Lydia Davis - We Read a One-Minute Short Story and Argue If It's a Story for 49 Minutes
Cole brings us one of the great living short story writers, and we argue whether her stories are stories at all, until Jaclynn gets the last word.
EPISODE SUMMARY
Cole makes the case for Lydia Davis, the MacArthur Fellow and Man Booker International Prize winner whose stories can run a single line. Robby read one and found it charming. Jaclynn has a Rothko theory for why she hasn't gotten Davis yet. We read a story aloud, hear Davis in interviews and readings, and fight about what the word "story" even means. You don't need to know her work first, and by the end Jaclynn has her answer.
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A Long Summary
Cole has spent fifteen years assuming everyone knows Lydia Davis, so the episode opens with a test: had Robby or Jaclynn heard of her before he started talking about her? For Jaclynn, the answer is only through Cole, who gave her a book of Davis's stories as a Christmas present and brings her up whenever the baby shoes story or Fleabag comes up. Cole walks us through why his assumption made sense. Davis received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2003 and the Man Booker International Prize in 2013, and she is admired by writers, translators and readers around the world. He also admits that every time he mentions her, he learns how few people have actually read her.
From there, the conversation turns into how to approach art you don't get yet. Jaclynn offers her Rothko theory: she looked at a Rothko, thought she could paint a red square, then sat with it until she saw the complexity. Bonsai trees went the same way, from cute trees she grew up seeing at Kmart to something meditative once a man in Japan walked her through his collection without a shared language. Robby read the story Cole chose and found it charming, though he was more interested in why he was reading it than in the reading itself. Cole explains why he loves her: a story that holds a single moment, with just enough detail that every reader pictures a different hotel lounge. Along the way we hear Davis herself in interviews, including one with Tyler Cowen and one at a literary festival in Scandinavia, and reading two of her pieces aloud.
The argument underneath all of it is whether these pieces count as stories. Cole finds the story in the narrator's realization. Someone brings back the plot versus story distinction from our Women Talking episode. Someone compares a Davis piece to bubble gum, a burst of flavor and then it's over. Jaclynn has barely read Davis but is in no way against her, and she keeps asking the question out loud. Stay for the last few minutes: she gets the last word, and it's the line that shows she gets it.
WHAT WE DISCUSS
00:27 - IS LYDIA DAVIS FAMOUS? DID JACLYNN LIE?
Cole asks whether Robby and Jaclynn had heard of Lydia Davis before this episode. He explains why he assumed she was a household name in the literary world, citing her MacArthur Fellowship and her Man Booker International Prize, and Jaclynn admits the book he gave her is still unread.
07:00 - JACLYNN'S BRILLIANT ROTHKO THEORY
Jaclynn explains why she thinks Davis is like Rothko: it looks simple until you spend time with it. She believes in Davis and says she just doesn't get her yet.
08:42 - LYDIA DAVIS INTERVIEW WITH TYLER COWEN
A clip of Davis in conversation with Tyler Cowen, who introduces her as a short story writer, essayist and translator of Proust and Flaubert. She explains why she chose not to read secondary material before translating Proust.
09:50 - ROBBY READS THE STORY
Robby reads "Conversation in Hotel Lounge," a very short piece about two women overheard on a sofa.
10:57 - JACLYNN LEARNS ABOUT BONSAI TREES.. IN JAPAN
Jaclynn gives a second example of something she didn't understand at first: bonsai trees. She tells the story of living in Japan and being walked through a stranger's bonsai collection, with no shared language, and how that changed her mind.
13:44 - LYDIA DAVIS, INTERVIEW TWO
A short clip of Davis describing her novel, The End of the Story, which was built from fragments to mimic how a narrator remembers.
14:18 - REINDEER ANTLERS AS ART
We talk about how friends in art school changed one host's mind about contemporary art: anyone could make it, but the work is that they did, and that they can explain why.
