Tillie Olsen's is a unique voice. Few writers have gained such wide respect based on such a small body of published work…. Among women writers in the United States, "respect" is too pale a word: "reverence" is more like it. This is presumably because women writers, even more than their male counterparts, recognize what a heroic feat it is to have held down a job, raised four children and still somehow managed to become and to remain a writer. The exactions of this multiple identity cost Tillie Olsen 20 years of her writing life. The applause that greets her is not only for the quality of her artistic performance but, as at a grueling obstacle race, for the near miracle of her survival.

Tillie Olsen's third book, "Silences," is about this obstacle course, this ordeal, not only as she herself experienced it but as many writers have experienced it...