Grace Paley

421 Pages·2017·14.67 MB·English

by  Judith. Arcana

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Dissertations Theses and Dissertations
1989
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Judith. Arcana
Loyola University Chicago
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Copyright © 1989 Judith. Arcana
GRACE PALEY
LIFE AND STORIES
by
JUDITH ARCANA
A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School
of Loyola University of Chicago in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
May
1989
( {c) 1989 Judith .Arcana)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work owes an unusual debt to its subject, Grace Paley,
who gave many hours and days of her time, over a period of
four years, to its author. Additionally, this work has been
nurtured from its conception by Professor Joyce P. Wexler,
whose support, editing, advice, and criticism have been
invaluable. Professor Suzanne S. Gossett contributed
critical readings and discussion, translation, and an
ongoing analysis of the methods of the author. Professor
Paul Jay assisted with thoughtful readings and criticism.
Other Loyolans--faculty, students and staff--have given much
assistance throughout the research and writing of this text.
They include Gloria Conforti, Allen J. Frantzen, Carole
Hayes, Patricia Lorimer Lundberg, Janice Mouton, Lorna
Newman, Jill N. Reich, James E. Rocks, Judith Wittner, and
Nancy Workman. The women of Northwestern University
Library's Special Collections were of great help. Jonathan
Arlook provided extraordinary support of almost every
conceivable kind, from emotional sustenance through
financial aid to technological instruction. Many others,
friends, colleagues and relatives of Grace Paley and Judith
Arcana, have also offered support, assistance and criticism
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throughout the years devoted to this project. These include
interview subjects Karl Biesinger, Sybil Claiborne, Jane
cooper, Victor Goodside, Bob Nichols, Danny Paley, DebQie
Paley, Jess Paley, Laura Paley, Nora Paley, and Jeanne
Tenenbaum; as well as Cathryn Adamsky, Daniel Arcana-Pildes,
Peaches Blessington, Arlene Kaplan Daniels, Omie Daniels,
Flora Faraci, Susan Koppelman, Susan Korn, Stuart Leven,
Donna Lachman, Lois Nowicki, the late Nan Nowik, Stephanie
Riger, and Jody Speckman.
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PREFACE
We often read and write to discover what is unknown
to us and apparently different from ourselves. But just as
often we seek familiarity, similarity, a kind of homeground.
As readers--Dorothy Parker's "constant" readers, Virginia
Woolf's "common" readers--and as scholars and writers, we
ask, what about me? Where in literature are reflections of
my experience, my sensibilities, my world view, my politics?
When I analyze and write about John Keats, or D.H. Lawrence,
or Beowulf, as I have done recently, I am ranging far off,
studying the history and possibilities of a distant "other"
juxtaposed in contrast to myself. But when I study she who
is most like me, I learn what has been--and might be-
possible for myself.l This has always been true for readers
of fiction.)
1. "There is something insidious about Historians
and Biographers and the ways in which they make women of
achievement seem so different from the rest of us that we
are unable to think of ourselves as emulating them. They
are not different--at least not in ways that make their
lives and achievements something we cannot use for models."
(Susan Koppelman, in rev of Between Women [Ascher, et al]
The Women's Studies Review, 8.1. (Jan/Feb 1986) 10-12.
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scholars need to allow for a variety of perspectives
and genres in criticism; we need to write and read different
voices in our research as well as in the texts we present to
our students. If critics are female, Black, Hispanic,
Asian-American, working class, gay or lesbian, but write in
the voices of those who are not, taking on the dominant
critical voice--which remains singular despite its
apparently diverse ideological bases--their own identities
are lost; they are effectively excluded, just as the stories
of their people, written in their true voices, have been
excluded.
Since 1985 I have visited with Grace Paley many
times, a Boswell to her Johnson at readings, meetings, and
kitchen tables. Though we drink more tea than coffee, and
probably won't tour the Hebrides, we have managed to walk,
talk and eat together in New York, Vermont and Illinois.
Like our gentlemen predecessors, we have grown into mutual
respect and affection, but we have gone beyond Boswell's
memory and stenography by taping many hours of formal
interviews as well. So this book is written by a woman who
knows Grace Paley personally, a woman who has become her
'
friend. Consequently, I write about her as "Grace." After
serious deliberation, I have decided that the distance
defined and implied by the traditional scholarly use of the
subject's last name is inappropriate here. That usage rings
V
false for a woman whom everyone calls Grace--including her
daughter, her son and daughter-in-law, and her undergraduate
students, as well as friends and colleagues.
I am aware of the concern of other feminist
scholars, reacting to the condescension of critics who
minimized and patronized the few women authors they bothered
to mention by writing and speaking of one "Emily" or
another, and of "Charlotte," "Jane," and "Virginia." The
subsequent choice--to write and speak of the women who are
our subjects by their full or family names--is made in
defense, in the spirit of reparation and homage. That
posture is a useful one, especially in the academic world,
but it has by no means calcified, and is not always
necessary. In this book, which offers Grace Paley as a
character as well as a subject, the use of her first name-
and the first names of others as well--suits the text in
both purpose and spirit. Additionally, accepting James
Boswell's precedent, I do not intend to address the issue of
scholarly objectivity--its elusiveness, its dubious value as
an ideal; instead I offer the results of a self-conscious
struggle toward an analysis and explication of Grace Paley's
lifework.
When she learned to drive--around the age of fifty-
Grace Paley loved driving so much she thought she would
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become a New York City taxi driver. Probably the only
reason she didn't was that her schedule couldn't accommodate
another commitment. Her daily mail looks like the postal
carrier's load for a whole route, her calendar like an
intricate puzzle with no clues. Her schedule might prompt
an observer to ask what the major political commitments and
priorities are, in all that flurry of variegated action.
And she'd answer, "When you say 'major things, important
things'--and ask where most of my thought and energy is
now--there's such a strong connection [among them all] that
you really can't separate" one issue from another. And if
the observer should remonstrate, "But you can't do it all,
really," Grace Paley says, "Well, you .... You can do a
~
great deal of it. There's no reason why you can't think
about several things and work on several things,2
"Some people~ totally interested in Central
American work, and that's real good. First of all, all of
our money is going there. When we pay taxes, that's where
the money is going: Central American militarization .... Then
in some states, like Vermont, there's ERA stuff still. And
all the stuff about women's reproductive rights. That's
absolutely key. There's nothing that isn't terribly
2. Throughout this text, all quoted material which
is not otherwise cited has been taken from my own
interviews.
vii
important. I mean, how can a woman think that their attack
on our bodies is not a real attack? For me, my feminism is
getting stronger all the time."
To get a sense of how she does what she does, I
asked her, one day in the fall of 1987 in her Vermont home,
to tell me her work schedule for the coming week. Teaching
wasn't on the list that week, and we didn't include sweeping
and laundry, or cooking, grocery shopping and washing
dishes, or attending meetings and visiting with friends and
family. That week she had three major commitments: "The
writing that I get done will be non-fiction, so to speak. I
have to give a talk on Monday on Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, in
our local library. ,It'll be a small group of people
probably, and I could have taken Edith Wharton. But I chose
Freeman because I figured everybody reads Edith Wharton."
"And this way they'll have to read Freeman," I say,
and she says, "Yeah, if they want to. If they want to talk
to me on Monday, they'll have to read Freeman. So I use my
local reputation to get people to read Freeman. Okay, so I
have to give that little literary talk. No big deal, not
too many people." I ask her to tell me, in each case, what
her purpose is, what it's for. "My purpose?" she echoes,
and I think she's indignant. "They asked me." I point out
that a lot of people ask her to do things.
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