Stories (individual not collaborative) by two contrasting writers (who are married to each other).

Political work. Paley concerns herself a lot with family history, and also the conditions found in America, repeatedly considering racism against Black Americans, and her own and her family's encounters. But also there is a piece where her father talks about old age. Certainly not divorced from social context. Nichols is very concerned about the effects that American lifestyle and economic practices have on other parts of the world. All the stories included here discuss that. By contrast, his poems are very intimate, depicting a close connection to the forests he lives in. This intimacy is paradoxical in "The Meter Reader" -- how can it be that the protagonist of that story, something of an author avatar, can find the local representatives of his electric company, such as the title personage, very homelike, and yet discover with unease that the same company is involved in massacres in Central America; what he and other local individuals do locally doesn't seem to matter when the company's guilt extends to them. Contrast, too, in "The Mirror of Narcissus" between attempts to see "others" (the real people there) during a visit to Chile and the multiple factors hindering that -- the self-regarding mirror, the American-centered historical narrative, the "system"-speak that economically erases individuals. The crimes of the World Bank are detailed further in "The Peasants" which I admit I was too chicken to read (didn't want to be depressed).

On the Book Swap shelf.