SOURCE: “Calisher's ‘Monologuing Eye,’” in The Fiction of Hortense Calisher, University of Delaware Press, 1993, pp. 107-17.

In the following essay, Snodgrass examines Calisher's authorial perspective and trademark prose style, drawing attention to the opposing aspects of “old world” realism and modern sensibility in her work.

Calisher’s reviewers invariably dive into the same adjectival pool and surface with a handful of epithets—“Jamesian,” “convoluted,” “dense,” and “elliptical”—when characterizing her distinctive style. Whether admiringly or hostile, they often call attention to Calisher’s “fondness for the supersubtle.”¹

Calisher’s theme and, with some exceptions, her stories are not in themselves either unique or strange; she herself, in several novels, has called attention to the “single story” (The New Yorkers [hereafter cited as NY], 559) always waiting to be told. Perhaps these familiar chords create certain expectations in book reviewers: specifically, a realistic, middle-of-the-road style—as opposed to a difficult...