Customer Reviews

Tell Me A Riddle

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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 me of Steinbeck in its power, and Morrison in its complexity.

"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.

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?

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.

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.

This is a review of the title- story only. It is Tillie Olsen's most famous work.It tells the story of the decline in old- age of a strong , independent woman who has given her life to raising her children, and is deeply connected to her own home. Her husband and her are incompatible, and he wishes to sell the home and move into a retirement facility. She in clinging to the home is clinging to her independence. There is both a Jewish cultural and a socialist political milieu pervading the work. It is written in a kind of clipped, poetic language.

The story was considered revolutionary, a creative breakthrough work in its time.

I found it somewhat difficult at times, but with a harsh and admirable integrity.