Grace Paley

Grace Paley was an amazing writer. With her death, my parents generation of women writers, arguably comes to a close
In the 80’s writing workshops were different. They focused more on good writing and less on marketability. I actually enjoyed them. There wasn’t the competitive aura there is now. I had a much published workshop teacher who was always pushing me to submit to the many prestigious lit magazines that seem to have disappeared.
She would compare my writing to Paley’s and I would argue that it was nothing like hers. I didn’t write fiction. I use dialogue sparsely. She said it was the over all feeling of action, of things happening, in an everyday context.
I don’t think I could ever be one tenth as good but I’m beginning to understand what she meant. I enjoy the mundane. Yesterday I overheard a man talking to himself, not on a cell or to a recorder. I stood and listened as he argued with himself, came to peace, and argued some more. I tried to memorize his conversation but couldn’t. I am trying to recreate it. It was a brilliantly sick discourse, one we don’t hear much anymore because of modern meds.
Then I got into an ideological argument with myself on how what I found fascinating because it’s so rare might become more frequent because our health system is so sick.
I think being able to listen to such conversations without appearing to be an interloper is one of the marvels of Manhattan.
The type of women Paley wrote about still live here and still have the same conversations though in a different vernacular. Our day is numbered though. I do hope to chronicle the women of my generation, and I don’t think I would have such a rich tapestry to work from if I hadn’t lived here for the past 32 years.
I don’t think I could ever evesdrop on too many conversations. The thing is people don’t seem to converse as much when walking on the street or in restaurants as they did just ten years ago when I would around Rockefeller Center and play a game–fill in the rest of the conversation.
People talk more on cells. I, and I am an all cell house, find that strange and unnerving. Face to face conversation seems to be dying as people fill the lonely walk with talk on the phone. They don’t look at their surroundings. They miss a lot.
One of the reasons I don’t feel sad I’m being forced to move is because I would rather experience new things and remember Manhattan as a place where people talked to the person next to them, not to a faceless person on the other end of the cell.