We've lost Grace Paley

[EFerrari]

Grace Paley, Writer and Activist, Dies at 84



Grace Paley, the celebrated writer and social activist whose short stories explored in precise, pungent and tragicomic style the struggles of ordinary women muddling through everyday lives, died on Wednesday at her home in Thetford Hill, Vt. She was 84 and also had an apartment in Manhattan.

Ms. Paley had been ill with breast cancer for some time, her literary agent, Elaine Markson, said yesterday.

Ms. Paley’s output was modest, about four-dozen stories in three volumes: “The Little Disturbances of Man” (Doubleday, 1959); “Enormous Changes at the Last Minute” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1974); and “Later the Same Day” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1985). But she attracted a devoted following and was widely praised by critics for her pitch-perfect dialogue, which managed at once to be surgically spare and almost unimaginably rich.

Her “Collected Stories,” published by Farrar, Straus in 1994, was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. (The collection was reissued by Farrar, Straus this year.) From 1986 to 1988, Ms. Paley was New York’s first official state author; she was also a past poet laureate of Vermont.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/24/obituaries/24paley.html

"There is no freedom without fear / and bravery." Responsibility

[juajen]

1. I will make it a point to read some of her work.

Thank you for pointing me to her. I appreciate your post.

[EFerrari]

2. You're in for a treat! And, do you remember in the run up to the war

how Laura Bush had to cancel an event she'd put together for poets because they rebelled and were going to read anti-war poems at her? Grace Paley was the instigator. :evilgrin:

[Beaverhausen]

12. I do remember that

RIP Grace.

[EFerrari]

31. I didn't know at the time that she was the mover.

But, it doesn't surprise me, thinking back through it.

lol

[Katherine Brengle]

3. Ditto that --

I've never heard of her, but I will be adding her work to my reading list.

May she rest in peace.

[EFerrari]

4. Poetry and prose. An amazing poet and a wonderful storyteller.

I remember reading Paley as a teen and thinkng, wow, this is real! She wrote about class and "race" and gender and sexual practice so immediately.

And she was a troublemaker any mother would be proud of. :)

/oops

[Katherine Brengle]

13. Sounds like my kind of woman :)

I look forward to it :)

[EFerrari]

30. Fasten your seatbelt.

:)

[mzmolly]

28. Add me to the list of the newly curious.

:hi: RIP Grace.

[EFerrari]

29. When you read her, you feel like you are THERE.

She had this amazing gift for making real people real in print. That doesn't happen every day.

Enjoy, mzmolly. :toast:

[mzmolly]

37. I can't wait. Though, I'm finishing American Tragedy right now , or trying to.

I had no idea it was 900 pages when I requested it from the library. :crazy:

Thanks for the suggestion sfexpat. :hi:

[EFerrari]

38. She was a wonderful writer and a beautiful lady and a fighter for democracy.

She didn't have to do any of that but she did, because it was right.

Imagine that, :)

[mzmolly]

39. Inagine that.

:hi:

[femmedem]

41. An excerpt for you:

See my reply #34.

[annabanana]

5. This gal had a backbone of steel.

May her children be legion.

[EFerrari]

33. We have that opportunity.

:)

[villager]

6. and only "enormous changes at the last minute" can save us now!

Travel well, and gently, Grace....

[EFerrari]

7. Activism (from her Wiki entry):

Simultaneous with Paley's burgeoning fiction career, she began what would become a life-long commitment to political activism, particularly anti-militarization efforts. In the 1950s, Paley joined friends in protesting nuclear proliferation and American militarization; she also worked with the American Friends Service Committee to establish neighborhood peace groups, through which she met husband Robert Nichols.

With the escalation of the Vietnam War, Paley's activism reached a new level. Paley joined the War Resisters League and came to national prominence as an activist when she accompanied a 1969 peace mission to Hanoi to negotiate the release of prisoners of war. She also served as a delegate to the 1974 World Peace Conference in Moscow and in 1978, was arrested as one of "The White House Eleven" for unfurling an anti-nuclear banner on the White House lawn.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Paley

[janx]

8. NOOOOOOO!

:cry:

[EFerrari]

9. I don't think I want to live in a world with no Grace Paley in it.

:(

[EFerrari]

10. A Conversation with My Father

A Conversation with My Father
Grace Paley

My father is eighty-six years old and in bed. His heart, that bloody motor, is equally old and will not do certain jobs any more. It still floods his head with brainy light. But it won't let his legs carry the weight of his body around the house. Despite my metaphors, this muscle failure is not due to his old heart, he says, but to a potassium shortage. Sitting on one pillow, leaning on three, he offers last-minute advice and makes a request.
"I would like you to write a simple story just once more," he says, "the kind de Maupassant wrote, or Chekhov, the kind you used to write. Just recognizable people and then write down what happened to them next."
I say, "Yes, why not? That's possible." I want to please him, though I don't remember writing that way. I would like to try to tell such a story, if he means the kind that begins: "There was a woman..." followed by plot, the absolute line between two points which I've always despised. Not for literary reasons, but because it takes all hope away. Everyone, real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life.
Finally I thought of a story that had been happening for a couple of years right across the street. I wrote it down, then read it aloud. "Pa," I said, "how about this? Do you mean something like this?"