16:25 - ROBBY NEW YORKER RESPONSER
Robby gives his honest read. He didn't hate it, found it charming, and thought it sounded like an anecdote from The New Yorker. We talk about how much work the reader does when a story gives you this little, and Cole explains the context he brought, including how Fleabag and the baby shoes story got him thinking about efficient writing.
22:28 - JACLYNN READS THE STORY
Jaclynn reads "Conversation in Hotel Lounge" again, and the room finds new things in it. Cole loves that every reading can place the lounge, the sofa and the women differently, and calls the piece a great outline: enough detail to picture it, enough room to imagine the rest.
26:51 - LYDIA DAVIS READS HER OWN WORK, "TWO SISTERS"
We hear Davis read "Two Sisters," a longer piece, in her own voice. Then we talk about why a strong reaction, even dislike, is a gift to an artist.
31:22 - PRETENTIOUS ALERT - SHIBBOLETH
Cole's theory is that knowing Davis works like a password, a shibboleth, among art students and literature readers. We explain the word, test it against Google Maps versus Apple Maps, and Cole lists the college towns where he has found fellow Davis readers. We also hear "Safe Love," a piece only a few lines long, and Cole says her stories are the shortest versions of salty dog tales.
39:45 - LYDIA DAVIS INTERVIEW IN SCANDANAVIA
Davis describes her own work for a festival audience, from a novel with no chapters to stories that are a line or two long. She says she calls them all stories to make it easier.
42:21 - WHERE LYDIA DAVIS GETS HER IDEAS FROM
Davis says that if you wait for a good idea, you just keep doubting yourself, and that forcing it can bring up very strange and interesting material.
44:17 - LYDIA DAVIS INTERVIEW ON IF HER STORIES ARE DOCUMENTARIES
Was the hotel lounge conversation real? We disagree about whether the piece is documentary or invented, then hear Davis explain that once she decides to write about a moment, she distances it from herself and shapes it until it is finished and no longer personal.
46:56 - WHAT IS ACTUALLY STORY?
The big question. We bring back plot versus story from our Women Talking episode, try bubble gum and Three's Company as analogies, and argue about whether a small change in the narrator's understanding is enough. Jaclynn gets the final word on the title.
CHAPTERS / TIMESTAMPS
00:27.792 IS LYDIA DAVIS FAMOUS? DID JACLYNN LIE?
07:00.667 JACLYNN'S BRILLIANT ROTHKO THEORY
08:42.292 LYDIA DAVIS INTERVIEW WITH TYLER COWEN
09:50.417 ROBBY READS THE STORY
10:57.709 JACLYNN LEARNS ABOUT BONSAI TREES.. IN JAPAN
13:44.834 LYDIA DAVIS, INTERVIEW TWO
14:18.334 REINDEER ANTLERS AS ART
16:25.751 ROBBY NEW YORKER RESPONSER
22:28.542 JACLYNN READS THE STORY
26:51.792 LYDIA DAVIS READS HER OWN WORK, "TWO SISTERS"
31:22.375 PRETENTIOUS ALERT - SHIBBOLETH
39:45.792 LYDIA DAVIS INTERVIEW IN SCANDANAVIA
42:21.584 WHERE LYDIA DAVIS GETS HER IDEAS FROM
44:17.709 LYDIA DAVIS INTERVIEW ON IF HER STORIES ARE DOCUMENTARIES
46:56.167 WHAT IS ACTUALLY STORY?
CREATIVES
- Lydia Davis, Author and Translator
As a translator, Davis is known for new English versions of Marcel Proust's Swann's Way (2003) and Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary (2010). She has also translated Maurice Blanchot, Michel Leiris, Michel Butor and Pierre Jean Jouve.
