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I had one of those “A-ha” moments in my “Literature of War” class this week (and I don’t mean the band). Light bulbs were going off—for me anyway.  We’ve been talking a lot about the stories and histories that have been forgotten or suppressed. This week it started with no one in the class knowing the work of Katherine Anne Porter. That happens a lot in my classes, but I figured they at least knew about her. Even two students from Texas had never heard of her. (Porter is from Texas.) It had me wondering if Porter was in danger of being forgotten. (Alice McDermott has written about feeling punched in the gut when she learned that libraries are discarding Porter’s books for lack of “demand.”) After reading “Pale Horse, Pale Rider,” we all agreed that she should continue to be read. It is by far the most luminous piece of writing we have encountered in the class.

“Pale Horse, Pale Rider” centers on an independent young woman struggling to navigate the world of journalism and live up to the demands on women during WWI to devote all of their time, energy, and money to supporting the troops. It was published in 1939, on the eve of WWII. It is clearly as much about the last war as the impending war. In one passage, she sums up the atmosphere on the home front during wartime:

“[T]he worst of war is the fear and suspicion and the awful expression in all the eyes you meet . . .  as if they had pulled down the shutters over their minds and their hearts and were peering out at you, ready to leap if you make one gesture or say one word they do not understand instantly. . . . It’s the skulking about, and the lying. It’s what war does to the mind and the heart. [It’s] worse than what it can do to the body.”

Having endured the demand for “100 percent Americanism” and the Sedition and Espioage Acts of WWI, which made grumbling about any aspect of the war potentially treasonous, Porter was clearly dreading going into another war.

The story is full of sardonic sarcasm about the war that is (was) supposed to end all wars, but it also includes a love story, about which the protagonist, Miranda, is anything but jaded. She falls in love with a soldier about to ship out, but then she falls ill with influenza. After a delirious month in the hospital, she finds out that he has died of the flu, which she surely gave to him.  It’s a story as much about the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic as it is about WWI.

After a little research, I came to class armed with statistics about the pandemic. It killed 50 million people worldwide in a matter of months, five times as many deaths as the four years of WWI produced. In the U.S. alone, it killed 700,000, while WWI killed 116,000. In the history of human pandemics, it is the second most deadly. Only the Black Plague of the 14th century was more deadly. Yet we know almost nothing about it. We may have heard about it, but we have no clue (I didn’t) about how significant it was. Why? Why do we know about the war but not the pandemic that dwarfed it?

I found the answer in a podcast episode titled “Forgotten Flu” about the Spanish Flu pandemic. (I highly recommend the podcast, “Backstory,” by thew way.) As one of the historians on the show explained, it’s forgotten because it doesn’t fit with the narrative Americans wanted to believe in, which was all about their having saved Europe and become some kind of global heroes. The Spanish flu became a footnote rather than part of the story because it subverted the master narrative of who we are (or are supposed to be) as a country: namely, the victors, the country of progress and technological (and medical) advancement. The story of the Spanish flu can’t be spun to fit that master narrative. It’s a story of defeat and the utter impotence of medical science.

As we talked about this, I had my A-ha moment. The thought came to me that this is why most (perhaps all?) of the forogtten stories have been suppressed. It’s like they go into the backwater of our national consciousness, some to return, others consigned to oblivion. But we must haul them up to the surface and reckon with them, if we are to change the master narrative that keeps so much of our national experience marginalized.

I’ve been so rocked by this realization that I changed the theme of my graduate course next semester to “Forgotten Stories.” I’m on the hunt for the best of the novels and short stories that have been left to molder in the stacks, so to speak (American, 20th century). Tell me your favorites. I’m working on the course description and book order now.  (You can email me at anneboydrioux@gmail.com, if the comments section isn’t working. I seem to be having trouble with it.)