In his introduction to Varieties of Exile, a collection of stories by Mavis Gallant, Russell Banks notes that, more than any other literary form, the short story 'speaks to and for every human being who thinks of him or herself as alone, cut off from God, and counted as unimportant and unworthy of attention except when considered en masse.' Gallant indeed wrote almost exclusively about the marginals of the world: the orphaned and the exiled; the abandoned and the uprooted; the people who, like the protagonist of her story 'New Year's Eve,' feel that they are forever being deposited in a place 'where there was no one to talk to' and one 'was not loved.' The aloneness in Gallant's writing is often not so much stated as implied. It hovers in the air, creates an atmosphere whose absence of emotional connection is often experienced as existential'an isolation so penetrating, it seems inborn. This sense of things is central to her writing. It comes not through character or plot...
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