AWARDS
MacArthur Foundation
MacArthur Fellowship (2003): WIN
Man Booker International
Man Booker International Prize (2013): WIN
PEN America
PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story (2020): WIN
PEN/Hemingway Award, for Break It Down (1986): FINALIST
Other prizes and fellowships
Lannan Literary Award for Fiction (1998): WIN
Whiting Award for Fiction (1988): WIN
American Academy of Arts and Letters, Award of Merit Medal (2013): WIN
Guggenheim Fellowship: WIN
National Book Foundation
National Book Award for Fiction, for Varieties of Disturbance (2007): FINALIST
National Book Critics Circle
Essays One (2019): FINALIST
Honors
Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France (1999)
Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2005)
SOURCE MATERIAL
The pieces and books we talk about in this episode: "Conversation in Hotel Lounge" (read aloud twice), "Two Sisters" (read by Davis), "Safe Love," her novel The End of the Story (1995), and her essay collection Essays Two (2021). For a wide starting point, The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis (2009) gathers her short fiction through 2008, and Can't and Won't (2014) is a later collection.
FUN FACTS / PRODUCTION TRIVIA
- Davis grew up around writers. Her father, Robert Gorham Davis, was a critic and English professor, and her mother, Hope Hale Davis, was a short story writer and memoirist.
- Her first love was music. She studied piano and then violin before she became a writer.
- She spent second grade at a convent school in Graz, Austria.
- After Barnard College she lived in Ireland and France for nearly three years and worked as a translator for the film industry and art galleries before turning to literary translation.
- She has credited the prose poet Russell Edson's very short tales with freeing her to write however she wanted.
- In the Tyler Cowen clip in this episode, Davis says she chose not to read secondary material on Proust before translating him. The full interview also covers how to persuade an ant to leave your house.
- The New York Times named The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis one of the 100 best books of the 21st century.
Transcript
Wait.
Speaker:So you’ve never read the Lydia Davis book that I bought you???
Speaker:They're 45 second stories.
Speaker:okay.
Speaker:In fairness, I didn't realize until I read this one that, yeah,
Speaker:I probably could have found the time.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:She writes
Speaker:an ironic, dry prose in which the speculative inner eye
Speaker:comments, extracting humor from the crude sort of nature of daily life Welcome
Speaker:I don't know about ironic and quick side hooks.
Speaker:What was the rest?
Speaker:Because all it is lately is
Speaker:is cinema, love stories.
Speaker:I'm worried about this podcast call.
Speaker:also.
Speaker:I wish people could have seen the trepidation in Robby's eyes
Speaker:as he tried to explain how he felt about Lydia Davis is one book
Speaker:that he read.
Speaker:known throughout the world.
Speaker:Also.
Speaker:my. Got it, I got.
Speaker:I'll take my.
Speaker:Got it, I got.
Speaker:my. Got Yeah.
Speaker:pew! Pew pew pew pew!
Speaker:As she deserves to be.
Speaker:Perhaps.
Speaker:I thought it was one of the things
Speaker:where I was like, oh, she's a known entity.
Speaker:And quote unquote, everybody knows knows who
Speaker:she is.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:you're doing the good work here.
Speaker:And me too.
Speaker:I keep I still have that book you bought me ten years ago sitting
Speaker:Definitely.
Speaker:Sorry.
Speaker:I think you're going in and out.
Speaker:What's, Do you not have 45 seconds
Speaker:a night?
Speaker:I. You should probably.
Speaker:Yeah, you should go check that To.
Speaker:Their 45 seconds stories.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:In fairness, I didn't realize until I read this one that.
Speaker:Yeah, I probably could have found the time.
Speaker:I do, I do have
Speaker:Wow. Wow.
Speaker:I had assumed that you would read it, and we're just not impressed.
Speaker:And we were just going to have a pleasant detente of.
Speaker:We're not going to talk about that.
Speaker:think I was worried that what happened to me
Speaker:reading this one would happen,
Speaker:It's the most gettable thing
Speaker:she's ever written.
Speaker:I don't get it.
Speaker:I'm going to get it.
