MARIANNE DeKOVEN
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likes-a stance even more unusual in serious postmodern fiction than
her assertions of hope in the face of our despair. It is not surprising that
this uncommon empathy, which is really the condition of adherence to
subjects of everyday life, is the province of a woman. Empathy and
compassion are legacies of sexism that women do well to assert as
privileged values rather than reject as stigmata of oppression. Uncom–
fortable as it makes her to write in such a predominantly male
tradition, as a woman in the avant-garde, Paley is in an especially
propitious position
to
unite interesting forms with important themes.
She uses innovative form much as she uses innovative activism, to
make new the endlessly dreary and shameful moral-political world we
inhabit.
"Mississippi Review
is elegant, warm,
thoughtful, has
a weight to it
and a simplicity–
the magazine is
being noticed as
it ought to be."
-Joseph McElroy
