SOURCE: “Bookshelf: Life and Love in Greenwich Village,” in Wall Street Journal, April 25, 1994, p. A12.

In the following review of Paley's Collected Stories, Locke claims that Paley has positively altered American literature.

In the beginning—40 years ago—Grace Paley found a voice and, listening closely and thinking hard, she wrote the first of her 45 now Collected Stories. That story, “Goodbye and Good Luck,” is still a great way to begin: “I was popular in certain circles, says Aunt Rose. I wasn’t no thinner then, only more stationary in the flesh.”

Boastful, competitive, adroitly linking mind and body, liberty and wit, this bittersweet and brassy dame, who decided to “live for love” and pays the price without rancor or self-pity, surprisingly gets her man in the end when she’s become “a lady what they call fat and fifty.” So love conquers all? Good luck.

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