By Alyce Wilson
( Standard-Journal,
March 27, 1998)

LEWISBURG -- "Make me look like a kabuki," Tess Gallagher joked when asked for permission to take pictures of her during her reading at Booksellers in Lewisburg last night. She pointed out the jacket of one of her books, where a photographer had made her look kabuki-like, with a white face, bright red lips and startling eyes. In life, as in her fiction, Gallagher values the power of humor.

At the reading she made a rare move for an author and answered questions from the audience about her work. Humor, she explained "is such a wonderful shower on us. It's refreshing." In some way, she said, all her stories use humor.

Gallagher, who is widely praised for her work as a poet, short story writer and essayist, is the current poet-in-residence at Bucknell University. To a small but enthusiastic audience, Gallagher read her short story, "A Glimpse of the Buddha."

The story is about a woman who has a strange conflict with another woman in a grocery store and learns from it by remembering the Buddhist concept that "everyone is Buddha." Gallagher said the story sprang from the "idea of the Buddha in even the most difficult people."

She said this story was unusual in that it started with a concept, while most of her stories start out as a scene.

The main character, she said, learns something from her encounter with a possibly crazy customer. This, in a sense, is what Gallagher hopes readers do with her stories.

"A writer has also to be a seer, because your reader is blind: They don't see anything that you don't give them," she said. She learned this through experience; in 1971, she worked with a blind man and described things to him on a daily basis. "His perception of the universe came through me," she said. She applies this principle to her writing, and teaches it to her students. Gallagher taught at Syracuse University for 10 years.

Because of this aspect of writing, Gallagher said, "A writer has a responsibility ... What mirror are they holding up?" In her stories, she prefers to show people as more flexible, capable of changing their ideas. "That, to me, is instructive," she said.

One example is a story called "My Gun," about a woman who tries to decide whether to buy a gun. The inspiration for the story came from people advising Gallagher to buy a gun after the death of her husband, writer Raymond Carver.

In the story, Gallagher said, "The gun amplifies fear quite a lot ... It makes everybody's fear visible." Gallagher leaves an uncertain ending, wher the reader doesn't know if the woman buys a gun.

Another story, "I Got a Guy Once," is a revenge tale with a twist, as the main character eventually feels sorry for the man he takes revenge on.

Gallagher should know about vengeance. Her uncle was murdered by a burglar, and the murderer went free. Gallagher had to convince her uncle's best friend not to take revenge by killing the man.

Such experiences help Gallagher to relate stories of hope and enlightenment -- even humor -- in a world where schoolchildren shoot other schoolchildren. "We don't have to keep making our mistakes," she said. "You (can) get out of the circuitry of your wrongdoings by 'waking up.'" She said she tries to "wake" herself up when writing a story, in order to awaken the reader. Without that, stories like "A Glimpse of the Buddha" would be "just an anecdote," she said.

"We're stuck in a universe in which all kinds of things happen. The rulebook is changing all the time," she said. This is why she uses her stories to propose possibilities.

Gallagher, who has read her work all over the country, including a special event for fiction authors with thousands of audience members, will read next on April 26 at 8 p.m. at Bucknell Hall on the Bucknell campus.

Her recent book of short stories, "At the Owl Woman's Saloon," is available at Booksellers, 328 Market St., Lewisburg. She will be at Bucknell until May.