[Writing with both ears]

At 73, Grace Paley remains one of America's most revered short story writers. Born in the Bronx, New York, in 1922, Paley established a reputation as a bard of Jewish New York with highly acclaimed collections like "The Little Disturbances of Man" (1959), "Enormous Changes at the Last Minute" (1974), and "Later the Same Day" (1985). Her most recent work, "The Collected Stories," was published in 1994 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The following is an excerpt from a recent conversation between Paley and Threepenny Review editor Wendy Lesser as part of San Francisco's City Arts & Lectures series.

Is it possible to develop a strong writing voice without having a deep sense of your own cultural roots?

Watching students of mine, it seems to me that you don't have to love your cultural roots, but you have to recognize them in some way. They are the sounds that were always in your ear.

On the other hand, you look at other people for whom English wasn't their language at all, like Conrad, and Beckett, who decided to write in French. As far as he was concerned, to hell with the rest of it, that is the culture that helped him speak his mind. And that's what you have to do -- figure out the best way you can be a truthful person.

Your stories feel as if they come out of daily conversations. Is that your main influence?

When I wrote poetry I was very keenly aware of being influenced. When I was very young, I wrote a lot like Auden. It's kind of comical, because after all, I didn't have a British accent. I took a class with Auden when I was 17 years old. Those poems meant a lot to me then, but later on they didn't mean a damn thing. But I did write exactly like Auden. I had no sense of my own language yet.

I look at all those poems now, and I see I didn't yet realize that you have two ears. One ear is that literary [Elsewhere in SALON: Seven months in bed] ear, and it's a good old ear. It's with us when we write in the tradition of English writing, or Western writing that includes Proust and Flaubert, and German writers and so on, and also Joyce.

But there was also something else that I had but I didn't know it. I only knew it in my own speech, and that is the ear of the language of home, and the language of your street and your own people.

When I started writing stories, I had a kind of a breakthrough. I had enough poetry from this ear, and I suddenly broke into the language that I then continued to write with. That was an important hour in my life. It was a sudden thing. I was sick and had a few weeks off, so I had the time to listen. I was able to use both ears suddenly.

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