Grace Paley

Seventeen stories written over the past fifteen years reveal the author's vision of human love and tragedy

Enormous Changes at the Last Minute

Jack asked me, Isn't it a terrible thing to grow up in the shadow of another person's sorrow?

I suppose so, I answered. As you know, I grew up in the summer sunlight of upward mobility. This leached out a lot of that dark ancestral grief.

He went on with his life. It's not your fault if that's the case. Your bad disposition is not your fault. Yet you're always angry. No way out but continuous rage or the nut-house.

What if this sorrow is all due to history? I asked.

mrs. paley, i owe you an apology... i was not in fact familiar with your game. thank you for living such a metal life and still finding time to write a treasure trove of deceptively simple stories in prose so fluid i might be tempted to go for the cliché and compare it to water.

as with any short story collection, some are better than others, but if anything was going to convert me from my rocky history with anthologies and remind me redemption is possible, i’m not surprised it’s this one. “a conversation with my father” alone is to 

what “uncle wiggily in connecticut” was to 

something about these blue hour stories, so much like little hopper paintings.

the datedness of an author’s style & subject tends to alienate a work from a literary audience no longer in touch with a bygone demographic, but paley strikes a so-specific-it-became-the-opposite approach to what are essentially different études around the same archetype & way of life. she disappeared completely into the writing and i along with her. so, so yum. i need to go back and reread some of these with a better brain for taking them apart.

Jack asked me, Isn't it a terrible thing to grow up in the shadow of another person's sorrow?

I suppose so, I answered. As you know, I grew up in the summer sunlight of upward mobility. This leached out a lot of that dark ancestral grief.

He went on with his life. It's not your fault if that's the case. Your bad disposition is not your fault. Yet you're always angry. No way out but continuous rage or the nut-house.

What if this sorrow is all due to history? I asked.

mrs. paley, i owe you an apology... i was not in fact familiar with your game. thank you for living such a metal life and still finding time to write a treasure trove of deceptively simple stories in prose so fluid i might be tempted to go for the cliché and compare it to water.

as with any short story collection, some are better than others, but if anything was going to convert me from my rocky history with anthologies and remind me redemption is possible, i’m not surprised it’s this one. “a conversation with my father” alone is to enormous changes what “uncle wiggily in connecticut” was to nine stories—something about these blue hour stories, so much like little hopper paintings.

the datedness of an author’s style & subject tends to alienate a work from a literary audience no longer in touch with a bygone demographic, but paley strikes a so-specific-it-became-the-opposite approach to what are essentially different études around the same archetype & way of life. she disappeared completely into the writing and i along with her. so, so yum. i need to go back and reread some of these with a better brain for taking them apart.

Enormous Changes at the Last Minute

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