Speaker:Like I understand it.
Speaker:I'm just like, how does this count?
Speaker:I'm so upset.
Speaker:Can I say, can I say my line?
Speaker:Can I say my brilliant line?
Speaker:I believe that Lydia Davis is like Rothko
Speaker:because I looked at a Rothko and I was like, I don't get it.
Speaker:That's I could paint a red square and be famous and an artist.
Speaker:And then I sat with it and I took some time.
Speaker:And I now find Rothko's extremely powerful.
Speaker:I see the complexity and the nuance and the varying shades.
Speaker:And it's not one red. It's multiple. Right?
Speaker:Like there's all of this stuff and that is is contained within
Speaker:what is seemingly so simple.
Speaker:So I believe she's a Rothko and I just don't get it yet.
Speaker:Look, I grew up in a trailer park, all right?
Speaker:I went to public school.
Speaker:Some.
Speaker:Some things take me longer to understand the nuance, because I just think,
Speaker:why didn't I spend 15 seconds writing interesting observations about the world?
Speaker:Publish it and have everyone tell me how brilliant I am.
Speaker:You realize she's not doodling
Speaker:these on the pooper right?
Speaker:Kolb called trying to be of the people.
Speaker:What if what you say.
Speaker:Is that what you think we call it
Speaker:I guess I was subconsciously trying to be relatable.
Speaker:Do you think that's what us proletariat call it?
Speaker:know. I.
Speaker:got home from my long day at the factory and off for some quiet time on the pooper.
Speaker:Wow. Today
Speaker:I'm here with a very special guest, Lydia Davis.
Speaker:Lydia is unique.
Speaker:She is one of America's best and best known short story
Speaker:writers, and her short stories are indeed very short.
Speaker:She is a leading translator,
Speaker:best known for translating parts of Proust and also Flaubert.
Speaker:She is a wonderful essayist.
Speaker:Her latest book, which I loved, is essays to Lydia Davis Just Out.
Speaker:Of course, there is also essays, one which is excellent as well.
Speaker:And she has, in fact done much more than that.
Speaker:Lydia, welcome.
Speaker:I love the fact that Proust does have very very short sentences.
Speaker:People kind of forget that.
Speaker:Well, the fact is that I,
Speaker:I did not, as a matter of principle, did not read
Speaker:any secondary material before I started translating Proust and
Speaker:even now
Speaker:would not want to read a great deal of it.
Speaker:I like see one on
Speaker:one confrontation with, with the text.
Speaker:And I really think that's where a reader
Speaker:should begin and maybe end.
Speaker:Which of you would like to read
Speaker:Can we delve deeper into.
Speaker:Your Rothko thing?
Speaker:Do you have a couple of other examples of things
Speaker:that Yeah, yes.
Speaker:I would love to hear some things that you didn't initially understand.
Speaker:Oh, tell me about bonsai.
Speaker:Because you're Big on Japan. I do
Speaker:How long did it take you to understand
Speaker:or to come to what you just said about the bonsai tree?
Speaker:not to bring it back to myself
Speaker:necessarily, but obviously I I'm so well-acquainted with my own work.
Speaker:Pretty well-acquainted anyway.
Speaker:But I think of the novel I wrote, the one novel
Speaker:the end of the story was meant to be.
Speaker:Give the impression of of fragmentation, because,
Speaker:the narrator is trying to remember,
Speaker:remember incidents.
Speaker:And so the memories come back in fragments.
Speaker:But Modern art or contemporary art or this weird
Speaker:avant garde stuff that gets hung on gallery walls.
Speaker:Is or is not genius or not genius.
Speaker:I was very much of the mind that it's not genius.
Speaker:When I was a little kid, but what changed my view on that is hanging out with,
Speaker:fish and her like, art student friends and all of them being like,
Speaker:yeah, literally any person could do what we're doing.
