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Article: Grace Paley: A Listener in the City
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- April 17, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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THE COLLECTED STORIES
By Grace Paley
Farrar Straus Giroux. 464 pp. $27.50
GRACE PALEY'S stories have achieved something of a cult or
classic status, and with good reason. Since their first appearance
in book form in 1959 with The Little Disturbances of Man, they have
been notable for their humor and urban grit, their quick-witted
sadness, and for their voices. No one else's stories sound like
these. The stories don't seem literary so much as colloquial
socialist-democratic, spoken aloud on a street corner or a front
stoop, to witnesses.
This book brings together all 45 of them, from the first
collection through the second, Enormous Changes at the Last Minute,
to the most recent, Later ...