Latest / the arc.fm / Lydia Davis - We Read a One-Minute Short Story and Argue If It's a Story for 49 Minutes

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Lydia Davis - We Read a One-Minute Short Story and Argue If It's a Story for 49 Minutes · the arc.fm

• 0:11
  Wait.
• 0:12
  So you’ve never read the Lydia Davis book that I bought you???
• 0:15
  They're 45 second stories.
• 0:19
  okay.
• 0:19
  In fairness, I didn't realize until I read this one that, yeah,
• 0:23
  I probably could have found the time.
• 0:43
  Yeah.
• 1:04
  She writes
• 1:05
  an ironic, dry prose in which the speculative inner eye
• 1:10
  comments, extracting humor from the crude sort of nature of daily life Welcome
• 1:15
  I don't know about ironic and quick side hooks.
• 1:19
  What was the rest?
• 1:22
  Because all it is lately is
• 1:24
  is cinema, love stories.
• 2:11
  I'm worried about this podcast call.
• 2:15
  also.
• 2:16
  I wish people could have seen the trepidation in Robby's eyes
• 2:20
  as he tried to explain how he felt about Lydia Davis is one book
• 2:24
  that he read.
• 2:44
  known throughout the world.
• 2:49
  Also.
• 3:14
  my. Got it, I got.
• 3:15
  I'll take my.
• 3:16
  Got it, I got.
• 3:17
  my. Got Yeah.
• 3:22
  pew! Pew pew pew pew!
• 3:35
  As she deserves to be.
• 3:36
  Perhaps.
• 3:49
  I thought it was one of the things
• 3:50
  where I was like, oh, she's a known entity.
• 3:54
  And quote unquote, everybody knows knows who
• 3:57
  she is.
• 4:20
  Yeah.
• 5:19
  you're doing the good work here.
• 5:22
  And me too.
• 5:23
  I keep I still have that book you bought me ten years ago sitting
• 5:31
  Definitely.
• 5:36
  Sorry.
• 5:37
  I think you're going in and out.
• 5:38
  What's, Do you not have 45 seconds
• 5:42
  a night?
• 5:49
  I. You should probably.
• 5:52
  Yeah, you should go check that To.
• 5:56
  Their 45 seconds stories.
• 6:00
  Okay.
• 6:00
  In fairness, I didn't realize until I read this one that.
• 6:04
  Yeah, I probably could have found the time.
• 6:08
  I do, I do have
• 6:15
  Wow. Wow.
• 6:24
  I had assumed that you would read it, and we're just not impressed.
• 6:27
  And we were just going to have a pleasant detente of.
• 6:30
  We're not going to talk about that.
• 6:32
  think I was worried that what happened to me
• 6:35
  reading this one would happen,
• 6:41
  It's the most gettable thing
• 6:43
  she's ever written.
• 6:51
  I don't get it.
• 6:52
  I'm going to get it.
• 6:53
  Like I understand it.
• 6:54
  I'm just like, how does this count?
• 6:56
  I'm so upset.
• 7:02
  Can I say, can I say my line?
• 7:04
  Can I say my brilliant line?
• 7:07
  I believe that Lydia Davis is like Rothko
• 7:10
  because I looked at a Rothko and I was like, I don't get it.
• 7:13
  That's I could paint a red square and be famous and an artist.
• 7:18
  And then I sat with it and I took some time.
• 7:20
  And I now find Rothko's extremely powerful.
• 7:23
  I see the complexity and the nuance and the varying shades.
• 7:27
  And it's not one red. It's multiple. Right?
• 7:29
  Like there's all of this stuff and that is is contained within
• 7:34
  what is seemingly so simple.
• 7:36
  So I believe she's a Rothko and I just don't get it yet.
• 7:38
  Look, I grew up in a trailer park, all right?
• 7:40
  I went to public school.
• 7:42
  Some.
• 7:43
  Some things take me longer to understand the nuance, because I just think,
• 7:46
  why didn't I spend 15 seconds writing interesting observations about the world?
• 7:51
  Publish it and have everyone tell me how brilliant I am.