Speaker:Like, you do not need to have eight years of school
Speaker:at in a master's program to paint soft
Speaker:pastel squares or to be like, I collect reindeer antlers
Speaker:and put Christmas ornaments on them, and we hang it on the wall
Speaker:at the Whitney, and people like, fawn over it.
Speaker:Like, literally true.
Speaker:But you didn't.
Speaker:And number two, you don't understand why I'm doing this until I explain it to you.
Speaker:Like there is a whole reason behind what I'm doing, what I'm doing, and.
Speaker:that stuck with me and brought me over to the side of being more open to.
Speaker:Oh, there are things I'm not gonna understand it.
Speaker:First,
Speaker:Please welcome Lydia Davis.
Speaker:Overheard on the train.
Speaker:Says one old lady to another.
Speaker:Everything gets worse.
Speaker:Does anything get better?
Speaker:I cannot wait to get to that.
Speaker:That's great.
Speaker:Robby did you hate the Lydia Davis short story
Speaker:also. To.
Speaker:Yes. I.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So then I need to say.
Speaker:Some of the like after context that happened once.
Speaker:I was like, oh, hey, I think we should do a Lydia Davis story.
Speaker:And then I went looking for Lydia Davis stories
Speaker:that perhaps were recorded, especially of her reading it herself.
Speaker:especially with audiences reaction to it, the more that I was like,
Speaker:people don't fucking get this at all.
Speaker:Or I was
Speaker:like, gee damn, is this like absolute trash?
Speaker:And I've been putting it up there like it's some genius art.
Speaker:And then finally getting back into, well, I'm
Speaker:going to have to speak about this with you guys.
Speaker:I'm just going to say what's been true to me
Speaker:since forever and ignore any new information.
Speaker:I did get back to.
Speaker:Oh my goodness.
Speaker:But I could feel
Speaker:a lot of what you're giving me.
Speaker:Once I was filtered it through seeing just, like, more general reactions,
Speaker:because it's not like the people who are going to see a Lydia Davis reading
Speaker:or going to, like a literature festival are.
Speaker:mistakenly not Adam?
Speaker:Adam Sandler 2004 movie they're they're very intentionally.
Speaker:But the fact that
Speaker:a lot of the
Speaker:reactions were just like, well, are you taking this in
Speaker:as if you're watching a 2004 buddy
Speaker:comedy? But,
Speaker:I should say parentheses
Speaker:I would say similar things about her career.
Speaker:This work in general of.
Speaker:They are I.
Speaker:I may not say the word perfect with it,
Speaker:but the fact that they are so short and intentionally
Speaker:so short is very important and very impressive.
Speaker:Every time it there's.
Speaker:I have more feelings.
Speaker:Every time I hear this story.
Speaker:Because what I'm realizing more and more it is
Speaker:that you can add nearly infinite details
Speaker:within this as you're imagining it.
Speaker:Every time the hotel room or the hotel lounge can be different.
Speaker:Every time the women are slouched or, like sitting straight up,
Speaker:or it's a different time of day, or like everything around, it can be different.
Speaker:Aside from like the five where she's put down.
Speaker:that is
Speaker:a reason I love Lydia Davis is work in general.
Speaker:There's an aspect of it I've never thought about until now.
Speaker:what you would do.
Speaker:You you'd have your like pursed
Speaker:Yes. Yes.
Speaker:The highest form of respect in my opinion.
Speaker:would you.
Speaker:I believe this of you call that you would be in that audience. Right.
Speaker:And other people would be laughing and you would, you would do you're like
Speaker:And you would feel that
Speaker:like she knows that you understand her better than anyone else.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:I feel like you would, you'd be like, she knows that.
Speaker:I know.
Speaker:We and you would tell that story later
Speaker:being like we locked eyes and I nodded and she she knew I was the one who got it.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:This was seven years ago
Speaker:called Two Sisters, one and then Two sisters.
Speaker:Twos and sections.
