Enormous Changes at the Last Minute: Stories

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 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 show more 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

But he does not know where the money for all of life will come.

This book is a city and wears me out as such. Nowhere is there the opportunistic grace of Let the Great World Spin, easier on the eyes and less real to the senses if I think back on my three-and-a-half year stint in LA. The second day of reading this shock shock shock of too slow and you’ll miss it wit left me with a migraine, no less, and so I put this back and plunged into the lengthier things I’m more akin to. War and Peace has that, if nothing else, an else that includes real woman to an extent that eventually chased me back to finishing this one up. Single mother of Jewish extract in the city I may never have been, but women and men in close quarters and closer show more dialogue vary little over the years and circumstances, and if I could dig McElroy, I can do this.

”Mrs. Finn,” I scream in order to be heard, for she’s some distance away and doesn’t pay attention the way I do, “what’s so terrible about fresh. EVIL is bad. WICKED is bad. ROBBING, MURDER, and PUTTING HEROIN IN YOUR BLOOD is bad.”

Paley’s a proponent of the modern times and all its lack of unearned respect. I am as well, but not as much: whether due to the sprawl of wooded creek posing as my backyard or long hours spent with the biggest tomes I could drag down from shelves, I have no head for voices or liking for Angela Carter’s declaration of “…Paley’s work mak[ing] the novel as a form seem virtually redundant.” Sit me down in the busiest intersection of passing folk and not two minutes will pass before my hand is itching towards something to mull over. I do take pleasure in the potential for rapid communication, the interchange of diversity day in day out, the blood bone gristle of infrastructure melded with the brain nerve pulsepoint of people, I do, I do! I just need some great periods of silent introspection (little afforded by urban living) on a regular basis, else I get cranky.

He had once killed a farm boy made crazy by crowds in the city. The boy had run all day in terror round and round Central Park. People thought he was a runner because he wore an undershirt, but he had finally entered the park, and with a kitchen knife he had killed one baby and wounded two or three others. “Too many people,” he screamed when he killed.

Paley’s a planter of tinier seeds. In less couched terms, Paley doesn't fuck around, what with her style narrowing into the heart of things without the comfort of all enclosing barriers, making us multitask in paying attention and plying imagination at tenfold plus the pace of the usual prose (spoonfeeding us ideologies and cringing back from every accidental increase of force in expectation of the spit). She’d shake her head at me, speedy reader that I am, but I did realize the sloppiness of my first effort and subsequently went back for a more serious combing, so I’m hoping she wouldn’t be too put out.

”Well, you just have to let the story lie around till some agreement can be reached between you and the stubborn hero.”

I grinned in chagrin at that. To be fair, fiction’s usually extemporaneous in the details rather than the fibrous mess of –isms, and when the reverse is the case I’m all set for inevitable polemic, but if Paley has a cause, it’s a breed of Legion. I’d say she’d like Tumblr, but as there’s none of the grimier evidence of human contact in multifarious infinitude of a geography that likes to think itself logical, she might think it too facile. Say what you will about the ‘net and words words words, but no one’s been horrifically murdered in them yet. show less

Well, I was surprised by this one. I love short stories. Somewhere, somehow I heard about Grace Paley. That she was a special teller of short stories. I obtained a copy of this collection with great expectations. The GR rating of 4 added to those expectations. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out as expected. Yes, Grace Paley is a unique teller of short stories. Some of her stories are so short that they are over before you have gotten to know a character or what the story might be about. I simply couldn’t find much to enjoy. The one aspect of her stories I did like was the repeat appearance of the character Faith across multiple stories. Unfortunately, except for Faith, I didn't feel like I got to know anyone. When the writer is also show more an artist, the art can accentuate the story. But sometimes there is just the art, and it has nothing to do with the story. That is Grace Paley for me, at least in this collection. I can recognize the art for what it is. I can even appreciate the art to some degree. The art, however, did not help the stories. show less

Sharp. Very much one time, one place, and one quirky mind.

I liked Grace Paley a great deal years ago; I still do, but now--being an old broad myself--find elisions in these stories.

This was the next stop on my quest to read the short story masters. I'd been hearing great things about Grace Paley for a long time so was quite pleased to discover a copy of this book at the Book Thing. While I thought it was a good read, I enjoyed some of the stories much more than others. Paley's characters are often single mothers living in NYC, and I wasn't always able to connect with them. She definitely had a distinct style, and her prose reflects a careful attention to word choice. Overall, I think I appreciated her storytelling craft and mastery of language more than her themes.

I was just going to give this four stars to balance my GR quota but whatever. At least half of these are in the ten most affecting stories I've ever read.