Reading Illness from “The Dead Cold Light of Tomorrow”: Katherine Anne Porter’s Pale Horse, Pale Rider in the Times of COVID-19

The aim of this study is to suggest a new assessment Katherine Anne Porter’s semi-autobiographical account her near-death experience with the 1918 flu, Pale Horse, Rider (1939), considered by many as paradigmatic American narrative that pandemic. Following trend set most critics Porter, article explores intersections memory and fiction in novella, but shifting attention our present-day response, assessed critical tool provides renewed insight into mysteries late-modernist text. Revisited context which cultural memories influenza have been awakened own traumatic COVID-19, seeks probe uncertainties aestheticized trauma narrative. investigate hypothesis contemporary reading illuminates modernist obscurities text and, consequence, raises possibility transcending limitations language myth exhibited text, providing meanings through connection remembrance.