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Title: Living in the neighborhood
Review: The characters in these stories are consistent throughout the book. Reading the stories was like getting acquainted with a community of people. I lost interest in some stories, while others contained gems of wisdom and phrases that stopped me in my tracks.In a story called, "A Conversation With My Father" Paley writes:""I would like you to write a simple story just once more," he says, "the kind Maupassant wrote, or Chekhov, the kind you used to write. Just recognizable people and then write down what happened to them next."I say, "Yes, why not? That's possible." I want to please him, though I don't remember writing that way. I would like to try to tell such a story, if he means the kind that begins:'There was a woman..." followed by plot, the absolute line between two points which I've always despised. not for literary reasons, but because it takes all hope away. Everyone, real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life."
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