Donald Barthelme: "Grace Paley is a wonderful writer and troublemaker. We are fortunate to have her in our country."

I love the Bronx-born short-story writer Grace Paley, especially her 1974 collection Enormous Changes at the Last Minute. The book contains only 17 stories, but there’s so much humor, pathos and wisdom packed into those pages. (Although I actually recommend you instead buy The Collected Stories, since you can get all 45 of her published short works for just pennies more.)

A political activist as well as a writer, Paley’s work in Enormous Changes was informed by the tumult of New York in the ’60s and early ’70s. She was the perfect writer for that time and place.

Here’s an excerpt from a 1985 David Remnick article about Paley (when she was 62) from the Washington Post:

“‘I’ve been here for almost forever,’ she says. Take ‘here’ to mean New York, and that is true. Paley’s background is richer than just the block. Her parents, Isaac Goodside and Manya Ridnyik, left Russian around 1905 and settled in New York, first on the Lower East Side and then in the Bronx. When they were young in Russia they had been Social Democrats opposed to the czar. Goodside had been exiled to Siberia and Ridnyik to Germany.

In New York, Goodside helped teach himself English by reading Dickens. He became a doctor. Paley’s mother took care of the house–Paley herself often escapes to sweeping and washing when her stories won’t come unstuck.

‘When I was little I used to love to listen to my parents’ stories, all the talk that went on,’ she says. ‘I loved to listen and soon I loved to talk and tell.'”