A Writer’s Writer’s Writer: Lydia Davis and the Naked Mind
At a certain point in her life, she realizes it is not so much that she wants to have a child as that she does not want not to have a child, or not to have had a child. —Lydia Davis, “A Double Negative”
Like many Lydia Davis fans, I sometimes mentally write parodies of her very short stories as I go about my day. Once you’ve been steeped in her work, this can become a mental tic:
The plastic things in the dishwasher never get dry. I do not want to dry them by hand before I put them away, yet if I do not put them away I cannot load the dirty dishes that are in the sink. I could put the plastic things away wet, but I am afraid of mildew.
Davis is mostly an acquired taste, but her way of seeing is contagious. She writes in a form that is, as far as I know, entirely her own. There is such a thing as flash fiction—stories of a page or so—but Davis takes brevity one step further. Many of her stories are no more than three or
