"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.
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.”
Perkins, Geroge, and Barbara Perkins. The American Tradition in Literature. 12th ed. Vol. 2. New York: McGraw Hill, 2009. Print
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).
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.
Morley, D. 1996, ‘Postmodernism: the rough guide’, in J. Curran, D. Morley & V. Walkerdine (eds) Cultural Studies and Communication, Arnold, New York
Postmodernism movement which began in the 1950’s and still prevails today, is the successor of Modernism. Postmodernism, in contrast to Modernism, seeks to challenge authority as a whole, refutes any belief in absolute truths, regards hierarchal power as distrustful and seeks to establish an approach in
Over the past thirty years, generations understand the world around us is made up of worldly views and patterns of thoughts that inform the culture. Postmodernism informs more of the current culture than of the past, and plays a major role in media, politics, and religion. Postmodernism relies more on experience rather than specific principles, knowing that the outcome of one’s experience will be relative than universal. Postmodernism implies a shattering of innocent confidence in the capacity of the self to control its own destiny. These are some characteristics that researchers find important?
The breath-taking expansion of police power that the United States government took after 9/11 now poses as a troubling issue. Americans need to address the issues of government surveillance because it affects t...
Clemmit, Marcia. “Prostitution Debate.” CQ Press. 18.19 (2008): 435-438. CQ Researcher. Web. 16 Oct. 2015.
Boykoff, J. (2006). Review of How Patriotic is the Patriot Act? Freedom Versus Security in the Age of Terrorism, by Amitai Etzioni. The Journal of Politics, 68(2), 457-487.
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...
In the 1950s, authors tended to follow common themes, these themes were summed up in an art called postmodernism. Postmodernism took place after the Cold War, themes changed drastically, and boundaries were broken down. Postmodern authors defined themselves by “avoiding traditional closure of themes or situations” (Postmodernism). Postmodernism tends to play with the mind, and give a new meaning to things, “Postmodern art often makes it a point of demonstrating in an obvious way the instability of meaning (Clayton)”. What makes postmodernism most unique is its unpredictable nature and “think o...
Strickland, Lee. "Without Civil Liberties Homeland Security Will Fall." University of Maryland. N.p., 23 Dec. 2005. Web. 10 Dec. 2013. .
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...
The concept of postmodernism has been much misunderstood. Resistance may come from the unfamiliarity of the wide range of work the term covers: the art of Andy Warhol; the music of John Cage and Terry Riley; ...