SOURCE: Bennett, Alma. “A Serious Person's Stories: Temporary Shelter and Others.” In Mary Gordon, pp. 89-107. New York: Twayne, 1996.

In the following essay, Bennett explores major themes in the stories of Temporary Shelter.

Some months after the 1987 publication of Temporary Shelter,¹ an interviewer suggested that Gordon didn't write many short stories, to which she replied, “I actually write quite a few. Not all of them do I consider publishable. So I have many of them in folders.” Mentioning that Temporary Shelter has “twenty, written over the course of a lifetime, over twelve years,” she then commented on the selection process for the collection, “I've only recently gone back over things I'd written ten, twelve years ago, reworked some, and thought, maybe—that's okay. Some were actually published, and I had to make decisions that I didn't want to include them in the collection” (Keyishian interview, 70). The effect of...