sauce on the side

yesterday harper lee broke her silence after watching hank aaron’s induction into the alabama academy of honor. i love harper lee. and in her honor, i’m maybe going to break my blogging silence in order to call everyone’s attention to the death of one ms. grace paley, one of my personal heroes.

grace paley was a writer and activist who produced three slim volumes of short stories in the midst of trying to be a wife, mother, and conscious citizen of the bronx and the world. i discovered her short stories when i was in high school, and they were a touch stone of the what i now think of as the canon of survival (it contains adrienne rich, mary oliver, wendell berry, virginia wolf, robert haas..), that is, writers who helped me get through adolescence without losing my head. grace paley’s stories are about sassy determined women who are trying to take the troubles of their personal lives with a grain of salt while refusing to let the troubles of the world pass them by unnoticed. in her protagonists, she captures this great mix of wry matter-of-fact humor about life with a passionate wish for something more, something better,that always made me feel like they were my role models. they worry over their inability to return library books, their marriages, their sons, the way they love, the future, the present (and what they should be doing to ensure one and improve the other). they ( and grace paley herself) were care-givers, but also rabble-rousers, women who knew how to make dinner on a budget, but who weren’t afraid to challenge authority wherever they saw fit. i loved them.

when i was a senior, wesleyan brought grace paley to campus as part of the writer’s project or something. this resulted in two fantastic happenings. the first was hilarious: she gave a reading of her stories in that theatre where they played that big instrument with lots of parts (anyone know what i’m talking about here? the one that was underground?) anyway. she read her stories, and it was sensational. then there was time for questions. people asked about her past, her stories, etc. then this one girl did that thing that someone ALWAYS does when there is a famous or even semi-famous person around. she stood up and laid out her personal baggage for, like, five minutes (ok, it was probably only 3 but you know how time feels under these kind of circumstances) anyway. it’s all praise, all “oh, i love your work, i really feel like has influenced me, I..” but with WAY too many “I” s and “Me”s thrown in to make is anything but embarrassing and annoying. the whole room is seething in awkwardness. FINALLY, the girl finished. there was a pause. little grace paley, with her dress and her fly-a-way white hair around her little brown eyes, looked at the girl. “thank you” she said quietly. then, after about a beat, because she seemed to feel like she must be honest, her face turned kind of embarrassed “i didn’t hear you”, she said, admitting it.
i don’t know if the hilarity of this situation comes through the way i’ve written it, but i was in stitches. she was so contrite, and so honest, and it was so funny the way she tried to pull it off and then couldn’t. i got some of the worst giggles of my life, and probably squeezed my friend alex’s hand off trying to stay quiet.

the next morning, i had weaseled my way into the meet-grace-paley breakfast. it was in that building where they do the rewards receptions. i remember because it was senior year, and it seemed like it was all-receptions, all-the-time. we ate some dry aramark bagels, and then there was a q & a session. people asked her about her writing process (obituaries suggest it was hap hazard) and her life in new york. when it came to finally be my turn, i asked her simply, “do you have any advice for us, i mean, about, you know…how to live? i mean, you know, for our lives, just living them?” (yes, i’m pretty sure about all those ‘you know”s. it happens) grace looked over at me, and what is amazing to me is that she didn’t take a moment. one would think that being asked for advice on How To Live my give someone a bit of pause. but she looked up, and said, “yes. what you need to do is go outside of yourself. go out into the world and meet people who are different from you, who have experiences that are outside of your experience. work and walk new different neighborhoods, meet people and talk to them. because as you talk to the people around you, you will hear their stories. and as you hear people’s stories, your politics will grow out of what you think about what you’ve heard. and your actions will grow out of what you will begin to believe. so, talk to people. talk to them. listen to them. go. ”

although she was busy woman who didn’t even hear the one rambling soliloquy that i ever heard directed towards her, i do kind of wish that grace paley could know how much i have tried to take her advice to heart.

she’s dead now, so obviously i can’t. but i can recommend that all of you go to a book store and buy the collected stories of grace paley. please?

when beautiful, stately harper lee was approached by a reporter in the south yesterday, she said, simply, “it’s better to be silent than to be a fool”.
the beauty of grace paley is that she was neither.

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