Enormous Changes at the Last Minute by Grace Paley
"Enormous Changes at the Last Minute" is a compelling short-story collection by Grace Paley that explores themes of identity, social issues, and the quest for peace through the experiences of middle-aged women. The characters, particularly Faith Darwin and Alexandra, navigate complex personal and societal challenges, from unexpected pregnancies to the lingering impacts of war and neglect. In "Enormous Changes at the Last Minute," Alexandra's decision to invite her pregnant clients to live with her instead of joining a commune highlights innovative approaches to social work that were ahead of their time. The stories delve into the intricacies of personal desire and social responsibility, with narrators reflecting on their pasts and envisioning their futures amidst life’s challenges. Paley's writing uniquely combines poetic language with profound insights into women's lives, making her an influential figure in feminist literature. The narrative also encompasses the struggles and tragedies faced by marginalized individuals, providing a nuanced commentary on the social fabric of the time. Ultimately, Paley’s work celebrates resilience and hope, inviting readers to consider the transformative power of personal connections in the face of adversity.
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Enormous Changes at the Last Minute by Grace Paley
First published: 1974
The Work
In Grace Paley’s Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, identity is a personal and a social issue in the struggle for a peaceful world. Most of the characters in this short-story collection are middle-aged women, such as Faith Darwin, who resembles, but is not intended to be, Paley’s alter ego; others are simply those about whom stories are told—the children who have died or suffered from neglect, poverty, drug abuse, and the Vietnam War.
The main characters in these stories act with defiance and hope. In “Enormous Changes at the Last Minute,” Alexandra is a middle-aged social worker who accidentally becomes pregnant through a liaison with Dennis, a cabdriver, poet, and commune member. Instead of joining the commune, Alexandra invites several of her pregnant clients to come live with her, a “precedent in social work which would not be followed or even mentioned in state journals for about five years.” In the story “Wants,” the woman narrator meets with her ex-husband, who criticizes her, telling her that she’ll “always want nothing.” In answer to herself and the reader, she recites the things she has wanted in her life, including ending the war before her children grew up. In “The Long-Distance Runner,” Faith Darwin takes a long run through her old neighborhood and ends up living with the black family who now occupies her childhood apartment. All three of these women examine themselves midway, finding, as Faith does, that a “woman inside the steamy energy of middle age” may learn “as though she was still a child what in the world is coming next.”
The collection’s most acclaimed story, “A Conversation with My Father,” features Faith, who, in dialogue with her father (modeled after Paley’s father, I. Goodside, M.D.), invents the story of a middle-aged woman who becomes a junkie trying to identify with her son’s generation. Faith’s father laments the “end of a person,” but is more upset when Faith adds her characteristic openness: In the “after-story life,” the junkie becomes a “receptionist in a storefront community clinic.” On one hand, Faith’s response is emblematic of the way in which Paley’s characters will not, as Faith’s father exclaims, look tragedy “in the face.” On the other hand, other stories in the collection—namely, “The Little Girl,” “Gloomy Tune,” and “Samuel”— do precisely that. These stories study the identities of the victimized—the teenage girl who is raped and strangled by a drug addict, the neglected boy branded in violence and delinquency, the black boy dying in a freak subway accident. “Never again will a boy exactly like Samuel be known,” states the narrator.
With the publication of Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, Paley’s reputation as a writer burgeoned. Her unique blend of poetic concision and concern for women’s contributions to the future makes her an important feminist voice in contemporary literature.
Bibliography
Aarons, Victoria. “Talking Lives: Storytelling and Renewal in Grace Paley’s Short Fiction.” Studies in American Jewish Literature 9 (Spring, 1990): 20-35. Argues that Paley empowers her characters through their propensity for telling stories. By telling their stories, her characters try to gain some control over their lives and reconstruct their experience.
Baba, Minako. “Faith Darwin as Writer-Heroine: A Study of Grace Paley’s Short Stories.” Studies in American Jewish Literature 7 (Spring, 1988): 40-54. Charts the development of Faith Darwin, a central figure in Paley’s first three collections of stories. In Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, Baba focuses on “Faith in the Afternoon,” in which the character pities herself as an abandoned wife, “Faith in a Tree,” in which she considers the life of a writer and decides to focus on social issues, and “The Long-Distance Runner,” in which she develops a relationship with an African American matriarch.
Criswell, Jeanne Salladé. “Cynthia Ozick and Grace Paley: Diverse Visions in Jewish and Women’s Literature.” In Since Flannery O’Connor: Essays on the Contemporary American Short Story, edited by Loren Logsdon and Charles W. Mayer. Macomb: Western Illinois University Press, 1987. Criswell acknowledges the shared Jewish and feminist background of Ozick and Paley but argues that whereas Ozick is committed to the moral vision of Torah, Paley affirms the free and open destiny of life; whereas Ozick writes from a classical feminist perspective, Paley manifests a feminine consciousness of empathy with her characters.
Gardiner, Judith Kegan. “On Female Identity and Writing by Women.” In Writing and Sexual Difference, edited by Elizabeth Abel. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.
Isaacs, Neil. Grace Paley: A Study of the Short Fiction. Boston: Twayne, 1990.
Lyons, Bonnie. “Grace Paley’s Jewish Miniatures.” Studies in American Jewish Literature 8 (Spring, 1989): 26-33. Argues that Jewishness is central to Paley’s stories. Her stories are grounded in Jewish experience; they contain comments about Judaism that constitute a coherent vision; and they embody Yiddishkeit, an unsystematic, oral framework of belief practiced by ordinary people. Her stories convey the sense that in a patriarchy the little person—one of Paley’s most frequent concerns—is usually a woman.
Schleifer, Ronald. “Grace Paley: Chaste Compactness.” In Contemporary American Women Writers: Narrative Strategies, edited by Catherine Rainwater and William J. Scheick. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1985. Points out that “little disturbances” and “enormous changes” are brought together at the close of Paley’s stories to create a sense of “ordinary ongoingness that eschews the melodrama of closure.”
Taylor, Jacqueline. Grace Paley: Illuminating the Dark Lives. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990. This book focuses on what Taylor calls Paley’s “woman-centered” point of view. Focuses on Paley’s recognition of the problems women face when trying to use a language based on male categories. Separate chapters deal with Paley’s humor, her narrative structure, her link with the oral tradition, and her experimentation with undermining the authority of the narrator.