Holiday (Critical Overview)

Critical Overview

A common criticism of Katherine Anne Porter's work is simply that there is too little of it. In the New York Times Book Review in 1939, in a review of Pale Horse, Pale Rider, Edith H. Walton writes, "One wishes, only, that she could manage to be more productive." In a 1965 review of The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter, a Time magazine critic states, "An author who in 71 years has published only 27 stories and one novel can scarcely be considered a major writer."

Though the critics were disappointed with the quantity of her work, most were very pleased with the quality. In a New Republic review of The Collected Stories, Joseph Featherstone writes, "Few writers in America or anywhere else have matched the purity of her English, her powers of deep poetic concentration, her intelligence, her responsiveness to the inner life of her characters, her sharp sense of the pressing forces of history, nationality, and social atmosphere." Walton puts it more succinctly: "There is, in short, a kind of magic about everything that Miss Porter writes." Howard Moss, in a review of The Collected Stories in the New York Times Book Review, calls Porter "a poet of the short story."

Though negative reviews of Porter's short stories were in the minority, not everyone was charmed by her often grim view of life and human nature. In the Time magazine review of The Collected Stories mentioned earlier, the reviewer writes, "She sees her characters less as people who must live than as problems to be solved. There is too little warmth and softness in her art." Bitterness and cynicism crept into some of her later work, especially her novel, Ship of Fools. As Mary Gordon writes in a 1995 article on Porter's work in the New York Times Book Review, "To act with malignity would seem, in Porter's mind, to be as natural to humans as drawing breath."

However, in this same article, Gordon praises the short story "Holiday": "Lost in the bitterness and cynicism with which Porter wrote Ship of Fools is the joy in nature and in simple living that marks her greatest short stories. This pleasure suffused the breathtaking "Holiday" (1960), which took her more than 30 years to write." She mentions Porter's gift for detail: "Porter earns her right to speak about humanity, about life and death, because she has so firmly rooted her perceptions in the soil of the particular." Howard Moss, in the review mentioned earlier, agrees; he describes her stories as "firmly grounded in life; and the accuracy and precision of their surfaces hold in tension the confused human tangle below."

"Holiday" did not receive a great deal of critical attention in its first release in 1960 and was overshadowed by some of Porter's more acclaimed stories when it was released in The Collected Stories in 1965. Some reviewers did make mention of it in their review of the book; Joseph Featherstone writes that in addition to her previously released work, "Miss Porter has added four uncollected stories, one of which, "Holiday," ranks with her best." Howard Moss writes in his review, "The author has added a magnificent new long story, 'Holiday.'"

To summarize, many critics agree that Porter was unarguably a master of the short story, whose one outing as a novelist was admirable, but not of the same quality as her shorter works.

Compare & Contrast

• 1920s: Early in 1920, the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) has about 60,000 members. However, the "Red Scare" period, during which Woodrow Wilson's attorney general orders the arrest of some 10,000 suspected communists and anarchists, helps reduce the party's membership to 7,000 by 1929.
  1960s: The Great Depression and the alliance of Russia and the United States in World War II gave the CPUSA membership a boost in the 1930s and 1940s, but this time it is the scare tactics of Senator Joseph McCarthy and the revelation of Stalin's crimes that diminish membership. By 1960 the party has around 10,000 members, down from an estimated peak of 100,000 during the war. The prosperity of the 1960s means that few are inspired to join the party, and though radicalism has increased in the late 1960s, the Communist Party does not play a significant role, and membership remains low.
• 1920s: During the 1920s, 21.4 percent of women over the age of sixteen are a part of the labor force. Most of these women have clerical, domestic, or factory jobs. Very few have children.
  1960s: In 1960, 37.7 percent of women over the age of sixteen are employed; by 1970 this figure will have increased to 43.3 percent. By 1965, approximately thirty-five percent of mothers with children under eighteen are employed. Women in the workforce are aided by some important legislation in the 1960s. First, in 1963, Congress passes an Equal Pay Act, which requires equal wages for men and women doing equal work. Then in 1964, the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination against women by any company with twenty-five or more employees.
• 1920s: In 1920, farmers make up 27 percent of the labor force. There are close to 6.5 million farms in the United States.
  1960s: In 1960, farmers make up just 8.3 percent of the labor force, and though the population has increased by about seventy-five million, the number of farms in the United States has fallen to under four million.