Book notes | Pale Horse, Pale Rider
Katherine Anne Porter’s lyrical short novel Pale Horse, Pale Rider was the primary focus on August 27 when UMRA’s Fourth Friday Book Club (aka Book Club II) met over Zoom.
Pale Horse, Pale Rider, the third and final tale in Porter’s 1939 volume of the same name, draws on her own experiences as a young woman. It features a 24-year-old Denver newspaper writer, Miranda, caught up in a just-blossoming love affair with a soldier during the overlapping horrors of World War I and the 1918 flu pandemic. (Miranda was a child and adolescent in the multigenerational first tale Old Mortality.)
Book Club II participants also discussed the mesmerizing middle tale Noon Wine, about a quiet Swede from North Dakota whose years as a hard-working, harmonica-playing farmhand in Texas abruptly culminate in tragedy.
When the ruins are cleared away
Throughout the discussion, the sheer power of Porter’s writing was repeatedly praised. Many passages stand out as arrestingly poetic in and of themselves, apart from the narrative; to cite just one example, the final sentence of Pale Horse, Pale Rider is elegiac: “Now there would be time for everything.” That sentence deftly captures Miranda’s hollow desolation on learning of an irremediable loss just as she begins to recover from a weeks-long, near-death experience.
More than a century after the timeframe of Miranda’s harrowing illness and intertwined heartbreak, the parallels with today’s COVID-19 pandemic and current wars struck Book Club II participants as eerie. Although Porter does depict the joys of a budding romance, she somberly foregrounds the timeless complexities of nightmares, religion, workplace and wartime politics, emotional and physical suffering, and ultimately death. As she herself once stated, the arts “are what we find again when the ruins are cleared away.”
Upcoming meetings:
September 24. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
October 22. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
November 26. Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie
For more information, please contact Book Club II facilitators Dorothy Marden or Margaret Catamby .
—Mary Knatterud, UMRA Book Club II member
Book Club II to meet August 27
Fri, Aug 27 2021, 2pm
Katherine Anne Porter’s searing short novel “Pale Horse, Pale Rider” will be the focus of discussion when UMRA’s Fourth Friday Book Club meets at 2 p.m. on August 27 over Zoom.
“Pale Horse, Pale Rider,” the third and final tale in Porter’s 1939 collection of the same name, centers on a young Denver newspaper writer, Miranda, who is dating a soldier during the throes of World War I and the 1918 flu pandemic. She was a child and adolescent in Porter’s multilayered first tale, “Old Mortality.” (The harrowing middle tale, “Noon Wine,” features a taciturn Swede from North Dakota who becomes a Texas farmhand.)
As Alice McDermott, a National Book Award-winning novelist and Johns Hopkins University professor, asserted on NPR in 2006, “There is enough intelligence, wit, heartache, profundity, and marvelous prose in the 50 pages of this short novel to have kept demand for it high, even across the seven [now nearly nine!] decades since it was first published.”
The Fourth Friday Book Club (aka UMRA Book Club II) welcomes new members.
Please contact Dorothy Marden or Margaret Catambay to learn more.
—Mary Knatterud, Book Club II member
Upcoming Events
Our July 15 "hike" is going to be a kayaking adventure on Bde Maka Ska (formerly Lake Calhoun) and Lake of the Isles! If you don't have a kayak (or paddleboard), Wheel Fun Rentals, located next to the new concession stand rents single kayaks at $15 an hour and double kayaks at $25. The second hour is free if we rent before noon. Life jackets are provided with the rental.
Laura Ericksen will lead the discussion of How Stella Learned to Talk by Christina Hunger, a true story by a speech-language pathologist who taught her dog, Stella, to communicate using buttons associated with different words.
Our August 5 hike will be a reprise of our hike last summer at William O'Brien State Park. This is a beautiful park with a winding trail and a great view of the countryside. The hike is about 5.5 to 6 miles and we'll go at a moderate pace with frequent water breaks. After the hike, we will eat lunch at Rustic Roots Winery, a half mile north of the park.
Kathy Cramer will lead the discussion of The Bookbinder by Pip Williams, a book set in 1914 Oxford chronicling the life of Peggy who works in the University bindery, but craves a life beyond binding books but to being a scholar herself.
Enjoy a two-hour cruise on the Jonathan Padelford, leaving from the Harriet Island dock in St. Paul, boarding time at 5:30 p.m. We will have a brief program on board by Patrick Nunnally from the River Life Program of the Institute on the Environment.
August 31 is the due date for annual reports and updates. Annual Reports, Toolkits, web page updates, operating document updates and archives collections are all due each year on this date.
Autumn is a wonderful season in Minnesota so plan to join UMRA at the Andersen Horticultural Library at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. Kristen Mastel, head librarian and curator, will reveal its treasure trove of publications and artifacts relating to plant history, horticulture, and natural history. After the tour, those who are interested may stay to eat lunch together, sitting outside if the weather is nice. Later, you are invited to a one-hour tram tour of the entire Arboretum that includes natural areas of flowering shrubs, bogs, and forests, family garden and landscaping showpieces, and the red barn farm
After a summer break the UMRA Photo Club will next meet September 10, 2024 in the meeting room of the Hennepin County St. Anthony Branch Library. For those interested in lunch, meet at the Great Dragon at 11:30 am. For September the THEME will be Curves
We will continue to discuss the pros and cons of Medicare Advantage. You will also hear about notable non-health plan and non-broker resources.