• 7:56
  You realize she's not doodling
• 7:59
  these on the pooper right?
• 8:09
  Kolb called trying to be of the people.
• 8:13
  What if what you say.
• 8:14
  Is that what you think we call it
• 8:16
  I guess I was subconsciously trying to be relatable.
• 8:20
  Do you think that's what us proletariat call it?
• 8:22
  know. I.
• 8:24
  got home from my long day at the factory and off for some quiet time on the pooper.
• 8:34
  Wow. Today
• 8:44
  I'm here with a very special guest, Lydia Davis.
• 8:47
  Lydia is unique.
• 8:48
  She is one of America's best and best known short story
• 8:52
  writers, and her short stories are indeed very short.
• 8:55
  She is a leading translator,
• 8:57
  best known for translating parts of Proust and also Flaubert.
• 9:01
  She is a wonderful essayist.
• 9:03
  Her latest book, which I loved, is essays to Lydia Davis Just Out.
• 9:08
  Of course, there is also essays, one which is excellent as well.
• 9:12
  And she has, in fact done much more than that.
• 9:14
  Lydia, welcome.
• 9:17
  I love the fact that Proust does have very very short sentences.
• 9:20
  People kind of forget that.
• 9:22
  Well, the fact is that I,
• 9:25
  I did not, as a matter of principle, did not read
• 9:28
  any secondary material before I started translating Proust and
• 9:34
  even now
• 9:35
  would not want to read a great deal of it.
• 9:38
  I like see one on
• 9:41
  one confrontation with, with the text.
• 9:44
  And I really think that's where a reader
• 9:48
  should begin and maybe end.
• 9:51
  Which of you would like to read
• 10:50
  Can we delve deeper into.
• 10:53
  Your Rothko thing?
• 10:55
  Do you have a couple of other examples of things
• 10:58
  that Yeah, yes.
• 11:01
  I would love to hear some things that you didn't initially understand.
• 11:12
  Oh, tell me about bonsai.
• 11:13
  Because you're Big on Japan. I do
• 12:13
  How long did it take you to understand
• 12:15
  or to come to what you just said about the bonsai tree?
• 13:48
  not to bring it back to myself
• 13:51
  necessarily, but obviously I I'm so well-acquainted with my own work.
• 13:55
  Pretty well-acquainted anyway.
• 13:57
  But I think of the novel I wrote, the one novel
• 14:00
  the end of the story was meant to be.
• 14:04
  Give the impression of of fragmentation, because,
• 14:09
  the narrator is trying to remember,
• 14:12
  remember incidents.
• 14:15
  And so the memories come back in fragments.
• 14:18
  But Modern art or contemporary art or this weird
• 14:23
  avant garde stuff that gets hung on gallery walls.
• 14:26
  Is or is not genius or not genius.
• 14:29
  I was very much of the mind that it's not genius.
• 14:34
  When I was a little kid, but what changed my view on that is hanging out with,
• 14:40
  fish and her like, art student friends and all of them being like,
• 14:46
  yeah, literally any person could do what we're doing.
• 14:51
  Like, you do not need to have eight years of school
• 14:55
  at in a master's program to paint soft
• 14:58
  pastel squares or to be like, I collect reindeer antlers
• 15:04
  and put Christmas ornaments on them, and we hang it on the wall
• 15:07
  at the Whitney, and people like, fawn over it.
• 15:11
  Like, literally true.
• 15:13
  But you didn't.
• 15:16
  And number two, you don't understand why I'm doing this until I explain it to you.
• 15:21
  Like there is a whole reason behind what I'm doing, what I'm doing, and.
• 15:26
  that stuck with me and brought me over to the side of being more open to.
• 15:31
  Oh, there are things I'm not gonna understand it.
• 15:33
  First,
• 15:41
  Please welcome Lydia Davis.
• 15:48
  Overheard on the train.
• 15:50
  Says one old lady to another.
• 15:53
  Everything gets worse.
• 15:56
  Does anything get better?
• 16:17
  I cannot wait to get to that.
• 16:18
  That's great.
• 16:19
  Robby did you hate the Lydia Davis short story
• 16:22
  also. To.
