The Collected Stories (FSG Classics)

In a story called, "A Conversation With My Father" Paley writes:
""I would like you to write a simple story just once more," he says, "the kind 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."


People say short stories are dying...   May 20, 2001
16 out of 17 found this review helpful

This collection of short fiction demonstrates just how horrible that would be. Grace Paley's work is amazing in its lyrical sound - at some moments sparse, at others extremely detailed, and always poignant. Stories about single mothers, about women visiting elderly parents in odd nursing homes, about families in general, and how the world works (and worked). It is hard to find a good short story writer... Somewhere between a novel (overly stuffed with words) and a poem (too highly styled and formatted to say what it really wants to say) a short story, when good, can come closest to literary perfection - you can say all that you want to say, but only that. Grace Paley's stories come close to that perfection. She is one of the most underappreciated great authors out there.