Customer Reviews (5)

Brilliant, sad, and wise
Tillie Olsen packs a lifetime of enforced silences into this slender work of art.These are dense and poetic evocations of Joyce and Woolf, but with an added proletarian knife-thrust to the heart.

Powerful
"Hey Sailor, What Ship" is the most powerful, concentrated portrayal of alcoholism that I have ever read.Olsen gets inside the mind of a late-stage alcoholic.Her prose seems to stretch and distort as her main character goes on an unplanned bender while on shore leave.

She shows beautiful restraint, too: there is nothing sensational or mawkish here.I am in awe of this story.

Will someone translate this for me please?
Tillie Olson is a brilliant woman. She was way ahead of her time, breaking through the constraints binding talented women back then by her sheer persistence and follow-through, becoming recognized as a notable author. Her insights regarding women authors of the 19th century are brilliant. And her story "Tell Me A Riddle" is a classic.

However, her words sometime seem to start from the middle of a conversation, back up against one another, fall over themselves and then make a circuitous route to sometimes puzzling conclusions. "Tell Me A Riddle" occasionally found me shaking my head as if to dislodge some buzzwords that were way too loud and confusing. Although I understood the gist of this powerful story, I found its delivery to be irritating.

Perhaps that is the way Tillie Olsen writes. However, despite the brilliance of her observations, I find her writing style too discordant.

I Sit Here Typing...
Amazed by her words and writing - the first story, I STAND HERE IRONING - where a mother is mulling over the changes in her and her daughter's lives and relationship. The stories were published in the 50s originally, but were written in a time-free fashion. Get you a copy, you hear?

She has a magic with words..
Olsen writes stories that are so powerful, and so well-written, you'll want to read them again and again.Although she uses Jewish culture as a backdrop, her talents bring a universaility to her stories which reminds meof Steinbeck in its power, and Morrison in its complexity. ... Read more

Book Description

First published in 1978, Silences single-handedly revolutionized the literary canon. In this classic work, now back in print, Olsen broke open the study of literature and discovered a lost continent-the writing of women and working-class people. From the excavated testimony of authors' letters and diaries we learn the many ways the creative spirit, especially in those disadvantaged by gender, class and race, can be silenced. Olsen recounts the torments of Melville, the crushing weight of criticism on Thomas Hardy, the shame that brought Willa Cather to a dead halt, and struggles of Virginia Woolf, Olsen's heroine and greatest exemplar of a writer who confronted the forces that would silence her. This 25th-anniversary edition includes Olsen's now infamous reading lists of forgotten authors and a new introduction and author preface.

Customer Reviews (9)

Why aren't you writing?

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
Why aren't you writing?, September 18, 2003
By Charity Kendall (Ann Arbor, Michigan USA) - See all my reviews
Silences by Tillie Olsen

Annotated Bibliography

This book is addressed to the silences in literature and the ways in which writing ceases to be, to the dying and death of capacity. It is about the censorship and self-censorship of woman primarily. The book is written to encourage everyone who is marginalized to find a place for their voice amidst the constrictions of wage-labor and child rearing because their experiences are invaluable. Olsen estimates that only one out of twelve writers in our century are women.Olsen goes into great depth telling the story of Rebecca Harding Davis a nineteenth century woman who spoke out through her literature from isolation both as a woman without encouragement and as a citizen of a backward city, without even a library, in what became West Virginia. She wrote and eventually was introduced to society and made great friends with many prominent writers, however, at age thirty-one she married, and once she had children she let her writing go. Her sympathetic perspective about iron-workers in her town is almost inexplicable in terms of her class. Olsen asks how she got the information she used in her story and remarks on her personal qualities that made her into a popular conversationalist before she retreated/succumbed to motherhood and fulfilled the role of what was properly expected of her. Primarily this book is about the silences of women throughout time. It asks why women have not been enabled to publish, why their lives have usually been overwhelmed by child rearing (their work not allowing time for writing), what is wrong with the world that it doesn't ask-and make it possible-for people to raise and contribute the best that is in them. Olsen explores the idea that women must choose between their art and their fulfillment as a woman and asks what difference it makes to literature if a woman remains childless especially since so many marvels have been created by childless woman. There is a wonderful excerpt from Henry James on the value he placed on his mother's sacrifices to her family.The book is filled with quotes from writers, Katherine Anne Porter writes that writers must not let editors or publishers tamper with their lives because writers are practicing an art while publishers are running a business. Olsen notes that at one time woman were asked to divest themselves of characteristics that might identify them as women if they were to try to write in this man's world. Cynthia Ozick is quoted as saying "...The term "woman writer"...has no meaning, not intellectually, not morally, not historically. A woman is a writer."Common people are asked why they do not write and writers are examined to understand why they have pauses in their otherwise fertile production. This is not about those times a writer takes to regenerate and think creatively, but rather, about those times when it is impossible to write because of the pressures the artist puts on him/herself or allows the world to impose.