• 16:44
  Yes. I.
• 18:18
  Yeah.
• 18:38
  So then I need to say.
• 18:40
  Some of the like after context that happened once.
• 18:44
  I was like, oh, hey, I think we should do a Lydia Davis story.
• 18:49
  And then I went looking for Lydia Davis stories
• 18:52
  that perhaps were recorded, especially of her reading it herself.
• 18:56
  especially with audiences reaction to it, the more that I was like,
• 19:01
  people don't fucking get this at all.
• 19:04
  Or I was
• 19:05
  like, gee damn, is this like absolute trash?
• 19:09
  And I've been putting it up there like it's some genius art.
• 19:18
  And then finally getting back into, well, I'm
• 19:21
  going to have to speak about this with you guys.
• 19:24
  I'm just going to say what's been true to me
• 19:27
  since forever and ignore any new information.
• 19:31
  I did get back to.
• 19:33
  Oh my goodness.
• 19:36
  But I could feel
• 19:38
  a lot of what you're giving me.
• 19:42
  Once I was filtered it through seeing just, like, more general reactions,
• 19:47
  because it's not like the people who are going to see a Lydia Davis reading
• 19:50
  or going to, like a literature festival are.
• 19:55
  mistakenly not Adam?
• 19:57
  Adam Sandler 2004 movie they're they're very intentionally.
• 20:02
  But the fact that
• 20:04
  a lot of the
• 20:05
  reactions were just like, well, are you taking this in
• 20:09
  as if you're watching a 2004 buddy
• 20:12
  comedy? But,
• 21:23
  I should say parentheses
• 21:25
  I would say similar things about her career.
• 21:28
  This work in general of.
• 21:32
  They are I.
• 21:34
  I may not say the word perfect with it,
• 21:37
  but the fact that they are so short and intentionally
• 21:41
  so short is very important and very impressive.
• 23:22
  Every time it there's.
• 23:26
  I have more feelings.
• 23:27
  Every time I hear this story.
• 23:35
  Because what I'm realizing more and more it is
• 23:37
  that you can add nearly infinite details
• 23:43
  within this as you're imagining it.
• 23:46
  Every time the hotel room or the hotel lounge can be different.
• 23:49
  Every time the women are slouched or, like sitting straight up,
• 23:54
  or it's a different time of day, or like everything around, it can be different.
• 23:58
  Aside from like the five where she's put down.
• 24:19
  that is
• 24:19
  a reason I love Lydia Davis is work in general.
• 24:23
  There's an aspect of it I've never thought about until now.
• 25:48
  what you would do.
• 25:49
  You you'd have your like pursed
• 26:02
  Yes. Yes.
• 26:06
  The highest form of respect in my opinion.
• 26:12
  would you.
• 26:13
  I believe this of you call that you would be in that audience. Right.
• 26:16
  And other people would be laughing and you would, you would do you're like
• 26:20
  And you would feel that
• 26:22
  like she knows that you understand her better than anyone else.
• 26:26
  Right.
• 26:26
  I feel like you would, you'd be like, she knows that.
• 26:29
  I know.
• 26:33
  We and you would tell that story later
• 26:35
  being like we locked eyes and I nodded and she she knew I was the one who got it.
• 26:42
  Absolutely.
• 26:43
  Yeah.
• 26:44
  This was seven years ago
• 26:47
  called Two Sisters, one and then Two sisters.
• 26:50
  Twos and sections.
• 26:55
  Two sisters, one.
• 26:57
  Though everyone wishes it would not happen,
• 27:00
  and though it would be far better if it did not happen,
• 27:03
  it does sometimes happen that a second daughter is born
• 27:07
  and there are two sisters.
• 27:10
  Of course, any daughter crying in the hour of her birth
• 27:14
  is only a failure and is greeted with a heavy heart by her father.
• 27:18
  Since the man wanted SOS, he tries again.
• 27:23
  Again it is only a daughter.
• 27:25
  This is worse for the second daughter than it is a third.
• 27:29
  I mean even a fourth.
• 27:30
  He is miserable among females.
