Vermont Poet Laureate Grace Paley and writer Robert Nichols captivated a Dartmouth audience in a Tuesday afternoon public reading of their works titled "In and Out of the Country."
The husband and wife duo was brought to campus by the Montgomery Fellow endowment, established by Harle and Kenneth Montgomery '25. The fund brings accomplished figures to Dartmouth to teach, lecture, and meet with students and faculty.
A packed Filene Auditorium listened raptly to the hour-long reading, which began with Robert Nichols' observational short story, "The Mirror of Narcissus." The story was set in Chile in 1972, a time of high underemployment that he described as "a reality hidden by a veil."
Nichols told the story of a woman he and Paley noticed as they waited in line for the cinema in Chile. He imagined what circumstances had brought her to the marketplace that day, fleshing out one of countless individual stories that are often glazed over by economic statistics.
When Paley took the stage, she read two of her husband's poems.
"He never reads any of his poems, and I'm sick of it!" Paley exclaimed.
After her oration of "Address to the Smaller Animals," she followed with "Father and Son on the Road," a rhythmic repetitive poem about a child growing up to the tune of his father's singing.
Paley admitted that she loves reading aloud and enjoys others reading and speaking aloud. She demonstrated that love for the spoken word in her reading of one of her early short stories, "In Time, Which Made a Monkey of Us All," which was loosely based on her old New York neighborhood.
With wry humor and warm voice, Paley matter-of-factly introduced her delighted audience to a slew of quirky and memorable characters. She created an appealingly eclectic yet believable neighborhood with descriptions and dialogue that reflected each of her characters' unique personalities.
The audience roared with laughter as she described the teenage protagonist mumbling, "Go away, bums!" to two loitering four-year-olds near his stoop and could not hold back chuckles as her plot continued with three teenage boys inventing a stink bomb.
Paley's descriptions and dialogue were comically truthful and bawdy as she gave voice to her appealing and unpolished characters. Paley, a New York-born Jew, described a character as having "died of Jewishness in the epidemic of '40 and '41" and detailed the scandalous, clumsy exploits of the teenage boys and girls in the neighborhood.
She demonstrated her skill at capturing life and infusing it with irony, comedy and wisdom. Her story was littered with observational gems, including the observation that "as you know, people who loathe you will sneeze in your face."
Nichols is the author of the books "Red Shift" and "Slow Newsreel of Man Riding Train," as well as the notable comic work "From the Steam Room." In addition to his novels, Nichols has also written short stories, plays, essays on politics and economics and poems about his travels.
Born in the Bronx, Paley is one of America's most lauded short story writers and poets, and her achievements include a 1961 Guggenheim Fellowship and the Edith Wharton Citation of Merit, as well as an honorary degree from Dartmouth in 1998.
