"Enormous Changes at the Last Minute:" Postmodern Humanism in the Short Fiction of Grace Paley(1)
On the jacket of her second book of short stories, Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, Grace Paley, a feminist, postmodernist, antiwar activist, and writer, identifies herself as a "somewhat combative pacifist and cooperative anarchist." In 1979, she was arrested on the White House lawn for demonstrating against nuclear weapons, and her résumé is full of such protest-related arrests. Paley's statement in a 1998 interview with the online magazine Salon is typical: "Whatever your calling is, whether it's as a plumber or an artist, you have to make sure there's a little more justice in the world when you leave it than when you found it."
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I am indebted to Todd Davis for presenting this postmodern possibility and for providing me with the terminology to explain it. Davis's work with Vonnegut's postmodern humanism has helped me define the parameters of my argument here.
2 See the title story from Enormous Changes at the Last Minute.
3 Hassan is quoting Susan Sontag, "One Culture and the New Sensibility," in Against Interpretation, 1967, pp. 293-304 and Leslie Fiedler, "Cross the Border-Close that Gap," in Collected Essays vol. 2, New York, 1971, pp. 461-85.
4 This is the title of Paley's first short story collection (1959).
5 In an essay titled "Grace Paley and Tillie Olsen: Radical Jewish Humanists," John Clayton writes that "it is our common life, our common pain, that concerns [Paley] In the stories of how many modern writers do we hear of collective experience?" (qtd. in Aarons 3). Davis writes of Lyotard's petite histoire as "provisional narratives that may serve as tools for daily, localized living, a contingent morality that is never grounded in presence but, rather, works with an awareness of its own constructedness toward a symbolic vision of a better reality"
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"Apocalyptic Grumbling: Postmodern Humanism in the Work of Kurt Vonnegut." Forthcoming in At Millennium's End: New Essays on the Work of Kurt Vonnegut. State University of New York Press, 2001.
Hassan, Ihab. "Toward a Concept of Postmodernism." Postmodern American Fiction: A Norton Anthology. Eds. Paula Geyh,
Fred G. Leebron, Andrew Levy. New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998. 586-595.
Klinkowitz, Jerome. "Grace Paley: The Sociology of Metafiction" Delta 14 (May 1982): 81-85.
Paley, Grace. "All My Habits Are Bad." Interview with A.M. Homes. Salon.com. 26 Oct. 1998. .
---. "A Conversation with My Father." Enormous Changes at the Last Minute. 1960. New York: Ferrar, Straus, Giroux, 1979. 159-67.
---. "Debts." Enormous Changes at the Last Minute. 1960. New York: Ferrar, Straus, Giroux, 1979. 7-12.
---. "Listening." Later the Same Day. New York: Penguin, 1985. 206-219.
---. "The Pale Pink Roast." Postmodern American Fiction: A Norton Anthology. Eds. Paula Geyh, Fred G. Leebron, Andrew
Levy. New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998. 94-99.
Schleifer, Ronald. "Grace Paley: Chaste Compactness." Contemporary American Women Writers: Narrative Strategies. Eds. Catherine Rainwater and William J. Schlick. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1985.
"The NAYked Truth." Prostitution: The Economic and Criminal Justice Benefits of Legalization. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2014.
In what follows, my research paper will rely on an article by Kathy Prendergast entitled “Introduction to The Gothic Tradition”. The significance of this article resides in helping to recapitulate the various features of the Gothic tradition. In this article the authoress argues that in order to overturn the Enlightenment and realistic literary mores, many of the eighteenth century novelists had recourse to traditional Romantic conventions in their works of fiction, like the Arthurian legendary tales (Prendergast).
Because of these abuses women could either become prostitutes or can be easily convinced and sold into sex trafficking. Prostitution has been a lucrative underground business for centuries now. Some women willingly go into this trade, and others are forced into this lifestyle. Prostitution can also be classified as a form of sex trafficking humans. As the demand of child prostitutes continue to risk, there will be more young women tricked into the trade. Pimps usually trick young girls by emotionally, physically, and psychologically manipulating them. Prostitutes often work long and hard hours and get little to no pay, while their pimps makes large sums of money each week. The girls may be offered gifts, money, or a new fabulous lifestyle that they could not get at home. Majority of young girls who are prostitutes are runaways so, all of these promises easily persuade them (Finklea,
Clemmit, Marcia. “Prostitution Debate.” CQ Press. 18.19 (2008): 435-438. CQ Researcher. Web. 16 Oct. 2015.
Postmodernism movement started in the 1960’s, carrying on until present. James Morley defined the postmodernism movement as “a rejection of the sovereign autonomous individual with an emphasis upon anarchic collective anonymous experience.” In other words, postmodernism rejects what has been established and makes emphasis on combined revolutionary experiences. Postmodernism can be said it is the "derivate" of modernism; it follows most of the same ideas than modernism but resist the very idea of boundaries. According to our lecture notes “Dominant culture uses perception against others to maintain authority.”
