My sense is that Katherine Anne Porter isn’t as well known in the UK as she deserves to be, and this long story (it’s around fifty pages; Porter herself considered it a short novel) deserves to be regarded as a classic alongside the best of Flannery O’Connor and Eudora Welty.
‘Noon Wine’ is set on a dairy farm in southern Texas during the 1890s. A mysterious and taciturn Swede arrives looking for work, and ends up staying for many years. His skill and industry transform the farm into a prosperous business, but he never speaks, simply playing the same song over and over on his precious harmonica. There’s a profound sense of menace throughout the story and the end is far more violent and horrendous and sad than you’d even feared.
First published as a short novel by Shuman’s, 1937. Collected in Pale Horse, Pale Rider: The Selected Short Stories, Penguin, 2011
A Personal Anthology 