Grace Paley - A Writer Whose Short Stories Will Be Around For a Long Time

Grace Paley, whose volume Collected Stories was a finalist or the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 1994 wrote only forty five stories but when she died the New York Times featured the obituary of this New Yorker who wrote about daily life in her own city.

Paley was known for her crafted stories based on the ironic, witty oral tradition common in the immigrant New York City neighborhood where she grew up. As she said, "I write fiction but I am writing the truth." Her stories were originally published as The Little Disturbances of Man (1959) Enormous Changes at the Last Minute (1974) and Later the Same Day (1985.)

Before it was fashionable, Paley was writing about women's lives in the larger context of society. At first she thought no one would be interested but her friend, writer Donald Barthelme, encouraged her to look for a publisher.

Here's a sample from an early story, "Goodbye and Good Luck:"

"Poor Rosie! If there was more life in my little sister, she would know my heart is a regular college of feelings and there is such information between my corset and me that her whole married life is a kindergarten."

And from the later "Midrash on Happiness" with her frequent character Faith Darwin thinking things through:

"By work to do she included the important work of bringing children righteously up. By righteously that along with being useful and speaking truth to the community, they must do no harm. By no harm she meant not only to the friend the lover the parent the coworker (the city the nation)--"

Work, family, writing and political activism were all important in Paley's life. A longtime teacher of writing at Sarah Lawrence and the City University of New York, she also served as a Vice President of the PEN American Center. For years, her Greenwich Village neighbors were accustomed to seeing her handing out leaflets on Sixth Avenue.

John Sayles and Susan Rice saw the dramatic potential of Paley's work and combined several of her stories into the movie that used her title, The Little Disturbances of Man. Her story of the same name was dramatized by the American Jewish Traveling Theatre.

Among Paley's friends was the award-winning science fiction writer Ursula LeGuin. Portland, Oregon, where LeGuin lives, is a long way from Grace Paley's Greenwich Village but about ten years ago the two women walked in together as a Northwest Writers awards ceremony was starting.

The emcee didn't miss a beat. He stood there beaming, welcoming "two great ladies, two great writers."