• 27:33
  He lives in despair with his failures.
• 27:37
  The man is lucky who has one son and one daughter.
• 27:40
  Though his risk is great in trying for another son.
• 27:44
  Most fortunate was the man with sons, only for
• 27:47
  he can go on son after son until the daughter is made,
• 27:51
  and he will have all the sons
• 27:52
  he could wish for, and a little daughter as well to grace his table.
• 27:56
  And if the daughter should never come, then he has a woman
• 28:00
  already in his wife, the mother of his sons.
• 28:03
  In himself he has not a man.
• 28:05
  Only his wife has that man.
• 28:08
  She could wish for a daughter having no woman.
• 28:11
  But her wishes are hardly audible.
• 28:13
  For she is herself a daughter.
• 28:16
  Though she may have no living parents,
• 28:19
  the single daughter, the many brothers only sister
• 28:22
  listens to the voice of her family and is proud of herself and happy.
• 28:26
  Her softness against her brother's brutality,
• 28:29
  her calm against their destruction is admired.
• 28:33
  But when there are two sisters, one is uglier and more clumsy than the other.
• 28:37
  One is less clever, one is more promiscuous.
• 28:41
  Even when all good qualities unite
• 28:43
  in one sister, as most often happens, she will not be happy
• 28:47
  because the other, like a shadow, will follow her success with green eyes.
• 28:53
  Two sisters grow up at different times and despise one another for children.
• 28:57
  They quarrel and turn red.
• 28:59
  And though if there were only one daughter,
• 29:02
  if there is only one daughter, she will remain Angela.
• 29:05
  Two will lose their names and be stouter as a result.
• 29:11
  Two sisters often marry.
• 29:13
  One finds the husband of the other crude.
• 29:15
  The other uses her husband as a shield against her sister
• 29:18
  and her sister's husband, whom she fears for his quick wit.
• 29:23
  Though the two sisters attempt friendship so that their children
• 29:26
  will have cousins, they are often estranged.
• 29:29
  Their husbands disappoint them, their sons are failures
• 29:33
  and spend their mother's love, and she turns strong as iron
• 29:37
  only is now the hatred of the two sisters for one another.
• 29:41
  This endures as their husbands wither,
• 29:44
  as their sons desert, caged together.
• 29:47
  Two sisters contain their fury.
• 29:50
  Their features are the same.
• 29:52
  Two sisters in black.
• 29:54
  Shop for food together.
• 29:55
  Husbands dead. Sons dead in some war.
• 29:58
  Their hatred is so familiar that they are unaware of it.
• 30:01
  They are sometimes tender with one another because they forget.
• 30:06
  But the faces of the two sisters in death
• 30:09
  are bitter by long habit, and small children will not look at them.
• 30:18
  I'm finding even
• 30:20
  the idea of negative reactions to some of her stories
• 30:24
  to be making me just giddy that, oh, great.
• 30:28
  And also, you could dislike it very genuinely and very deeply
• 30:32
  and have great thoughts about why you dislike it.
• 30:35
  And that's equally as exciting.
• 30:38
  great art.
• 31:00
  this thing
• 31:00
  I'm finding out about it from speaking with you too.
• 31:04
  Yeah.
• 31:04
  Tell us about before tonight.
• 31:07
  she. Her work.
• 31:09
  And I'm making this.
• 31:10
  I'm making this up from feelings about my memory, not from specific.
• 31:15
  Oh, this is exactly how I experienced it.
• 31:18
  But. Lydia Davis.
• 31:20
  This work was always the thing that.
• 31:23
  Oh, It may be pretentious.
• 31:28
  Linsey Davis Davis's work was the shibboleth
• 31:37
  There is.
• 31:40
  There's our boy.
• 31:53
  It was this work with this shibboleth
• 31:56
  that was passed between art students
• 31:59
  and comparative literature students, and anybody who wasn't a physicist
• 32:03
  who thought that they were smart, that you could say to somebody, oh,
• 32:08
  but also Lydia Davis, and they would respect you.
• 32:12
  Yeah. Could you define that word? Perhaps.
