skygiants

When I read The Great Influenza, it told me that the Story To Read if I wanted to know about the experience of living through the Spanish Flu was Katherine Anne Porter's "Pale Horse, Pale Rider."

So, biddable as I am, I said, "okay!" and trotted off to check Pale Horse, Pale Rider out of the library.

There are actually three stories in Pale Horse, Pale Rider. I liked the first two -- "Old Mortality," about a child's experience of living through her Southern family's nostalgia, better than "Noon Wine," an exploration of evil and life-ruining events -- but the title
story is what I read the book for, and it blew me away.

The protagonist of "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" is a journalist, Miranda, whose biggest problem is that she can't quite afford the war bond she's being shamed into buying, and also that her new boyfriend is quite probably going to die in WWI as soon as he gets shipped out. But right now they're going out to the theater and having midnight restaurant dates, because what can you do?

Then she gets a bigger problem, which is the flu, but it's not really a bigger problem, or rather it's all part of the same problem -- it's the awareness of death everywhere, it's the utter absence of a future. I'm not doing this story justice; I will be reading it again.