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How circumstances affect the creation of literature
This scholarly exploration of how silence is imposed on the literary writing of those people hampered by gender, class, religion, or ethnicity was first published in 1978 and has recently been reissues with a new preface. Olsen speaks of the obstacles and frustrations faced when women and other disenfranchised people are driven to put words to paper. The fact that Olsen took 15 years to write this book, squeezing bits of time between working and mothering, goes a long way toward demonstrating exactly what she's talking about.

Why aren't you writing?
Silences by Tillie Olsen

Annotated Bibliography

This book is addressed to the silences in literature and the ways in which writing ceases to be, to the dying and death of capacity.It is about the censorship and self-censorship of woman primarily. The book is written to encourage everyone who is marginalized to find a place for their voice amidst the constrictions of wage-labor and child rearing because their experiences are invaluable.Olsen estimates that only one out of twelve writers in our century are women.Olsen goes into great depth telling the story of Rebecca Harding Davis a nineteenth century woman who spoke out through her literature from isolation both as a woman without encouragement and as a citizen of a backward city, without even a library, in what became West Virginia. She wrote and eventually was introduced to society and made great friends with many prominent writers, however, at age thirty-one she married, and once she had children she let her writing go.Her sympathetic perspective about iron-workers in her town is almost inexplicable in terms of her class.Olsen asks how she got the information she used in her story and remarks on her personal qualities that made her into a popular conversationalist before she retreated/succumbed to motherhood and fulfilled the role of what was properly expected of her. Primarily this book is about the silences of women throughout time.It asks why women have not been enabled to publish, why their lives have usually been overwhelmed by child rearing (their work not allowing time for writing), what is wrong with the world that it doesn't ask-and make it possible-for people to raise and contribute the best that is in them.Olsen explores the idea that women must choose between their art and their fulfillment as a woman and asks what difference it makes to literature if a woman remains childless especially since so many marvels have been created by childless woman.There is a wonderful excerpt from Henry James on the value he placed on his mother'ssacrifices to her family.The book is filled with quotes from writers, Katherine Anne Porter writes that writers must not let editors or publishers tamper with their lives because writers are practicing an art while publishers are running a business.Olsen notes that at one time woman were asked to divest themselves of characteristics that might identify them as women if they were to try to write in this man's world.Cynthia Ozick is quoted as saying "...The term "woman writer"...has no meaning, not intellectually, not morally, not historically.A woman is a writer."Common people are asked why they do not write and writers are examined to understand why they have pauses in their otherwise fertile production.This is not about those times a writer takes to regenerate and think creatively, but rather, about those times when it is impossible to write because of the pressures the artist puts on him/herself or allows the world to impose.

a way to get the book
It is an embarassment that this title is out of print. As a woman, mother, writer, I am reading it now + find it to be an important tool. SO here is my suggestion for obtaining a copy, which may be awful but nonetheless itis how I got my copy: I borrowed it from the library and then told them Ilost it + then I paid for it.

