SOURCE: Keefer, Janice Kulyk. “‘Radiant Paradigms and Chinks of Light’: Mavis Gallant's Polish Émigrés in Paris.” In Varieties of Exile: New Essays on Mavis Gallant, edited by Nicole Côté and Peter Sabor, pp. 37-48. New York: Peter Lang, 2002.

In the following essay, Keefer assesses “Forain” and “A State of Affairs” as literary achievements.

“If we are moved by a story, it has meant something, perhaps something important to us; if we are not moved, then it is, as story, meaningless” (Geddes, 817). I've adapted this remark of T. S. Eliot to remind us that whatever our theoretical orientation or critical practice, we must be passionate readers—resistant, yes, but also responsive to what complex literary texts have to offer us, attentive to the terms they work within. It behooves us, in other words, to be moved by what we read, and what we choose to write upon...