Short, white-haired, plainspoken Grace Paley is the patron saint–or the feminist, pacifist, leftist, Jewish matron saint–of those of us who believe in combining the artistic and the activist life. (Not that we necessarily do it, but we believe in it.) There’s the Paley whose last fiction collection was a National Book Award finalist, and the Paley who’s lain down on the steps of the Pentagon to protest the arms race. She traveled to Hanoi in 1969, has had stories published in the New Yorker as well as defunct political magazines, and became known as a writer’s writer for her distinctive voice.
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Last year, Vanity Fair saluted Paley, now 76, in a profile complete with an Annie Leibovitz portrait and the honorific “America’s mistress of the short story.” Her writing is cryptic, simple, rhythmic, dense as poetry, just this side of disingenuous. Starting one of her stories is like walking in on a conversation on the subway or, more likely, in an apartment kitchen or a park in Greenwich Village.
Her stories examine the connections between people, the way they talk and fight, the way they hurt and accept one another, how they seek respite from situations they can’t change. “I’m not good at plot,” Paley cheerfully admits. But then she expands the definition of the device, seeing it as a naturally occurring phenomenon: “Plot is like the words ‘and then.’ There has to be plot. If you’re using up time, you have some plot.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): Grace Paley photo by Alexander Colhoun.
