'Scratched' Spotlights The Value Of A Less Orderly Approach, Harm Of Perfectionism
Elizabeth Tallent writes: "For the sake of perfection, I took a voice, my own, and twisted until mischance and error and experiment were wrung from it, and with them any chance of aliveness."
The writer Elizabeth Tallent released her first story collection in 1983. Over the following decade, she joined Stanford's prestigious creative writing faculty and published a novel and two story collections, all well-received.
Michiko Kakutani, though, reviewing Tallent's 1993 collection for , wrote sadly that each story was individually beautiful, but the collection relied too much on the same themes, explored in the "same combination of elliptical dialogue and minutely detailed introspection." Kakutani ended her review hoping that Tallent, given her "generous gifts," would, is, in fact, significantly broader. It also took Tallent 22 years to write.
