SOURCE: "The Stories of Tillie Olson," in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 1, No. 1, Fall, 1963, pp. 21-5.

In the following essay, O'Connor praises Olsen's short stories, for the power of their scenes of everyday life.

Tillie Olsen writes about anguish. One character thinks: "It is a long baptism into the seas of humankind, my daughter. Better immersion and in pain than to live untouched. Yet how will you sustain?"

In one story a soft-hearted sailor has lived a boisterous, rowdy, hard-drinking life. His world is empty, meaningless and in an eerie flux of days and nights at sea, transient acquaintanceships at bars and brothels when he is very drunk. His only refuge is a man whose life he had once saved, and the man's family. He has given the wife and children presents and much needed money. They have all loved him, and welcomed his visits. But now that...