Few writers get as large a reputation for as small a quantity of writing as Tillie Olsen. She died this week at 94.
NEW YORK - Tillie Olsen, an influential and widely taught fiction writer who narrated and experienced some of the major social conflicts of the 20th century, died Monday night, two weeks before her 95th birthday.
A longtime resident of Berkeley, Calif., Olsen had been in failing health for a long time, her daughter, Laurie Olsen, told The Associated Press. Tillie Olsen died at Kaiser Hospital in Oakland, Calif.
Politically active and class conscious, joined to the world as if every soul were a soul mate, Olsen countered the literary myths of her male peers. She did not immortalize the cowboy or the outlaw, but the woman who stayed home. For her characters, the open road did not lead to freedom, but only to the next job.
Because of the opening phrase "I stand here ironing," from the short story of the same name, she for years received the occasional iron sent by an admirer. She published just two works of fiction — "Tell Me a Riddle" and "Yonnondio" — but she was well known among writers, teachers and feminists, her friends and fans including Alice Walker, Margaret Atwood and Grace Paley.
More.
Her literary reputation was made pretty much on two stories, "Tell Me A Riddle" and "I Stand Here Ironing." She gained fame in the 50s but the buzz was still strong a decade later when I entered grad school. Very left wing and always politically active, she was blacklisted to various degrees, especially at the beginning of her career.
No comments:
Post a Comment