Getting the Book: This book is out of print, but copies of both cloth and paperback editions are often found at Powells and other vendors online, in various conditions and at various prices. It’s also in many libraries.
- commentary
In the early eighties, having become interested in the idea of biography, the idea of studying and writing about one person, I decided my next book would be about a writer, a woman, so I could learn from her (as Grace said about Virginia Woolf, I wanted to learn how she did it). In 1984, I started graduate school; Grace showed up at a conference nearby in my first semester. When I heard her talk – about politics, writing, and the politics of writing – I knew she was the one for me. So I wrote literary biography for my dissertation and, after graduation, turned the dissertation into this book. From those years ‘til her death in August of 2007, we were friends; we had a good time together.
Grace Paley was one of the great masters of the short story form; her work serves as one kind of standard and goal for anyone and everyone writing stories, in any language, in any country. She also wrote poems and essays that tell us, in her startlingly clear voice, things we need to know. Her work in the streets has been neither less nor more important than her work on the page; these different forms, these ways of working, are multiple facets of the one thing: her lifework.
Grace was one of the “famous” contemporary women who understand that their success is fostered by women’s liberation movement. She knew – and said – that only a few critics and opinion-makers paid serious attention to her until waves of women lifted and carried her, buying her books by the thousands.
By the time of her death, Grace had become a national treasure in the USA, both loved and honored. Because of her joyous, funny, smart and intensely interested years of living, people in countries all over the world gratefully celebrate her.
In the early eighties, having become interested in the idea of biography, the idea of studying and writing about one person, I decided my next book would be about a writer, a woman, so I could learn from her (as Grace said about Virginia Woolf, I wanted to learn how she did it). In 1984, I started graduate school; Grace showed up at a conference nearby in my first semester. When I heard her talk – about politics, writing, and the politics of writing – I knew she was the one for me. So I wrote literary biography for my dissertation and, after graduation, turned the dissertation into this book. From those years ‘til her death in August of 2007, we were friends; we had a good time together.
Grace Paley was one of the great masters of the short story form; her work serves as one kind of standard and goal for anyone and everyone writing stories, in any language, in any country. She also wrote poems and essays that tell us, in her startlingly clear voice, things we need to know. Her work in the streets has been neither less nor more important than her work on the page; these different forms, these ways of working, are multiple facets of the one thing: her lifework.Grace was one of the “famous” contemporary women who understand that their success is fostered by women’s liberation movement. She knew – and said – that only a few critics and opinion-makers paid serious attention to her until waves of women lifted and carried her, buying her books by the thousands.
By the time of her death, Grace had become a national treasure in the USA, both loved and honored. Because of her joyous, funny, smart and intensely interested years of living, people in countries all over the world gratefully celebrate her.
- excerpts
Grace Paley believes that we are all creatures of our time, born and formed in history. Her stories always carry the past within their present, even as both turn amazingly into the future. Every story, she has said, is at least two stories, and her own often include more than two plots, more than two sets of characters, more than two “central” themes. This is one of the ways in which her work is most true and most autobiographical, for the stories of our lives never do separate and line up neatly into diagrammable, chronological plots. Instead, our stories weave in and out erratically, absorbing and eclipsing each other in turn, moving back and forth through history, which contains them all....
Out of the PTA and into the streets, she had developed into a charismatic speaker and organizer. Like the voices of her fictional narrators, her own voice is compelling. In the gritty charm of its Bronx cadence and pronunciation, Grace’s voice is easy to understand, compellingly sincere, simple and intimate, revelatory and explanatory without being directive; her public style is no less personal than her immediate presence. A live model of the feminist axiom – the personal is political – Grace Paley often catalyzes and embodies the thoughts and feelings of her audience as she speaks....
When she thinks about having become 'a literary person,' Grace agrees that the transformation took place over a long period and was almost imperceptible. She rarely speaks of the long time it took for her to define herself as a writer, but she willingly generalizes from her own experience to comment on how difficult it is for women to be taken seriously – even in the midst of success. In 1984 … Grace addressed this issue [at a conference, and is quoted as] “saying that her stories were considered nice, little unimportant stories about domestic situations. As if to prove her point, an article in the Chicago Tribune about th[at] conference referred to her as an ‘intellectual version of Erma Bombeck.’ [and don’t even think about what that foolish phrase implies about the estimable Ms. Bombeck]....
Grace Paley believes that we are all creatures of our time, born and formed in history. Her stories always carry the past within their present, even as both turn amazingly into the future. Every story, she has said, is at least two stories, and her own often include more than two plots, more than two sets of characters, more than two “central” themes. This is one of the ways in which her work is most true and most autobiographical, for the stories of our lives never do separate and line up neatly into diagrammable, chronological plots. Instead, our stories weave in and out erratically, absorbing and eclipsing each other in turn, moving back and forth through history, which contains them all....
Out of the PTA and into the streets, she had developed into a charismatic speaker and organizer. Like the voices of her fictional narrators, her own voice is compelling. In the gritty charm of its Bronx cadence and pronunciation, Grace’s voice is easy to understand, compellingly sincere, simple and intimate, revelatory and explanatory without being directive; her public style is no less personal than her immediate presence. A live model of the feminist axiom – the personal is political – Grace Paley often catalyzes and embodies the thoughts and feelings of her audience as she speaks....When she thinks about having become 'a literary person,' Grace agrees that the transformation took place over a long period and was almost imperceptible. She rarely speaks of the long time it took for her to define herself as a writer, but she willingly generalizes from her own experience to comment on how difficult it is for women to be taken seriously – even in the midst of success. In 1984 … Grace addressed this issue [at a conference, and is quoted as] “saying that her stories were considered nice, little unimportant stories about domestic situations. As if to prove her point, an article in the Chicago Tribune about th[at] conference referred to her as an ‘intellectual version of Erma Bombeck.’ [and don’t even think about what that foolish phrase implies about the estimable Ms. Bombeck]....
- response
When told that the University of lllinois had taken it out of print, Grace Paley exclaimed: “Oh! People love that book!”
Click the blue links here to read an interview with Grace done the spring before her death by Ricky Gard Diamond and an online memorial to Grace by Ursula K. Le Guin. Listen to CircleA Radio's hour-long show honoring Grace, broadcast on KBOO in Oregon, a few months after her death in 2007; this one is an interview with ja-as-biographer — all about Grace, featuring several clips of her, reading & talking on different occasions over the years. Read a brief essay about Grace in On The Issues, The Progressive Women's Magazine (February, 2010 - asked by the editors to discuss Grace in terms of their issue's theme, I wrote this). And - check out this excellent blog/news resource.
When told that the University of lllinois had taken it out of print, Grace Paley exclaimed: “Oh! People love that book!”
Click the blue links here to read an interview with Grace done the spring before her death by Ricky Gard Diamond and an online memorial to Grace by Ursula K. Le Guin. Listen to CircleA Radio's hour-long show honoring Grace, broadcast on KBOO in Oregon, a few months after her death in 2007; this one is an interview with ja-as-biographer — all about Grace, featuring several clips of her, reading & talking on different occasions over the years. Read a brief essay about Grace in On The Issues, The Progressive Women's Magazine (February, 2010 - asked by the editors to discuss Grace in terms of their issue's theme, I wrote this). And - check out this excellent blog/news resource.