The Expensive Moment by Grace Paley
"The Expensive Moment" by Grace Paley is a nuanced narrative that explores the life of Faith, a character familiar to readers of Paley's other works. Set against a backdrop of political engagement and personal introspection, the story delves into Faith's relationships with her grown sons, her husband Jack, and her lover Nick, a charismatic scholar. Central to the narrative is Faith’s lunch meeting with her close friend Ruth, where they reflect on their children’s political choices and the uncertain future they face.
The story poignantly addresses themes such as the limitations of individual power in the face of societal issues, the passage of time, and the emotional complexities of parenting. Faith's encounters, especially with Xie Fing, a Chinese poet, highlight the shared burdens of motherhood and the wistfulness of missed opportunities. Paley skillfully blends humor and reflection, ultimately leading to a contemplation of the sacrifices made for ideals and the emotional toll of letting go. The tone remains thoughtful and introspective, inviting readers to engage with the profound choices that shape lives amid a turbulent political landscape.
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The Expensive Moment by Grace Paley
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1985 (collected in Later the Same Day, 1985)
Type of work: Short story
The Work
“The Expensive Moment” is a complex and textured fabric of moments, observations, encounters, emotions, and ideas in a particular period of Faith’s life. Presumably the same character of Paley’s other stories, she here inhabits a world of overtly political discussions and deeper, mellower wisdom.
The people in Faith’s life are all vigorously engaged in political and emotional pursuits. Her sons are grown: Tonto is in love, and Richard is an active member of the League for Revolutionary Youth. Faith is in a solid but stale marriage to a furniture store salesman named Jack and is having an intellectually and sexually stimulating affair with an attractive, mercurial China scholar named Nick. Her best friend, Ruth, meets her for lunch at the Art Foods Deli and laments the absence and uncertain future of her daughter Rachel, an errant political revolutionary. Faith reminisces about her own activist past and debates trade and political theory with her son Richard. Along with Ruth and Nick, she attends meetings and dinners where she meets exiled Chinese artists and writers.
At such a meeting, Faith meets Xie Fing, a Chinese poet, “a woman from half the world away who’d lived a life beyond foreignness and had experienced extreme history.” The two women become acquainted, and Xie Fing invites herself to see Faith’s home, a request that delights and flatters Faith. They spend the next day drinking tea in Faith’s kitchen, touring the house and the neighborhood, discussing themselves, their children, their political activities, and the future. The story ends simply on a shared note of wistful regret, both women acknowledging in retrospect how little they knew about preparing their children for the real world.
Throughout the story are a variety of interrelated themes: the disparity between the depth of the individual’s concern and his or her limited power to affect the world, the passage of time and the wisdom that comes with it, the burdensome responsibility of raising children and then the painful necessity of letting them go, the contrast between the social and political ideals of the mind and the emotional and physical needs of the body.
These themes come together at various moments; one of the most potent is when Faith thinks back on her anti-draft activities in the 1960’s and contemplates the sacrifices that young people sometimes must make for their country or their ideals. Thinking about such sacrifices in the context of Rachel’s revolutionary activities, and about the possibility that Richard, too, could someday disappear and never be heard from again, Faith recognizes that there sometimes comes “a moment in history, the expensive moment when everyone his age is called but just a few are chosen by conscience or passion. . . . Then you think sadly, I could have worked harder at raising that child, the one that was once mine.”
“The Expensive Moment” is a very thoughtful story that, in examining the difficult choices that history forces an individual to make, by extension examines the cost of all choices. The tone, though relentlessly questioning and sometimes regretful, is never maudlin or angry—those do not seem to be colors on Paley’s emotional palette. Rather, she gently mocks political convictions—mentioning the “L.R.Y.’s regular beep-the-horn-if-you-support-Mao meeting” and envisioning John Keats writing verses in a rice paddy in provincial China—even as she portrays a world in which ideas have weight and magnetism. In such a world, convictions—or, for that matter, a healthy and reasoned cynicism—are dramatic and sensual. They establish the connections between people and help Faith and those around her to make sense of their complex lives and find things to value as they travel across the ugly map of contemporary political reality. Such a world is not to be dismissed and avoided; rather, like Faith and Xie Fing, one can only earnestly strive to do one’s best and forgive, though never forget, the past.
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