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Authors
Grace Paley (b. 1922)
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The Collected Stories (1994) draw on Paley’s three major volumes of short fiction: The Little Disturbances of Man (1959), Enormous Changes at the Last Minute (1974), and Later the Same Day (1985). Other stories and poems appear (with paintings by Vera B. Williams) in Long Walks and Intimate Talks (1991) Begin Again: Collected Poems appeared in 2000. The three major studies of Paley’s fiction are Grace Paley’s Life Stories: A Literary Biography (1993) by Judith Arcana, Grace Paley: A Study of the Short Fiction (1990) by Neil D. Isaacs, and Grace Paley: Illuminating the Dark Lives (1990) by Jacqueline Taylor.
Grace Paley was born to Russian Jewish immigrants in New York City and attended Hunter College and the Merchants and Bankers Business and Secretarial School. From the start of her writing career, the power of dialogue has been an important element of her work: one of her recurring story lines has been the portrayal of the relationships that women develop by talking to each other. Paley has also been active in fighting for various social concerns, from protests against the Vietnam War to demonstrations against the production of nuclear weapons. Her short stories are collected in such volumes as The Little Disturbances of Man (1959), Enormous Changes at the Last Minute (1974), and Later the Same Day (1985).
Questions for Discussion and Writing
A Conversation with My Father (1974) melds two narratives together: it is an intimate conversation between a dying father and a loving daughter; and it is a story about storytelling, about the relationship between literary modes and standards and life as experienced.
1. After the narrator of A Conversation with My Father reads her father one paragraph of the story she is working on, the father and daughter begin a good-natured argument about how stories should be told. What values and expectations are in conflict here? What values do they eventually discover that they have in common, with regard to fiction?
2. Late in the conversation, the father raises repeatedly the idea of "tragedy," which results in another intense discussion. What is it that the father wants his artist-daughter to recognize? Does she understand what he is asking her to see?
