jilting of Granny Weatherall - death bed regrets.

The Cracked Looking Glass - a kinder, gentler Madame Bovary story.

Old Mortality - the past as family legend, gossip, or the tiresome memories of a prior generation.

Noon Wine - consequences for caring "how things look"; study Mr Thompson.

Pale Horse, Pale Rider - journalist vs metaphorical horsemen of the apocalypse.

The Old Order - Tennyson, "The old order changes, yielding place to new." Contrasts generations; comprised of several shorter stories.

The Downward Path to Wisdom - the mis-rearing of a young child.

A Day's Work - balanced view of a dysfunctional marriage.

Holiday - an unexpected personal connection.

The Leaning Tower - an American finds 1931 Berlin to be fragile and vulnerable. show less

This was one of the best collections of short stories I've ever read.

I am not generally a fan of short stories. I like to commit to my literature and short stories tend to feel like a summer fling that was over before I was able to analyze it to death and suck all of the fun out it.

I especially dislike collections of short stories because even the best authors' voices come through in them. While I typically like to feel as though I can hear an author's voice, when it happens during a book of 30 of their short stories and it's the same author with different stories, I get confused, partially due to the fact that I'm extremely dumb and partially due to the fact that they almost always center around the same themes or characters who hail show more from similar backgrounds and locations.

This was not the case with Katherine Anne Porter. Every one of these stories was completely different in style, voice, content and characterization and every one of the stories was brilliant. It helped that many of them were over 50 pages long (one was over 100). The length allowed me to get to know the characters as intimately as I wanted.

All in all, this was a fantastic book from a writer who is not only talented but extremely versatile as well. show less

A very skilled short story writer, Katherine Anne Porter brings to life her characters and, primarily through character development, takes you deep into their world with a minimum of words. Not once did I feel that a story ended prematurely or that I wanted or expected more than I got.

She tackles a variety of experiences that might feel very familiar to most of us. In The Rope a husband and wife engage in an argument over a piece of rope that made me chuckle with recognition. I think if you are or have ever been married, you will see yourself and your spouse at some moment in this story. In fact, all you really need to have is a sibling or a friend and you might still relate easily to what transpires.

He is another excellent story that show more deals with a mother and her mentally handicapped son. I confess to feeling that we might, as a society, find ourselves in this one as well. It was a kind of tragic tale for me.

My favorite of the stories was The Cracked Looking Glass. This story of a May/December marriage struck me as particularly poignant. I could understand the feelings of the protagonist so well and loved seeing how her view changed over time.

Old Mortality, Noon Wine, and Pale Horse, Pale Rider are three novellas which were published originally under the collective name Pale Horse, Pale Rider. I was completely riveted to each of these stories, which are dark and disturbing in many ways. The first seems to pose the question of how much can we know about a person who is gone by listening to those who knew her? The second is a tale of the difference a hired man makes to the life of a farmer who employs him. The third, which ties back to the first by incorporating a character from that story, deals with fate and the precarious nature of life and death during WWI and the flu epidemic. All excellently written.

What was easy to realize, but surprising in its way, was the completely contemporary feel of all of these stories. We think our lives have changed substantially, but perhaps only the outer shell is different. The cell phones and newer fashions and quickie food preparation, and even the changes in the status of women in both the workplace and home, hasn’t changed the basic inner conflicts much at all. show less

Seems like these stories are pretty important to the study of mainstream American Modernism -- if you're into that sort of thing. Porter threads notions of prosaic evil throughout to establish an element of immediacy in her writing; it is what gives her work its didactic impact and it contributes largely, I think, to the timeless quality of her stories. The stories are brilliant because they draw us into towns and kitchens and families that are "like our own"; they remind us that the essential moments of our lives are not lived on the bear hunt (Faulkner) or in the bullfighting arena (Hemingway) but rather in ordinary moments of modest intensity.

For me, Porter’s most hard hitting story is “Rope.” While it would be easy to read show more this as a glimpse into an unhappy or a hopeless marriage, I think it more or less perfectly captures an unhappy phase or adjustment period. This is a man who is unable to empathize with his wife and a wife who is unable to direct or cope with her frustration. I am confident that I am not the only reader who felt almost unbearably guilty when the husband mused, “Imagine anybody caring more about a piece of rope than about a man’s feelings.” Porter, you jerk.

These stories do not consistently bring readers through to a resolution. Although she ties up loose ends in stories like “Noon Wine,” the ambiguous endings of other stories are suggestive of something like hope. The couple in “Rope” may have resolved their issues; their issues may have become much, much worse; the husband may have poisoned his wife’s coffee the following morning. Anything is possible because this story reflects a particular moment or period in a dynamic human life, and we can't speculate on the ultimate outcome of this contained failure to connect because human beings are not static or unchanging entities. Lovers are capable of cruelty towards one another – and people are capable of recognizing the unwitting evil of their own habits. They are capable of developing new habits.

While some writers use fiction to transport readers out of conventional comfort zones, Porter chooses to meet her audience where they live. It's a space worth reading about. show less

This collection of stories represents most of the author’s literary output over the course of her life. It’s really not a large body of work. I expected what it lacked in quantity to be made up in quality, but it didn’t work out that way. The early stories had an air of immaturity. The stories that resonated most with me were the last two in the collection – “Holiday” and “The Leaning Tower”. Porter worked on “Holiday” over several decades, and the final product is worthy of the author’s efforts. “The Leaning Tower” reflects Depression-era Berlin and the influences that led to World War II. From this side of the war, it’s chilling to see how accurate Porter’s perceptions were.

I read this long (495 pages) short story collection over many months and, I must admit, was glad to reach this end this afternoon. I've said before that I'm not a fan of short stories. When they revolve around a central character, as in Olive Kitterage it's different and I can enjoy them (as I did with Olive), but this collection did not fall in that category. The Collection includes 27 stories (2 of which are more novellas) all with different characters and different settings. Really the only thing they have in common is that they are all somber stories of people with difficult lives.

I'm not generally a big reader of short stories. I want to like them, but mostly end up feeling sort of dissatisfied & not quite filled up. It's like eating a really nice appetizer & nothing else for dinner - two hours later you're scrounging in the fridge for the peanut butter. I guess I just like a longer read.

There are some writers who work within this genre who stand out for me - James Joyce, Raymond Carver, Ernest Hemingway, Ellen Gilchrist, & Alice Adams. All of these writers have the ability to encapsulate a moment in time that makes reading them a pleasure. I'm going to add Katherine Anne Porter to my list.

Porter's writing is a bit formal, but that works within the context of what she is doing with it. Her stories capture their show more characters within the frame of the story, but effortlessly acknowledge that there is a life that happens outside of that frame. I loved that I got a true sense of the before & after lives of these characters & that I cared.

This collection is also wonderful for the reason all collections like that are wonderful - you really get to see the maturation of the writer through their writing. In this regard short story writers probably have the advantage. It took me a bit over a year to read all of Iris Murdoch, this was substantially quicker.

I don't know that I'll go on to become an enormous reader of short stories, but I'm glad I read these. They were beautiful & satisfying in their own way & that's what good reading is all about, right? show less