RIP, Grace Paley:

"In the stories about Faith, we have the portrait of a modern woman whose openness to life disposes her to have affairs with men who often let her down. Her closest relationships are with other women. Together they converse endlessly about their children, men and sick parents. In one story Faith has parents in an old people's home who wish only she would find a way to live that would cost her less pain. In the story A Conversation with My Father, her father wishes also that Faith would write fiction with a beginning, middle and definite ending. But Faith counters with an explanation of her stories, with their seemingly plotless meandering, which might be Paley's own credo both as a writer and as a secular radical. She explains that she doesn't write well-made stories 'because the traditional form of fiction takes all hope away'. And for Faith, 'Everyone, real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life.'"--from an obituary in the Guardian

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