Tell Me a Riddle is a collection of short fiction by Tillie Olsen first published by J. B. Lippincott & Co. in 1961.Frye, 1995 p. 217-218: Selected Bibliography And p. 16, p. 75: "...novella..."Pearlman and Werlock, 1991 p. 29-30
The volume is composed of three short stories and a novella, the title piece "Tell Me a Riddle".Frye, 1995 p. 16, p. 75: "...novella..." "Tell Me a Riddle" was awarded the O. Henry Award in 1961 for best American short story.Pearlman and Werlock, 1991 p. xvi: Chronology section.
The works in the collection continue to be the most highly acclaimed of Olsen's literary oeuvre.Pearlman and Werlock, 1991 p. xii: "...most critics agree on the genuine artistic strengths of her most widely reprinted stories, "I Stand Here Ironing" and "Tell Me a Riddle." And p. x: "...the highly acclaimed Tell Me a Riddle..."Frye, 1995 p. 15: "...30 years after the publication, these stories still being singled out 'for advancing the art of short story writing.'"
Stories The magazine and date of original publication are indicated. The titles of the stories are those established in the 1961 J. B. Lippincott & Co. volume, and the table of contents ordered by the Dell Publishing collection in 1962: the order in which they were written.Frye, 1995 p. 217-218: Selected Bibliography And: p. 185 table of contents order established.Pearlman and Werlock, 1991 p. 29-30Mambrol, 2020: "...order in which they were written."
"I Stand Here Ironing" (Pacific Spectator, 1956. Originally titled "Help Her to Believe") "Hey Sailor, What Ship?" (New Campus Writing, 1957) "O Yes" (Prairie Schooner, 1957, under the title "Baptism") "Tell Me A Riddle" (New World Writing, Stanford Short Stories, both 1960)
Reception The short story "Tell Me a Riddle" has been called "a powerful study of the politics of voice", "an American Classic", and described as "beautifully crafted and painfully real in the issues of family that it raises".
Time named Tell Me a Riddle one of the ten best books of the year in its December 1961 issue.Frye, 1995 p, 214: Chronology The title story "Tell Me A Riddle" won first prize O. Henry Award the same year.Frye, 1995 p, 214: Chronology
Form and style
One of the outstanding features of Olsen's literary form is the "extraordinary compression" of her short stories. The origins of this form lie in the "immediate circumstances" under which Olsen wrote: a low-income working-class mother raising four daughters, who recognized both the limitations and possibilities these hardships presented her as a writer.Frye, 1995 p. 14-15
Literary critic Joanne S. Fry explains that Olsen's social realities and her awareness of herself as subject to the larger historical influences in the 20th century led her to create short stories and novellas that are "novelistic" in form. Fry writes:
The Dungannon Foundation, in presenting Olsen with the Rea Award in 1994, declared that Tell Me a Riddle possessed "the lyric intensity of an Emily Dickinson poem and the scope of a Balzac novel."Frye, 1995 p.15, p. 127 footnote no. 30
Literary critic Marilyn Yalom praises "Olsen's style, that accounts for her prestige in literary circles."Pearlman and Werlock, 1991 p. 35, p. 153: See here in Selected Bibliography source of Yalom quote. Biographers Mickey Pearlman and Abby H. P. Werlock wrote:
Literary critic Mara Faulkner comments on the feminist component in the collection:
Adaptations Tell Me a Riddle, a film based on the short story collection, was released in 1980.
References
Sources Faulkner, Mara. 1993. Protest and Possibility in the Writing of Tillie Olsen. University Press of Virginia, Charlotteville and London. Frye, Joanne S. 1995. Tillie Olsen: A Study of the Short Fiction. Twayne Publishers, New York. Leonard, John. 1994. Introduction to Tell Me a Riddle in Tell Me Riddle, Delta Books published by Dell, New York. Mambrol, Nasrullah. 2020. "Analysis of Tillie Olsen's Stories." Literary Theory and Criticism, Literariness. https://literariness.org/2020/06/22/analysis-of-tillie-olsens-stories/ Retrieved 19 November 2023. Olsen, Tillie. 1961. Tell Me A Riddle. J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia. Pearlman, Mickey and Werlick, Abby H. P.. 1991. Tillie Olsen. Twayne Publishers, Boston, Mass.
External links Tell Me a Riddle study guide Tillie Olsen's 'Tell Me a Riddle': The Catastrophe of History "No one's private ground": A Bakhtinian reading of Tillie Olsen's Tell Me a Riddle