I offer by way of introduction to the Gothic literary world an extract taken from Ann. B Tracy’s book The Gothic Novel 1790-1830: Plot Summaries and Index Motifs:
Post-Modernism, the absence of any certainty, discredits the values of modernism, opposing the fixed principles of meaning and value. It is built on countless theories about society, the media and knowledge of the world, but it is also aware that there is no ultimate way of making sense of humanity. Ondaatje embraces aspects of post-modernism, by creating a novel that breaks away from the traditional narrative, thereby giving readers a greater perspective on the novel. One learns that any story is simply a storyteller's construction, and is never unbiased.
Postmodernism is a vague term that can describe a variety of disciplines that include, architecture, art, music, film, fashion, literature…etc. (Klages). In the case of “Videotape”, postmodern literature would be the main focus or area of study. This type of literature emerged in the era that succeeded World War II and relies heavily on the use of techniques such as, fragmentation, the creation of paradoxes, and questionable protagonists. Furthermore, postmodern literature also exudes ambiguity and critical thinking where the focus is mainly on the reader and his/her experience of the work rather than the content and form. Building upon that, the selected passag...
One attribute of Modernist writing is Experimentation. This called for using new techniques and disregarding the old. Previous writing was often even considered "stereotyped and inadequate" (Holcombe and Torres). Modern writers thrived on originality and honesty to themselves and their tenets. They wrote of things that had never been advanced before and their subjects were far from those of the past eras. It could be observed that the Modernist writing completely contradicted its predecessors. The past was rejected with vigor and...
The oldest occupation in history, prostitution is one of the only occupations in which those who practice it are not protected by law in many first world countries. That however, sets the stage for disaster; women can get beaten and raped but will not report it out of fear of getting arrested themselves. To protect prostitutes and their patrons, voluntary prostitution of those over the age of eighteen in inevitable and must be legalized.
Napier, Elizabeth R. The Failure of Gothic: Problems of Disjunction in an Eighteenth-Century Literary Form. New York: OUP, 1987.
Understanding the Gothic novel can be accomplished by obtaining a familiarity of the Augustan point of view, which helps to develop a reference point for comparing and contrasting the origin of Gothic literature. The thinking that was being questioned by the Gothic novel was Augustanism; and without some understanding of Augustan principles and their role in eighteenth-century thought it is difficult to understand the purposes of the Gothic revival, either in terms of history or in terms of the way in which it offered a new conception of the relations between man, nature and a supreme being. David punter describes the political relationship of the Augustan thinker to the literary world, “ It is tempting to see in Augustanism the doctrine of a small cultural elite holding on to power and status under increasing pressure, and that pressure as precisely that exerted by the new reading public on the homogeneity of the old literary establishment (p 31 Punter). This small number of elite would have included, but not limited to, Fielding, Johnson and especially Pope. However, Fielding and Johnson were slowly stepping outside of the realm of the Augustan limitations. Fielding was undoubtedly Augustan in his beliefs in the stability of social rules and the necessity of a social and psychological compromise, but his mocking attitude towards literary stipulation represents a more moderate Augustan replication. Johnson, on the other hand, was a firm believer in these literary rules and yet it was his ‘Preface to Shakespeare’ which became the first significant breach in these limitations. Alexander Pope’s ‘Essay on Man’ embodies the cosmological, theological and ethical beliefs of the Augustan age; while at the same time exemplifying submission to the rules of literary form. The Augustan approach was intellectual with formal restraint; while relying on reason and traditionalism to create literary works. These stipulations were very controlled by their boundaries and could not be exaggerated with out being broken. The Augustan critical attitude condemned spontaneity for its chaotic qualities, imagination for its objection to reason and liberalism for its opposition to traditionalism.
Nassif, Tony. “Should Prostitution be Legal”. Cedarsfoundation.org. Cedars cultural and educational foundation, n.d. Web. 27 November 2011.
Many of the girls who are thrown or introduced into prostitution, usually have no way of escaping. Pimps would keep eyes on them twenty-four-seven, and if not themselves, they would have partners to keep a look out on them, so no escape would be possible.
As mentioned earlier money laundering is the process of hiding profits from illegal criminal activities. The major goal of these criminal activities is to make as large of a profit as possible. The money laundering process is very important to these criminals because it allows them to enjoy their profits without revealing the source. When one of these activities generates large profits, the group involved must find a way to disguise the funds without attracting attention towards themselves. The way they accomplish this is by moving the funds to an indiscrete place where they are less likely to attract lots of attention. This allows the group to keep the source of the profits hidden so that it is always available to them. Money laundering is usually done in countries in which they have few or very weak laws ...