The Collected Stories
Grace Paley · 1994
Paley's stories are sui generis: politically ferocious, linguistically playful, rooted in the Jewish-American New York voice like no one else. She makes the domestic feel epic and the political feel intimate.
The case against
Plot offended her principles, and many pieces here are voice with nowhere to go: two pages of glorious Bronx talk that end mid-gesture. Faith, her ex-husbands, and the park-bench debates recur until separate stories blur into one long conversation. When the politics arrive undigested, as in the later work, charm tips over into preaching.
Short Stories · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
