Lydia Davis - Can't and Won't - Stories

And we shake our heads over the Roman gladiators. Oh, charlatans!

She tries to get her husband to look at the dog and the cat lying stretched out together companionably side by side on the floor. He is immediately annoyed with her because he is trying to concentrate on what he is doing.

Since he won’t talk to her, she then starts talking to the cat and the dog. Again he tells her to be quiet — he can’t concentrate.

What he is doing is writing a note to the paperboy. He is writing a note in answer to a note they have received from the paperboy.

The paperboy has written that when walking through their yard in the dark in the early morning, he has “met several animals”—“like skunks.” He is announcing that from now on, he would prefer to leave the paper outside the yard, “at the back gate entrance.”

Now, in response, her husband is writing to the paperboy saying No, they prefer to have the newspaper delivered as always to the back porch, and if he can’t do that, they will discontinue the paper.

In fact, according to the grammatical construction used by the paperboy in his note, it is the animals themselves who are not only walking through the yard but also delivering the paper.

The train station is very crowded. People are walking in every direction at once, though some are standing still. A Tibetan Buddhist monk with shaved head and long wine-colored robe is in the crowd, looking worried. I am standing still, watching him. I have plenty of time before my train leaves, because I have just missed a train. The monk sees me watching him. He comes up to me and tells me he is looking for Track 3. I know where the tracks are. I show him the way.

dream

I get up out of bed in the night. My room is large, and dark but for the white dog on the floor. I leave the room. The hallway is wide and long, and filled with an underwater sort of twilight. I reach the doorway of the bathroom and see that it is flooded with bright light. There is a full moon far above, overhead. Its beam is coming in through the window and falling directly on the toilet seat, as if sent by a helpful God.

Then I am back in bed. I have been lying there awake for a while. The room is lighter than it was. The moon is coming around to this side of the building, I think. But no, it is the beginning of dawn.

dream

I see myself from the back, walking. There are circles of both light and shadow around each of my footsteps. I know that with each step I can now go farther and faster than ever before, so of course I want to spring forward and run. But I am told that I must pause at each step, letting my foot rest on the ground for a moment, if I want it to develop its full power and reach, before taking the next.

dream

I do not want to read about the life of Jerry Lewis.

I do want to read about mammalian carnivores.

I do not want to read about a portrait of a castrato.

I do not want to read this poem:

(“… and so I stood/at the water’s edge among electrolytes…”)

I do want to read about the history of the Inca khipu.

I do not want to read about:

the history of the panda in China

a dictionary of women in Shakespeare

Do want to read about:

sow bugs

bumblebees

Do not want to read about Ronald Reagan.

Do not want to read this poem:

(“What’s the point of sitting on a bus/and fuming?”)

Do want to read about the creation of the musical South Pacific :

(“This study will contribute greatly to the still under-written history of the Broadway musical”)

Not interested in:

The Oxford Companion to Canadian Military History

Not interested in (at least not today):

Hitler

London theater productions

Interested in:

the psychology of lying

Anne Carson on the death of her brother

French writers admired by Proust

the poems of Catullus

translations from the Serbian

Not interested in:

the creation of the Statue of Liberty

Interested in:

beer

East Prussia after World War II

philosemitism

Not interested in:

the Archbishop of Canterbury

Not interested in this poem:

(“Light dazzles from the grass/over the carnal dune…”)

Not interested in:

the Anglo-Portuguese establishment

heraldic leopards

Interested in:

the lectures of Borges

Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style

dust jackets in the history of bibliography:

(“For the first time, the dust jacket has been given its due status…”)

Not interested in:

the friendship of Elgar and Schenker

the work of Alexander Pope

T. S. Eliot’s fountain pen

Not interested in:

the Audit Commission

Interested in:

the social value of altruism

the building of the Pont Neuf

the history of daguerreotypes

Not interested in:

a cultural history of the British Census:

(“It is salutary to see, from this learned book, that, mutatis mutandis , such controversies have plagued the census since its inception…”)

Not interested in:

a cultural history of the accordion in America

(“Squeeze This”)

Interested in:

the Southport Lawnmower Museum

Not interested in:

a history of British television criticism

fashion at the Academy Awards:

(“How Oscars dress etiquette has changed since the ceremony’s inception in 1928”)

Not interested in:

Anacaona: The Amazing Adventures of Cuba’s First All-Girl Band

Always (or almost always) interested in:

JC’s NB and the doings of the Basement Labyrinth

Not interested in — or, well, yes, maybe interested in:

the history of diplomacy

Laura Bush’s autobiography

for summer she needs

pretty dress cotton

There are also men in the world. Sometimes we forget, and think there are only women — endless hills and plains of unresisting women. We make little jokes and comfort each other and our lives pass quickly. But every now and then, it is true, a man rises unexpectedly in our midst like a pine tree, and looks savagely at us, and sends us hobbling away in great floods to hide in the caves and gullies until he is gone.

A well-meaning teacher, inspired by a text he had been reading, once sent all the other teachers in his school a message about negative emotions. The message consisted entirely of advice quoted from a Vietnamese Buddhist monk.

Emotion, said the monk, is like a storm: it stays for a while and then it goes. Upon perceiving the emotion (like a coming storm), one should put oneself in a stable position. One should sit or lie down. One should focus on one’s abdomen. One should focus, specifically, on the area just below one’s navel, and practice mindful breathing. If one can identify the emotion as an emotion, it may then be easier to handle.

The other teachers were puzzled. They did not understand why their colleague had sent them a message about negative emotions. They resented the message, and they resented their colleague. They thought he was accusing them of having negative emotions and needing advice about how to handle them. Some of them were, in fact, angry.