• 32:14
  the idea of a shibboleth more traditionally, it's like it's a.
• 32:29
  So I just think it
• 32:30
  could be worth unpacking what it is.
• 32:34
  It's.
• 32:34
  This is the first time I've heard it in a sentence, probably in seven years,
• 32:38
  except in, like, extremely religious connotation, All right.
• 32:43
  Shibboleth is a word
• 32:46
  that is used to define an in group versus an out group.
• 32:51
  And any, like, extremely like, historical or religious traditional sense.
• 32:56
  Let's say there were two tribes.
• 32:58
  One that could pronounce words
• 33:01
  that had the sound of
• 33:05
  and another group that didn't learn how to pronounce,
• 33:09
  or the s-h sound as kids.
• 33:11
  And so to test whether or not
• 33:14
  somebody was with your tribe or not, with your tribe safely,
• 33:19
  you make them say a phrase that had an s-h sound,
• 33:22
  and if they could say it, I was like, oh, great, you are actually one of us.
• 33:26
  If they couldn't say it,
• 33:27
  Or if they stumbled over it, you knew they weren't actually one of you.
• 33:56
  And one chef's kiss.
• 34:11
  Not since moving to New York.
• 34:16
  in Cambridge?
• 34:19
  I can name the places.
• 34:24
  Ithaca.
• 34:25
  Cambridge, New Haven
• 34:31
  and Arbor.
• 34:32
  Seattle, Kirkland in particular.
• 34:41
  Where else?
• 34:42
  Oh, outside of Chicago.
• 34:43
  Because Chicago was a writer's town.
• 34:44
  And I would bet my life that all throughout Buenos Aires,
• 34:50
  Lydia Davis is acclaimed.
• 35:01
  Oh, I was saying
• 35:01
  why she was important to me as actual real life.
• 35:05
  I went on for the rest of my life thinking, this is a very important person
• 35:10
  that people that I respect and feel a sense of artistic camaraderie
• 35:15
  with, know about and love and think the same as I do.
• 35:20
  If her.
• 35:21
  But as I continue
• 35:24
  to give her collections of short stories to more and more people.
• 35:29
  I'm finding out. people aren't even reading them.
• 36:04
  this is very short.
• 36:06
  Safe. Love.
• 36:08
  She was in love with her son's pediatrician.
• 36:12
  Alone out in the country.
• 36:13
  Could anyone blame her?
• 36:15
  There was an element of grand passion in this love.
• 36:19
  It was also a safe thing.
• 36:22
  The man was on the other side of a barrier between him and her.
• 36:27
  The child on the examining table.
• 36:29
  The office itself. The staff.
• 36:32
  His wife.
• 36:34
  Her husband.
• 36:35
  His stethoscope.
• 36:36
  His beard. Her breasts.
• 36:38
  His glasses.
• 36:39
  Her glasses, etc..
• 36:43
  I read two from an older.
• 36:52
  But I feel like so many times.
• 36:56
  People can experience a moment and run through a million different
• 37:01
  thoughts and emotions in their head about that one moment,
• 37:05
  because our brains do experience so much in ones that we can't.
• 37:09
  We could never
• 37:11
  put into words in the moments because the moment is already over.
• 37:15
  But you can lock eyes with somebody from across the street.
• 37:18
  Perhaps you've both have seen somebody.
• 37:21
  Have a tough moment, and then you look at each other
• 37:24
  and understand, oh, we've both seen somebody else have a tough moment.
• 37:28
  We've both connected on that man.
• 37:31
  We thought our lives were kind of bad when we woke up this morning,
• 37:34
  but in reality we've just realized, oh, our lives are great
• 37:38
  and we've connected about that.
• 38:05
  From a different perspective.
• 38:07
  There's a thing that I could love about it, but that wasn't.
• 38:09
  I wasn't trying to get out.
• 38:28
  The thing I wrote down about this story in particular
• 38:30
  and a thing that I think about many of her story is,
• 38:34
  is that they are the shortest versions of salty dog tales.
• 38:38
  Like, even though they're like micro short, if you wrote down the plot?
• 38:43
  Why did you tell them this to me?
