Lydia Davis proved her gift for transforming the banal into the fascinating when she read at Russell House Wednesday evening. The audience responded most enthusiastically to a story structured as a letter of complaint about an insufficiently flattering illustration of the contents of a can of peas. Somehow the author, translator, and recipient of virtually every conceivable literary grant managed to imbue such annoyances of modern experience with importance.
Most of the selections from the evening were drawn from Davis’s 2001 short story collection Samuel Johnson is Indignant, although she also read a few more recent unpublished works. Many of the stories were extremely brief, some as short as one paragraph, and unconventional in their combination of formal experimentation with what Assistant Professor of English Matthew Sharpe called an “emotional core.” Sharpe introduced Davis, comparing her to such luminaries as Montaigne and Kafka.
Between readings, Davis—who, with thick-framed glasses, a colorful sweater, and shoulder-length hair, appeared older and more distinctive than she did in her publicity photograph—recounted her journey towards her distinctive style. In college, she said, her dream was to publish a story in The New Yorker. She attempted to write traditional narratives. She became frustrated until she read the work of Russell Edson, which she described as inconsistent. His occasional failures, she said, gave her the courage to take artistic risks.
In her twenties she forced herself to write two paragraph-long stories every day, until she “trained” her mind to seek inspiration in every experience. The results of her efforts are often amusing. The audience Thursday reacted to a story of ostensibly disconnected vignettes as if it were a comedy routine of erudite one-liners:
“Dad, sorry I made fun of you. Now I’m spelling Nietzsche wrong, too.”
Many students who attended the event were not previously familiar with Davis’s work. Lee Norton ’08 said he knew only that she wrote short stories, and assumed they would be more conventional. But he added that he was “pleasantly surprised.”?Other students arrived with expectations. Emily Rabkin ’08 was somewhat disappointed that Davis did not read from the older collection Almost No Memory, but liked that the new, shorter pieces acted as “keyholes” to the author’s longer works.
During the brief question and answer session following the readings, other attendees expressed their interest in Davis’s celebrated translations of Proust, which she planned to discuss in detail at a Thursday morning lecture.
As a translator, Davis exhibits an acute sensitivity to language that serves her well in her English writing. She often produces abstract, syntactically complex sentences that a less skillful writer would have trouble getting away with. Imprecise language disturbs her; many of her stories express frustration at the poor grammar she encounters over the intercom of a public bus or in a phone company’s apology for bad service. Another “letter of complaint” centered around a misspelled item on a restaurant menu.
Davis’s willingness to draw out all the implications of even a single phrase or word caused the listener to realize how much is implied but not directly stated in everyday writing and speech.
“I try to explore the question as far as I can before getting tedious,” she said.
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