These essays have had a profound impact on my own work.
I am not shocked that this wonderful work is out of print -- it's simply history repeating itself. But I do think we should work very hard to get it back into print, probably by one of the small feminist publishers, such asThe Feminist Press or Aunt Lute or Spinster -- because they are faithful totheir books.However, until that happens, those looking for the essayswill find many of them reprinted in various anthologies, including thetitle essay, "Silences: When Writers Don't Write" in IMAGES OFWOMEN IN FICTION: FEMINIST PERSPECTIVES ed. Susan Koppelman, Popular Press,1972, and still in print and available from the publisher. ... Read more

Book Description
Series Editors: Gary Scharnhorst, University of New Mexico and Eric Haralson, State University of New York, Stony Brook

This is the only series to provide in-depth critical introductions to major modern and contemporary short story writers worldwide. Each volume offers:

• A comprehensive overview of the artist's short fiction-including detailed analyses of every significant story
• Interviews, essays, memoirs and other biographical materials -- oftenpreviously unpublished
• A representative selection of critical responses
• Acomprehensive primary bibliography, a selected bibliography of important criticism, a chronology of the artist's life and works and an index

Book Description
Better Red is an interdisciplinary study addressing the complicated intersection of American feminism and the political left as refracted in Tillie Olsen's and Meridel Le Sueur's lives and literary texts. The first book-length study to explore these feminist writers' ties to the American Communist Party, it contributes to a reenvisioning of 1930s U.S. Communism as well as to efforts to promote working-class writing as a legitimate category of literary analysis. At once loyal members of the male-dominated Communist party and emerging feminists, Olsen and Le Sueur exhibit in their writing tendencies both toward and away from Party tenets and attitudes--at points subverting formalist as well as orthodox Marxist literary categories. By producing working-class discourse, Olsen and Le Sueur challenge the bourgeois assumptions--often masked as classless and universal--of much canonical literature; and by creating working-class women's writing, they problematize the patriarchal nature of the Left and the masculinist assumptions of much proletarian literature, anticipating the concerns of "second wave" feminists a generation later. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

This is a spectacularly important book.
This is an extremely important and readable book about two very important working-class writers.It is one of the finest efforts of its kind to begin to help us rediscover and recover working-class literature as well asto renew the importance of class in our national discussion. ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (2)

A novella of poverty
A young girl survives a very hardscrabble existance, dragged from coal mine to sunflower farm to the bloody slaughterhouses of Omaha as her father struggles to find work that will support himself and his growing family. The little girl tries to find joy in a life that is almost totally devoid of it; to escape despair, her father drinks; her mother, constantly pregnant, is worn out trying to keep them all fed and housed; and the one place where they are all happy, the sunflower farm in North Dakota, ruins them with capricious weather. Their final move, to Omaha, is where the book ends.

I gave the book 5 stars on the strength of the writing and story; a book that was begun decades earlier, the author resurrected what was already written and published it without adding much. It's a pity there is no followup; it is a story begging for resolution. You wonder how the family did; if the children grew to escape the fates of their parents (one child is lost to sickness), or if they were lost in the cracks of humanity that swarmed amongst the poor of the 30s. I heard stories like this while growing up, from survivors of the Depression; we will probably not return to such abject misery as is portrayed here, but this thin little book is a cautionary tale, and very moving.

An unfinished and lovely work
The majority of Yonnondio was written when Olsen was 19 years old. Her husband discovered its remains among Olsen's papers in 1972 and she herself pieced the current book together and published the still unfinished results in 1974. This newest version of the book includes new material discovered by Olsen that was not included in the 1974 version.

Yonnondio (the title taken from a Walt Whitman poem) is a moving lament for the impoverishment and despair of young families and young women during the depression. Despite the uneveness and jumpiness of the narrative (an artifact of its unfinished status), the small and detailed moments leap out through the pages to capture the reader. It is occasionally a very sad book, and always very beautiful.

It's unusual to be so impressed by an unfinished novel published when the author was still living. Unfortunately, Olsen has published so few works that even something rough and unfinished is a welcome treat. While I understand her insistence that she would not write any new material for the book, it is hard not to read it and wish it were possible to read the finished book. If the fragments are so magnificent, what would the final work have been? ... Read more

Book Description

Term paper due tomorrow? Need to cram for a test? Or just looking for the best information about a favorite literary work?

Turn to "Short Stories for Students" to get your research done in record time. Brought to you by Thomson Gale--the world's leading source of literary criticism and analysis--this e-doc contains: plot summary; character analysis; author biography; an overview of the story's themes, style, and historical context; a compendium of in-depth critical material; study questions; suggestions for further reading; and much more.

