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One of the outstanding features of Olsen's literary form is the “extraordinary compression” of her short stories. The origins of this form lie in the “immediate circumstances” under which Olsen wrote: a low-income working-class mother raising four daughters, who recognized both the limitations and
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Literary critic Joanne S. Fry explains that Olsen's social realities and her awareness of herself as subject to the larger historical influences in the 20th century led her to create short stories and novellas that are “novelistic” in form. Fry writes:
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Olsen’s writing is alive with the conviction that creativity, strength, and adaptability are far more common in women than most people think, though one’s vision has to shift to see the unconventional, sometimes desperate, manifestations of these
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Pearlman and
Werlock, 1991 p. xii: “...most critics agree on the genuine artistic strengths of her most widely reprinted stories, “I Stand Here Ironing” and “Tell Me a Riddle.” And p. x: “...the highly acclaimed Tell Me a
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The short story "Tell Me a Riddle" has been called "a powerful study of the politics of voice", "an
American Classic", and described as "beautifully crafted and painfully real in the issues of family that it raises".
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These are qualities that differentiate her short fiction from other innovative modern or contemporary short fiction, that make her stories instrumental in the development of contemporary short fiction.
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The volume is composed of three short stories and a novella, the title piece “Tell Me a Riddle.” “Tell Me a Riddle” was awarded the O. Henry Award in 1961 for best
American short story.
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Frye, 1995 p. 15: “...30 years after the publication, these stories still being singled out ‘for advancing the art of short story writing.’”
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praises “Olsen’s style, that accounts for her prestige in literary circles.” Biographers Mickey
Pearlman and Abby H. P. Werlock wrote:
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The magazine and date of original publication are indicated. The titles of the stories are those established in the 1961
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one of the ten best books of the year in its
December 1961 issue. The title story “Tell Me A Riddle” won first prize
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Pearlman and
Werlock, 1991 p. 35: “...ultimately, it is her style that ‘accounts for prestige in literary circles.’”
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Even if Tillie Olsen does not write another book, we are all richer for having read the major works —
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Werlock, 1991 p. 35, p. 153: See here in Selected Bibliography source of Yalom quote.
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Frye, 1995 p. 217-218: Selected
Bibliography And: p. 185 table of contents order established.
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The works in the collection continue to be the most highly acclaimed of Olsen's literary
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Pfaelzer, Jean (1994). "Tillie Olsen's "Tell Me a Riddle": The
Dialectics of Silence".
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Literary critic Mara
Faulkner comments on the feminist component in the collection:
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776:"No one's private ground": A Bakhtinian reading of Tillie Olsen's Tell Me a Riddle
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Frye, 1995 p. 217-218: Selected Bibliography And p. 16, p. 75: “...novella…”
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https://literariness.org/2020/06/22/analysis-of-tillie-olsens-stories/
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Mambrol, Nasrullah. 2020. “Analysis of Tillie Olsen’s Stories.”
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Pearlman, Mickey and Werlick, Abby H. P.. 1991. Tillie Olsen.
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Tillie Olsen's 'Tell Me a Riddle': The Catastrophe of History
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collection in 1962: the order in which they were written.
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possibilities these hardships presented her as a writer.
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Protest and Possibility in the Writing of Tillie Olsen.
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The Dungannon Foundation, in presenting Olsen with the
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Pearlman and Werlock, 1991 p. xvi: Chronology section.
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For the film based on the short story collection, see
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Mambrol, 2020: “...order in which they were written.”
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