Grace Paley (1922–2007)

What a strange collection of stories. This wasn't at all what I expected, although I'd always heard about Grace Paley in conjunction with others of my favorite writers (esp. Donald Barthelme). I don't know why I picked up this book today--I think it was a mention of her name in a Bookforum article that I read while I ate lunch and watched the snowstorm--but it was just right. I've been thinking about writing lately and about all of the not-writing I've been doing, and maybe this is just the show more kick in the ass I've needed. These stories make me feel like writing and storytelling are important, which is something I occasionally need to be reminded of.

Paley's writing is super-sharp and her characters are precise and real. It's jarring to discover that what she's really writing about, in this very exact, brutally clear way, is utter chaos and human messiness. Within the first five pages, I'd already put the book down twice--the second time, which I added as a GoodReads quote, in the story "Debts," with the sentence "There is a long time in me between knowing and telling," and the first time, in "Wants," because of this:

"He had had a habit throughout the twenty-seven years of making a narrow remark which, like a plumber's snake, could work its way through the ear down the throat, halfway to my heart. He would then disappear, leaving me choking with equipment. What I mean is, I sat down on the library steps and he went away."

My God, that's so simple but visceral! There are plenty of other moments like this throughout the collection, but it wasn't just the moments and turns of phrase that made it special; there's a coherent world view here that's unshakable and just heartbreaking and odd all at once. Read it, read it, read it. Seriously, read it. show less

“Grace Paley, beni güldüren, ağlatan öyküler yazıyor. Paley, kimseye benzemeyen komik, enerjik, sade ve hüzünlü bir sese sahip bir yazar.” Susan Sontag

Genç bir askere tutulan işveli bir ergen, banliyölerdeki iki yüzlü babalar, arabada yaşayan bir iş bulma danışmanı, Noel piyesinde oynayan yahudi çocuklar, didişen aşık bir çift. Bu, gündelik hayatların kuytusunda kalan insanın küçük rahatsızlıklarını keşfe çıkan bir kitap. Paley insan olma halinin show more yalnızlığını, dokunaklı komikliğini usta bir kulakla ve ironik bir dille resmedebiliyor. show less

Many of these stories were written more than fifty years ago, yet their humor, humanity and life still literally leap off the pages to make you chuckle, wince and empathize with the various characters that populate them. And the collection's subtitle is particularly apropo - "Stories of Women and Men at Love." Not "in" love, you should note, but "at" love. Because, after reading these sharply hewn tales, you begin to suspect that Grace Paley does not put all that much stock in romance, or show more the kind of love that the women and men here are engaged in. The title itself, THE LITTLE DISTURBANCES OF MAN, might even indicate that man is not quite so important as he'd like to think. Indeed, that subtitle again: note that "women" come first.

Before I forget to say it: I loved these little stories. Grace Paley was not a prolific writer, producing only a few collections of stories. But she was good, damn good. She spent much of her life engaged as a political activist, marching, protesting and demonstrating. Married a couple times, with a couple of kids, writing was something she worked into the creases of her active and busy life. Perhaps the proof of this can be found here in "Two Sad Stories from a Long and Happy Life."
The first, "1. The Used-Boy Raisers," introduces us to Faith, along with her current husband, 'Pallid,' and her ex-husband, 'Livid.' Who are both hanging out in her kitchen complaining about the food, but the husbands seem to get along, to understand each other - and their names fit well. Livid needles her about another "old boyfriend Clifford," who shows up int the second sad story, "2. A Subject of Childhood." Clifford comes across as a self-absorbed creep, who she throws out after he accuses her of doing "a rotten job" as a mother, "lousy," in fact. She beans him with an ashtray, then considers -

"For I have raised these kids, with one hand typing behind my back to earn a living. I have raised them all alone without a father ..."

Reading these lines, I strongly suspected, Yup. This is how Grace Paley lived her life. Raising her two kids alone, writing when she had to, to make a living. In the same story, the boyfriend gone, the kids sleeping, she continues -

"I organized comfort in the armchair, poured the coffee black into a white mug that said MAMA, tapped cigarette ash into a ceramic hand - hollowed by Richard. I looked into the square bright window of daylight to ask myself the sapping question: What is man that woman lies down to adore him?"

What is man indeed? In another story he might be "The Pale Pink Roast." In another a washed-up Yiddish actor who likes to keep a mistress on the side. In another, Charles C. Charley, an air conditioning guy in his late thirties who gets involved with a teenager ("An Irrevocable Diameter"), or a sleazy Army corporal who romances a thirteen year-old at the same time he's dating her aunt ("A Woman, Young and Old"). Bottom line: men are mostly cads and opportunists. And Grace Paley is a very discerning and FUNNY writer. Philip Roth called these stories "splendidly comic and unladylike." Bingo!

Grace Paley, I suspect, enjoyed the men in her life - until she didn't. And she was not above poking gentle fun at herself either. That's a great trait in a writer. I'll say it again. I loved these stories. Thank you, Ms. Paley, and R.I.P.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER show less

Paley evokes the postwar New York Jewish demographic with such pathos, intimacy and irony. She very unassumingly gets under your skin, burrowing deeper with each successive story, with surprising metaphors and turns of phrases that make you pause and reread.

What struck me the most about this collection was the messy earthiness of its characters, - its network of decidedly rough and unpolished lower/-middle class women, who are knowingly or unknowingly swept up by the feminist waves of their show more times -, whose collective motherhood turns out to be a source of social change. A compelling contrast, compounded by Paley's (occasionally-brutally) minimalist prose.

Contains three collections: The Little Disturbances of Man, Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, and Later the Same Day.

Further media: Click here to listen to Nell Freudenberger discusses Grace Paley's short story "Somewhere Else" with The New Yorker's fiction editor, Deborah Treisman. The podcast includes a reading of the story by Barbara Rosenblatt. "Somewhere Else" was published in The New Yorker on October 23, 1978. show less