SOURCE: “In Appreciation of Hortense Calisher,” in Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature, Vol. 6, No. 2, Summer, 1965, pp. 243-9.

In the following essay, Hahn discusses Calisher's prose style, early fiction, and formative experiences, and the critical response to False Entry and Textures of Life.

“Words are our reflex. We spend our lives putting things into words,” says the narrator in Hortense Calisher’s “Little Did I Know.” (From Extreme Magic, a collection.) She recalls how, as a girl at college, “I was drunk on language, the way you see kids get on jazz at Birdland. I ran all over the pasture, wondering how I could ever eat all the books there were. … And the words! I collected them in all shapes and sizes, and hung them like bangles in my mind.”

Like all good fiction-writers, Miss Calisher puts something not only of herself but of all of us into her...