Speaker:Two sisters, one.
Speaker:Though everyone wishes it would not happen,
Speaker:and though it would be far better if it did not happen,
Speaker:it does sometimes happen that a second daughter is born
Speaker:and there are two sisters.
Speaker:Of course, any daughter crying in the hour of her birth
Speaker:is only a failure and is greeted with a heavy heart by her father.
Speaker:Since the man wanted SOS, he tries again.
Speaker:Again it is only a daughter.
Speaker:This is worse for the second daughter than it is a third.
Speaker:I mean even a fourth.
Speaker:He is miserable among females.
Speaker:He lives in despair with his failures.
Speaker:The man is lucky who has one son and one daughter.
Speaker:Though his risk is great in trying for another son.
Speaker:Most fortunate was the man with sons, only for
Speaker:he can go on son after son until the daughter is made,
Speaker:and he will have all the sons
Speaker:he could wish for, and a little daughter as well to grace his table.
Speaker:And if the daughter should never come, then he has a woman
Speaker:already in his wife, the mother of his sons.
Speaker:In himself he has not a man.
Speaker:Only his wife has that man.
Speaker:She could wish for a daughter having no woman.
Speaker:But her wishes are hardly audible.
Speaker:For she is herself a daughter.
Speaker:Though she may have no living parents,
Speaker:the single daughter, the many brothers only sister
Speaker:listens to the voice of her family and is proud of herself and happy.
Speaker:Her softness against her brother's brutality,
Speaker:her calm against their destruction is admired.
Speaker:But when there are two sisters, one is uglier and more clumsy than the other.
Speaker:One is less clever, one is more promiscuous.
Speaker:Even when all good qualities unite
Speaker:in one sister, as most often happens, she will not be happy
Speaker:because the other, like a shadow, will follow her success with green eyes.
Speaker:Two sisters grow up at different times and despise one another for children.
Speaker:They quarrel and turn red.
Speaker:And though if there were only one daughter,
Speaker:if there is only one daughter, she will remain Angela.
Speaker:Two will lose their names and be stouter as a result.
Speaker:Two sisters often marry.
Speaker:One finds the husband of the other crude.
Speaker:The other uses her husband as a shield against her sister
Speaker:and her sister's husband, whom she fears for his quick wit.
Speaker:Though the two sisters attempt friendship so that their children
Speaker:will have cousins, they are often estranged.
Speaker:Their husbands disappoint them, their sons are failures
Speaker:and spend their mother's love, and she turns strong as iron
Speaker:only is now the hatred of the two sisters for one another.
Speaker:This endures as their husbands wither,
Speaker:as their sons desert, caged together.
Speaker:Two sisters contain their fury.
Speaker:Their features are the same.
Speaker:Two sisters in black.
Speaker:Shop for food together.
Speaker:Husbands dead. Sons dead in some war.
Speaker:Their hatred is so familiar that they are unaware of it.
Speaker:They are sometimes tender with one another because they forget.
Speaker:But the faces of the two sisters in death
Speaker:are bitter by long habit, and small children will not look at them.
Speaker:I'm finding even
Speaker:the idea of negative reactions to some of her stories
Speaker:to be making me just giddy that, oh, great.
Speaker:And also, you could dislike it very genuinely and very deeply
Speaker:and have great thoughts about why you dislike it.
Speaker:And that's equally as exciting.
Speaker:great art.
Speaker:this thing
Speaker:I'm finding out about it from speaking with you too.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Tell us about before tonight.
Speaker:she. Her work.
Speaker:And I'm making this.
Speaker:I'm making this up from feelings about my memory, not from specific.
Speaker:Oh, this is exactly how I experienced it.
Speaker:But. Lydia Davis.
Speaker:This work was always the thing that.
Speaker:Oh, It may be pretentious.
Speaker:Linsey Davis Davis's work was the shibboleth
Speaker:There is.