• 38:45
  But if you're actually experiencing it, you're like, oh my gosh, I'm just this was
• 38:49
  a great ride.
• 39:46
  none of that matters.
• 39:48
  I've had such joy reading your your stories
• 39:52
  that I'm delighted that we can present you here at the festival
• 39:55
  in front of so many Scandinavian readers here.
• 39:59
  You've written a number of short collections of short story and one novel.
• 40:05
  I find it hard to describe what your writing is
• 40:10
  like if you should present it.
• 40:12
  How would you describe it yourself?
• 40:17
  It's very difficult.
• 40:19
  I guess I would have to say it ranges from.
• 40:22
  Well, from the the novel would be the longest.
• 40:25
  But even the novel isn't completely traditional novel.
• 40:30
  It's one sort of long monologue
• 40:33
  without chapters and just spaces.
• 40:37
  Now and then, ranging all the way down to the tiniest.
• 40:42
  The stories are only a line or two long, with the title,
• 40:47
  really, anything and everything that I feel like doing, I do.
• 40:50
  only afterwards do I worry about what I might call it.
• 40:54
  I mean, I call them all stories just to make it easier, but.
• 42:24
  if you wait for a good
• 42:25
  idea, you know, you'll just keep doubting yourself and.
• 42:29
  And if you force it, interesting things can happen.
• 42:33
  Because you were you were, sometimes writing
• 42:36
  from a very strange place inside yourself
• 42:40
  because you can't stop and think.
• 42:42
  You just go ahead so you can bring up very strange material.
• 42:46
  There's a way that you're describing it and a thing.
• 42:50
  But I'm giving it credit for that.
• 42:53
  Are in disagreement with each other Both of you are very much.
• 42:57
  Especially when I heard you read it.
• 42:59
  We're very much putting up as in real life.
• 43:02
  Lydia Davis definitely was in a hotel lounge.
• 43:05
  She overheard this exact conversation.
• 43:08
  She wrote it down. This is documentary.
• 43:11
  But, I definitely experience it as she thought of this,
• 43:16
  perhaps there was inspiration, but it was not a documentary thing at all.
• 43:21
  It was like, it's not a recitation of life to me.
• 44:08
  Why would somebody do that for?
• 44:11
  This is not a joke, but one for fun. Hey.
• 44:16
  Cole's first pun.
• 44:22
  But I think as soon as I recognize that this is something
• 44:25
  that I would like to write about it, I immediately do distance from myself.
• 44:29
  So even if it did happen to happen to me,
• 44:33
  it could have happened to anyone in this sense.
• 44:35
  And then my My project is to
• 44:39
  is to shape it so that it has a complete form
• 44:43
  and in a way it's no longer personal
• 44:46
  or no longer subjective.
• 44:50
  Once I shape it properly
• 44:53
  and give it the right rhythm in the right language,
• 44:56
  I think if it were more casually written,
• 44:59
  it would sort of cross the line back into confession or,
• 45:05
  I don't know, just some.
• 45:07
  And it would be more uncomfortable.
• 45:09
  It wouldn't, it would not be a finished made thing, you know.
• 45:13
  she's so in control of what she's putting on the page,
• 45:16
  that by the time we get to her saying, I am surprised and intrigued.
• 45:22
  What a heart to heart they're having.
• 45:25
  and so I am going to take you down this path so far,
• 45:29
  but you're like, oh, let's treat this as high falutin hoity toity B.S.
• 45:35
  but then in the end,
• 45:37
  for you, here's a salty dog tale
• 45:40
  because she can.
• 46:43
  I find story
• 46:44
  in the narrator's realization that they're in this moment.
• 46:49
  Are nuts, actually having deep, feelings and experiences with in their universe.
• 46:55
  And, in fact, just a fucking nincompoop who was overhearing some story
• 47:42
  but the place where you
• 47:48
  I don't know about that.
• 47:50
  Jaclynn made a head to the right.
• 47:53
  Head to the left. Eyebrow up. Frown. Smile.
• 47:56
  This.
• 48:14
  I rest my
• 48:15
  case. I do