SOURCE: “The Saint,” in The New Republic, June 29, 1998, pp. 35-9.

In the following negative review of Just As I Thought, Wolfe condemns Paley's “stubborn” activism as hypocritical, dishonest, and, at worst, immoral. As Wolfe concludes, “Paley’s sentimental and sanctimonious book inadvertently exposes what went wrong with the American left.”

In an interview in 1984, Grace Paley was asked about her youthful experiences with civil disobedience. Recalling how she and her neighbors refused to allow buses through or real estate development around Washington Square Park in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, Paley responded: “One of the things I learned was stubbornness. And I’ve thought more and more that that’s the real meaning of nonviolent civil disobedience—to be utterly and absolutely stubborn.” The title that she has given this collection of essays, stories, speeches, introductions, poems, and remembrances confirms that this is a writer who is proud of...