(Translated by Maria Jolas for the @ndbooks.bsky.social edition.)

3. In "Living," another Faith story, a friend dies, life (in all its precariousness) distilled into a handful of sentences. Writes Paley: "I was bleeding. The doctor said, 'You can't bleed forever. Either you run out of blood or you stop. No one bleeds forever.'" soundcloud.com/penamerican/...

2. "A Conversation With My Father" from Paley's 1974 collection, Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, is a story about telling stories and ending them. "My father," it begins, "is eighty-six years old and in bed. His heart, that bloody motor, is equally old and will not do certain jobs any more."

1. "The Used-Boy Raisers" (1959) is the first of Paley's "Faith Darwin" stories—a character, as her name suggests, born out of the tension between the secular and the religious, the personal and political. (Text isn't readily available online, but there is a recording read by the legend herself.)

Here's a 1964 recording with additional context: youtu.be/HwUtZGWaePo?...