Speaker:There's our boy.
Speaker:It was this work with this shibboleth
Speaker:that was passed between art students
Speaker:and comparative literature students, and anybody who wasn't a physicist
Speaker:who thought that they were smart, that you could say to somebody, oh,
Speaker:but also Lydia Davis, and they would respect you.
Speaker:Yeah. Could you define that word? Perhaps.
Speaker:the idea of a shibboleth more traditionally, it's like it's a.
Speaker:So I just think it
Speaker:could be worth unpacking what it is.
Speaker:It's.
Speaker:This is the first time I've heard it in a sentence, probably in seven years,
Speaker:except in, like, extremely religious connotation, All right.
Speaker:Shibboleth is a word
Speaker:that is used to define an in group versus an out group.
Speaker:And any, like, extremely like, historical or religious traditional sense.
Speaker:Let's say there were two tribes.
Speaker:One that could pronounce words
Speaker:that had the sound of
Speaker:and another group that didn't learn how to pronounce,
Speaker:or the s-h sound as kids.
Speaker:And so to test whether or not
Speaker:somebody was with your tribe or not, with your tribe safely,
Speaker:you make them say a phrase that had an s-h sound,
Speaker:and if they could say it, I was like, oh, great, you are actually one of us.
Speaker:If they couldn't say it,
Speaker:Or if they stumbled over it, you knew they weren't actually one of you.
Speaker:And one chef's kiss.
Speaker:Not since moving to New York.
Speaker:in Cambridge?
Speaker:I can name the places.
Speaker:Ithaca.
Speaker:Cambridge, New Haven
Speaker:and Arbor.
Speaker:Seattle, Kirkland in particular.
Speaker:Where else?
Speaker:Oh, outside of Chicago.
Speaker:Because Chicago was a writer's town.
Speaker:And I would bet my life that all throughout Buenos Aires,
Speaker:Lydia Davis is acclaimed.
Speaker:Oh, I was saying
Speaker:why she was important to me as actual real life.
Speaker:I went on for the rest of my life thinking, this is a very important person
Speaker:that people that I respect and feel a sense of artistic camaraderie
Speaker:with, know about and love and think the same as I do.
Speaker:If her.
Speaker:But as I continue
Speaker:to give her collections of short stories to more and more people.
Speaker:I'm finding out. people aren't even reading them.
Speaker:this is very short.
Speaker:Safe. Love.
Speaker:She was in love with her son's pediatrician.
Speaker:Alone out in the country.
Speaker:Could anyone blame her?
Speaker:There was an element of grand passion in this love.
Speaker:It was also a safe thing.
Speaker:The man was on the other side of a barrier between him and her.
Speaker:The child on the examining table.
Speaker:The office itself. The staff.
Speaker:His wife.
Speaker:Her husband.
Speaker:His stethoscope.
Speaker:His beard. Her breasts.
Speaker:His glasses.
Speaker:Her glasses, etc..
Speaker:I read two from an older.
Speaker:But I feel like so many times.
Speaker:People can experience a moment and run through a million different
Speaker:thoughts and emotions in their head about that one moment,
Speaker:because our brains do experience so much in ones that we can't.
Speaker:We could never
Speaker:put into words in the moments because the moment is already over.
Speaker:But you can lock eyes with somebody from across the street.
Speaker:Perhaps you've both have seen somebody.
Speaker:Have a tough moment, and then you look at each other
Speaker:and understand, oh, we've both seen somebody else have a tough moment.
Speaker:We've both connected on that man.
Speaker:We thought our lives were kind of bad when we woke up this morning,
Speaker:but in reality we've just realized, oh, our lives are great
Speaker:and we've connected about that.
Speaker:From a different perspective.
Speaker:There's a thing that I could love about it, but that wasn't.
Speaker:I wasn't trying to get out.
Speaker:The thing I wrote down about this story in particular
Speaker:and a thing that I think about many of her story is,
Speaker:is that they are the shortest versions of salty dog tales.
