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Radcliffe College
1986
Hill Visiting Professor, University of Minnesota.
1987
Gund Professor, Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio. Regents lecturer, University of California at Los Angeles.
1989
Jack Olsen dies.
1991
Receives Mari Sandoz Award, Nebraska Library Association.
1994
Receives Rea Award for the Short Story ($25,000 to writers contributing significantly to the short story as an art form).

 

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Tell Me a Riddle

 

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The edition of ''Tell Me a Riddle" included here is the 1989 Delta reprint, the most recent version of the text. Olsen has gradually revised "Tell Me a Riddle" since its first publication in 1961, most notably to eliminate language like "man" and "mankind," substituting the more generic and inclusive "human" and "humankind." In the first edition, Eva's quotation from the old socialist hymn, "These Things Shall Be," included the line "all that may plant man's lordship firm"; this line was omitted in subsequent versions. These revisions suggest the influence of feminist critiques of sexist language; they support Olsen's inclusive and democratic vision.
The first edition lacked the hopeful and prophetic subtitle, "These Things Shall Be," included in all subsequent versions. Another interesting change is the alteration of Eva's wish to "journey to her self" to a longing instead to "journey on." The motive behind this change may be guessed by noting another emendation to the same passage when Olsen excerpts it for Mother to Daughter, Daughter to Mother. In all editions of the full text, Eva searches for "coherence, transport, meaning." In the daybook, she seeks "coherence, transport, community" (198). Olsen's revisions move the text away from a privileging of the isolated self and develop further the implicit longing for a community and a commitment larger than self or biological family.

 

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Tell Me a Riddle
TILLIE OLSEN
''These Things Shall Be" * (1956-1960)
I
For forty-seven years they had been married. How deep back the stubborn, gnarled roots of the quarrel reached, no one could saybut only now, when tending to the needs of others no longer shackled them together, the roots swelled up visible, split the earth between them, and the tearing shook even to the children, long since grown.
Why now, why now? wailed Hannah.
As if when we grew up weren't enough, said Paul.
Poor Ma. Poor Dad. It hurts so for both of them, said Vivi. They never had very much; at least in old age they should be happy.
Knock their heads together, insisted Sammy; tell 'em: you're too old for this kind of thing; no reason not to get along now.
From Tell Me a Riddle (New York: Delta, 1989).
*Poem by John Addington Symonds, sung in the British labor and socialist movements, and in progressive social and religious movements in the United States.

 

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Lennie wrote to Clara: They've lived over so much together; what could possibly tear them apart?
Something tangible enough.
Arthritic hands, and such work as he got, occasional. Poverty all his life, and there was little breath left for running. He could not, could not turn away from this desire: to have the troubling of responsibility, the fretting with money, over and done with; to be free, to be carefree where success was not measured by accumulation, and there was use for the vitality still in him. There was a way. They could sell the house, and with the money join his lodge's Haven, cooperative for the aged. Happy communal life, and was he not already an official; had he not helped organize it, raise funds, served as a trustee?
But shewould not consider it.
''What do we need all this for?" he would ask loudly, for her hearing aid was turned down and the vacuum was shrilling. "Five rooms" (pushing the sofa so she could get into the corner) "furniture" (smoothing down the rug) "floors and surfaces to make work. Tell me, why do we need it?" And he was glad he could ask in a scream.
"Because I'm use't."
"Because you're use't. This is a reason, Mrs. Word Miser? Used to