SOURCE: “Grace Paley's World-Inventing Words,” in Middle Grounds: Studies in Contemporary American Fiction, edited by Emory Elliot, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987, pp. 173-87.

In the following essay, Wilde argues that Paley's fiction is neither realist nor strictly metafictional. According to Wilde, Paley's “midfictional” style embodies elements of mystery and affirmation that, while acknowledging the disorder and ambiguity of the world, reflect an approach to creativity and experience that is both vivid and adaptive.

People require strengthening before the acts of life.

Grace Paley, “Living”

I digressed and was free.

Grace Paley, “Faith in a Tree”

“When I was a little girl, I was a boy,”¹ Grace Paley told the audience of a recent symposium, a remark that ironically pays tribute to the power critics with a good many different axes to grind have come to find in the so-called “discourse of the Father.”² Insidiously formative (Paley went on...