Speaker:Like, even though they're like micro short, if you wrote down the plot?
Speaker:Why did you tell them this to me?
Speaker:But if you're actually experiencing it, you're like, oh my gosh, I'm just this was
Speaker:a great ride.
Speaker:none of that matters.
Speaker:I've had such joy reading your your stories
Speaker:that I'm delighted that we can present you here at the festival
Speaker:in front of so many Scandinavian readers here.
Speaker:You've written a number of short collections of short story and one novel.
Speaker:I find it hard to describe what your writing is
Speaker:like if you should present it.
Speaker:How would you describe it yourself?
Speaker:It's very difficult.
Speaker:I guess I would have to say it ranges from.
Speaker:Well, from the the novel would be the longest.
Speaker:But even the novel isn't completely traditional novel.
Speaker:It's one sort of long monologue
Speaker:without chapters and just spaces.
Speaker:Now and then, ranging all the way down to the tiniest.
Speaker:The stories are only a line or two long, with the title,
Speaker:really, anything and everything that I feel like doing, I do.
Speaker:only afterwards do I worry about what I might call it.
Speaker:I mean, I call them all stories just to make it easier, but.
Speaker:if you wait for a good
Speaker:idea, you know, you'll just keep doubting yourself and.
Speaker:And if you force it, interesting things can happen.
Speaker:Because you were you were, sometimes writing
Speaker:from a very strange place inside yourself
Speaker:because you can't stop and think.
Speaker:You just go ahead so you can bring up very strange material.
Speaker:There's a way that you're describing it and a thing.
Speaker:But I'm giving it credit for that.
Speaker:Are in disagreement with each other Both of you are very much.
Speaker:Especially when I heard you read it.
Speaker:We're very much putting up as in real life.
Speaker:Lydia Davis definitely was in a hotel lounge.
Speaker:She overheard this exact conversation.
Speaker:She wrote it down. This is documentary.
Speaker:But, I definitely experience it as she thought of this,
Speaker:perhaps there was inspiration, but it was not a documentary thing at all.
Speaker:It was like, it's not a recitation of life to me.
Speaker:Why would somebody do that for?
Speaker:This is not a joke, but one for fun. Hey.
Speaker:Cole's first pun.
Speaker:But I think as soon as I recognize that this is something
Speaker:that I would like to write about it, I immediately do distance from myself.
Speaker:So even if it did happen to happen to me,
Speaker:it could have happened to anyone in this sense.
Speaker:And then my My project is to
Speaker:is to shape it so that it has a complete form
Speaker:and in a way it's no longer personal
Speaker:or no longer subjective.
Speaker:Once I shape it properly
Speaker:and give it the right rhythm in the right language,
Speaker:I think if it were more casually written,
Speaker:it would sort of cross the line back into confession or,
Speaker:I don't know, just some.
Speaker:And it would be more uncomfortable.
Speaker:It wouldn't, it would not be a finished made thing, you know.
Speaker:she's so in control of what she's putting on the page,
Speaker:that by the time we get to her saying, I am surprised and intrigued.
Speaker:What a heart to heart they're having.
Speaker:and so I am going to take you down this path so far,
Speaker:but you're like, oh, let's treat this as high falutin hoity toity B.S.
Speaker:but then in the end,
Speaker:for you, here's a salty dog tale
Speaker:because she can.
Speaker:I find story
Speaker:in the narrator's realization that they're in this moment.
Speaker:Are nuts, actually having deep, feelings and experiences with in their universe.
Speaker:And, in fact, just a fucking nincompoop who was overhearing some story
Speaker:but the place where you
Speaker:I don't know about that.
Speaker:Jaclynn made a head to the right.
Speaker:Head to the left. Eyebrow up. Frown. Smile.
Speaker:This.
Speaker:I rest my
Speaker:case. I do
