From the Archives: What is it about Lydia Davis?
"It is not easy to live in this world."
(Note: Today’s newsletter may be listened to if you wish, using the audio clip above. Let me know if you’d like this as a feature going forward. Thanks!)
“My stories are sometimes closer to poems or meditations, but often there is at least a little narrative in them.” ~Lydia Davis
Upcoming! Flash Fiction Immersion Extravaganza!
Mark your calendars! The next paid subscriber event will run from Monday, February 23rd - Monday, March 16th. These are always such fun and productive events, and I’d love for you to join in! Twenty-two days of writing to prompts, and sharing positive feedback and encouragement, along with terrific published examples, and fun challenges. This time, I will also include a Write Together Webex meeting and, as always, there will be a Salon Night Reading for all participants. Stay tuned for more details!
Below is a post from 2023 many of you will not have seen, along with story analysis and writing prompt. Enjoy!
Lately, I am finding myself most interested in what sets some stories, some writing, apart from the rest. I’ll explore this in some depth today and in the next few newsletters. I’d like to start with the work of Lydia Davis.
I wonder if Lydia Davis has ever used the term “flash fiction” for her shortest works. I don’t think she herself has, but the New Yorker has, in its summer flash fiction series, Davis has a piece entitled “Everyone Cried.”
I spoke about originality in my last 3-in-90 workshop (the next two cover different aspects of originality as well). What I love about Davis’s work is that it is wholly inimitable. It’s not just her style, but the mind and sensibility behind what she writes. I feel similarly about Joy Williams. Even if one were to closely study the prose and attempt to emulate the sentence structures, they are both impossible to copy because of the unparalleled originality of thought. They’re both absolutely brilliant.
There’s something deceptively simple in Davis’s prose. On its face, it’s quite straightforward.
The opening sentence of “Everyone Cried” is: “It is not easy to live in this world.”
Davis draws us in with her unique voice. She surprises with her approach which is both bold and simple. It takes more skill, this kind of writing, that doesn’t set out to be “beautiful” or “stunning.” There are no rich descriptions, no overcooked emotional manipulation. Davis trusts and respects the reader, indeed, she trusts and respects herself. Let’s look at one of her “Five Stories” in Conjunctions: 24:
The Outing
An outburst of anger near the road, a refusal to speak on the path, a silence in the pine woods, a silence across the old railroad bridge, an attempt to be friendly in the water, a refusal to end the argument on the flat stones, a cry of anger on the steep bank of dirt, a weeping among the bushes.
Let’s pull this apart. This day, this outing, is rendered for us in one sentence with many clauses. So we have:
An outburst
A refusal (to speak)
A silence (x2)
An attempt
A refusal (to end)
A cry of anger
A weeping
As a reader, think of how much this one sentence opens up to your imagination. Davis leaves out what needn’t be stated. She lets us decide on the characters. So much happens here, but we’re never privy to the argument. We are given anger, silence, and weeping only. Note, too, how much space is given to the setting. The road, the path, the pine woods, the old railroad bridge, the water, the flat stones, the bank of dirt, and the bushes.
Flash fiction, no matter how brief, needs a turning point, a load bearing sentence, or shift of some kind, in order to truly “work” and be set apart from prose poetry. Do you see the turn here?
“…an attempt to be friendly in the water…”
That’s it. The moment when reconciliation was still possible. And again, Davis doesn’t overplay anything here. It is enough to say “an attempt to be friendly” and allow the reader to decide what that looks like.
I love writers who let me feel smart. I think most readers do. We might admire pretty sentences (because we’re writers and pretty sentences take skill), but we also like, even need, to engage deeply with the work in order to be satisfied with it. It is the difference between just looking at something beautiful or strange and feeling that beauty and the strangeness in ourselves. In the greatest work, something is evoked in the mind or heart of the reader aside from saying to themselves, “that’s beautiful writing.” It’s what I mean by resonance.
