Adams, Alice - Carolyn See (essay date 1982)

Carolyn See (essay date 1982)

SOURCE: "23 Stories Form Necklace of Thought," in Los Angeles Times, April 13, 1982, Section V, p. 6.

[In the following review of To See You Again, See praises Adams's stories as "hard and sharp and unbearably concrete. "]

The conventions for describing women short-story writers are almost as constricting as the form itself. "Wise and witty" are words used often (can you imagine "wise and witty" applied to a novel by Norman Mailer?); "Wise, witty, luminous, delicate." But just as the best women short-story writers work in unexplored realms, the words to describe their creations may not have been invented yet. (The Tlingit Indians had no word for lighter fluid.)

The jacket material describes Alice Adams as comparable to Flannery O'Connor and Katherine Mansfield, when indeed all Adams has in common with those writers is that she is also a woman and writes short stories.

It might be more...

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