Why choose "Short Stories for Students"? Because no other source offers so much in such a compact package. Trust the experts: Thomson Gale--and "Short Stories for Students."Download Description

Term paper due tomorrow? Need to bone up for a test? Or just looking for the best information about a favorite literary work?

Turn to "Short Stories for Students" to get your research done in record time. Brought to you by the Gale Group--the world's leading source of literary criticism and analysis--this e-doc contains: plot summary; character analysis; author biography; an overview of the story's themes, style, and historical context; a compendium of in-depth critical material; study questions; suggestions for further reading; and much more.

Why choose "Short Stories for Students"? Because no other source offers so much in such a compact package. Trust the experts: The Gale Group--and "Short Stories for Students." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Nice piece of kit ...
... and less clinical than expected. Read it second to the actual work. ... Read more

Book Description
Word count: 3264. ... Read more

Book Description
  Tillie Olsen's personal selection from the work of 120 writers of prose and poetry, memoir and song, provides a contemporary view of this special relationship from such writers as Louise Bogan, Colette, Simone de Beauvoir, Grace Paley, Olive Schreiner, Gloria Steinem, Alice Walker, Eudora Welty, and Virginia Woolf. This book includes a monthly calendar, applicable to any year, for notes and reminders. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description
Tillie Olsen grew up in a Socialist, secular Jewish immigrant working-class home in the American midwest, and became one of the most striking writers of the twentieth century. The selections of criticism in this anthology survey the reception of her work over the past sixty years and clarify the social, cultural, and economic contexts of her writings. The volume includes selections of the most important criticism of her work, along with original contributions. The essays in this book are grouped in three sections, which correspond with different stages in the development of Olsen's life and art. The selections demonstrate the potential for social activism cultivated in her upbringing, her development as a young writer in the mid-1930s California Marxian milieu, and her maturation after years of balancing the responsibilities of childrearing and employment outside the home. The pieces link her with traditional American literary figures, and relate her to socialist feminist literary tradition and the Jewish American tradition as well. An important introduction to her work, the volume is also a companion to other studies. ... Read more

Book Description

Twayne's United States Authors Series presents concise critical introductions to great writers and their works.

Devoted to critical interpretation and discussion of an author's work, each study takes account of major literary trends and important scholarly contributions and provides new critical insights with an original point of view. An Authors Series volume addresses readers ranging from advanced high school students to university professors. The book suggests to the informed reader new ways of considering a writer's work. A reader new to the work under examination will, after reading the Authors Series, be compelled to turn to the originals, bringing to the reading a basic knowledge and fresh critical perspectives.

Each volume features:

• A critical, interpretive study and explication of the author's works
• A brief biography of the author
• An accessible chronology outlining the life, work, and relevant historicalbackground of the author
• Aids for further study -- complete notes and references, a selected annotated bibliography and an index
• A readable style presented in a manageable length

Book Description
Combining biography, history, and literary theory, this work looks at three of the most significant women writers to emerge from American radicalism of the 1930s. Le Sueur, Olsen, and Herbst were influenced by the Communist movement of the time, but each also forged an independent vision offeminist socialist literary milieu. Drawing on Marxist and post-Marxist theory, and addressing the challenge of such new feminist theorists as Jean Bethke Elshtain, Roberts takes a theoretical approach that encompasses the social vision and feminist practice of the writers and places them in their historical, cultural, and social contexts. The study covers their lives from the turn of the century to the 1970s, with an emphasis on the 1930s; examines their views of the Cold War; links the three to the Progressive tradition; and analyzes their key literary works.Resources for analysis include historical and contemporary theory; excerpts from the radical press of the 1920s and 1930s; and primary materials from the writers themselves, including journals, notes, and unpublished archival materials. ... Read more

Book Description
This work examines Tillie Olsen's four short stories in" Tell Me A Riddle", and her novel fragment "Yonnondio: From the Thirties" in terms of the ethical development of the adolescent female characters. The study uses the ethics of responsibility and care as identified by Carol Gilligan to investigate each young female character's struggle to grow, to make her place in the world, and to remain in relationship with herself and others. The book contextualizes the exclusion of the ethics of care from the literary canon and argues for inclusion of multiple ethical modes. ... Read more