R.I.P. Grace Paley

Posted 23 August, 2007 in Obituaries |

Sad news: Grace Paley, the great American short-story writer, has died at age 84.

The obituaries and tributes are starting to come in. Everyone who ever met Paley, even in passing, seems to have a story about her, which is understandable because, in addition to being one of the finest writers of short fiction of her (or any) era, she was also one of the warmest, most generous people imaginable.

I had the privilege of meeting her once, at Toronto’s Harbourfront International Festival of Authors, in 1995. During an on-stage interview and Q&A, I asked her why she wrote exclusively short stories, given the fact that very few people read short-story collections as compared to novels. She gave a polite answer to a question she’d clearly heard many times before and moved on.

When I went up to get my book signed after the event, I introduced myself and she recognized me as the person who asked the question about short stories. She asked me if I was a writer, and I said that I was. At the time I was working on an as-yet unfinished collection of stories. She pulled me aside and fixed me with one of the most intense stares I’ve ever experienced.

She told me that when she started writing her publisher advised her to change her subject matter, since there was no market for Jewish fiction in America. She then said that the year she published her first collection (1959), Philip Roth published his first book. Bernard Malamud and Isaac Bashevis Singer were already publishing. Ten years later, Leonard Michaels would burst onto the scene with his first book. She said to me, “So what I have to tell you is this: you do what you have to do, and don’t listen to them, because they don’t know what they’re talking about.”

Paley also gave me what is perhaps the best advice about writing fiction I’ve ever heard: “Don’t write what you know. Write what you don’t know about what you know.”

She was a remarkable woman, and a consummate artist. She will be sorely missed.

Grace Paley: I would say that stories are closer to poetry than they are to the novel because first they are shorter, and second they are more concentrated, more economical, and that kind of economy, the pulling together of all the information and making leaps across the information, is really close to poetry. By leaps I mean thought leaps and feeling leaps. Also, when short stories are working right, you pay more attention to language than most novelists do.

1 comment to “R.I.P. Grace Paley”

Kerry, August 23rd, 2007 at 8:51 pm:

• That’s a lovely post Steven. Thank you.

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