Once in my time there was a woman and she had a son. They lived nicely, in a small apartment in Manhattan. This boy at about fifteen became a junkie, which is not unusual in our neighborhood. In order to maintain her close friendship with him, she became a junkie too. She said it was part of the youth culture, with which she felt very much at home. After a while, for a number or reasons, the boy gave it all up and left the city and his mother in disgust. Hopeless and alone, she grieved. We all visit her.

"O.K., Pa, that's it," I said, "an unadorned and miserable tale."

http://www.wits.ac.za/humanities/lls/holistic/converse.htm

[EFerrari]

11. Kick

[Madspirit]

14. RIP...k&r...n/t

[EFerrari]

16. Thanks, Lee.

I want to read her all over again. What a piece of work. :hug:

[EFerrari]

15. I'm going to kick this a few more times. Grace Paley

was progressive before "progressive" was a thang.

For Grace, who taught me that even if you weren't a skinny blonde with a last name like "Johnson" and living in suburbia, you still had a real life that was really important.

:toast:

[Binka]

17. Another Kick For Gracie

What a wonderful woman. :cry:

[EFerrari]

22. I just can't stand it, Binka. But I'm a selfish youknowwhat.

:cry:

[Jack Rabbit]

18. ()

[EFerrari]

26. Days like this, I wish I lived in one of those cultures

where you wear big black clothes, tear your hair, beat your chest and wail.

What a light she was. Thank you, Jack Rabbit. :hug:

[Tsiyu]

19. Sorry to hear this

Glad she shared herself with the world while she was here.

I hope she had some happiness in her long, full life.

[EFerrari]

25. She was a clear, strong, consistent and REAL voice for peace.

It doesn't get better than that.

:toast: to Grace.

[cali]

20. I was thinking of her last weekend

during our poetry and tea benefit for AFSC. She read there 2 years ago. What a wonderful person she was!

[EFerrari]

23. She has this GIFT of making real peoples' real life real in words.

That just doesn't happen very often.

I'm pissed she's gone. That I never got to meet her or thank her for being who she was.

:cry:

[smoogatz]

21. She was one of the greats.

A lively and gentle soul, and one of the best writers of her generation, as well as being a committed and passionate peace activist. And she called everybody "honey."

As long as Grace Paley lived, there was hope for the world. I loved her; very sad she's gone. Sincerest condolences to her family.

[EFerrari]

24. Who will be Grace now?

She took on anything and everything. We were so lucky to have her for a while. :hug:

[EFerrari]

27. Kick for a strong woman, a great writer and a fearless activist.

[EFerrari]

32. Kick

[femmedem]

34. From "Wants"

From "Wants", a story which begins with the narrator meeting her ex-husband on the steps of the library.

"...I want, for instance, to be a different person. I want to be the woman who brings these two books back in two weeks. I want to be the effective citizen who changes the school system and addresses the Board of Estimate on the troubles of this dear urban center.

I had promised my children to end the war before they grew up.

I wanted to have been married forever to one person, my ex-husband or my present one. Either has enough character for a whole life, which as it turns out is really not such a long time. You couldn't exhaust either man's qualities or get under the rock of his reasons in one short life.

Just this morning I looked out the window to watch the street for a while and saw that the little sycamores the city had dreamily planted a couple of years before the kids were born had come that day to the prime of their lives..."

Oh Grace, you were one of my favorites. I'll read you tonight before I drift off to sleep.

[EFerrari]

36. A great spirit that was not afraid -- or, that understood fear

is a prerequisite for change. :hug:

[EFerrari]

35. I don't really know who of you all are rec'ing this thread.

But I want to say this.

Grace Paley was so important to me. She taught me that you can take care of your family AND your community AND that the work was all of a piece. She showed me that the dots connect and that whatever we can manage to do in our community is the most important work any American can do. That if we break the job down to the small steps we can take, we can and do make a difference in the quality of life for ourselves, for our neighbors, for human life in the larger frame.

She wrote about ordinary Americans as if they were important, were worth thinking about. She wrote about us.

Thank you, Gracie, for illuminating us to ourselves. We will always be in your debt.

Good job.

[EFerrari]

40. Kick for a true mentor

[EFerrari]

42. Last kick for an amazing woman, American, writer and progressive.

:kick:

[pnorman]

43. I was checking "Democracy Now" for something else, and saw this:

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/24/1322211

pnorman

[EFerrari]

44. Thank you.

:)

[pnorman]

46. And thank YOU for posting this notice.

I had heard the name before, but had completely misidentified her in my memory. I'm not a card-carrying Christian, so I'll offer a thought to her memory, rather than a prayer. Later, I'll further honor her by diligently Googling her name.

pnorman

[EFerrari]

47. I figured out today that the friend who gifted me with her as a kid

is also gone and also lost to cancer. :(

There's a lot of things I'd be willing to forgo in this life. Paley isn't one of them and neither was my friend, Marilyn.

:toast: Absent friends and present company.

[smirkymonkey]

45. Rest in Peace, Grace.

:kick:

[EFerrari]

48. Kick