It Was Like My Trying to Have a Tender-Hearted Nature: A Novella and Stories

By Diane Williams

This work by Diane Williams delves into the strange relationships of men and women. From marital betrayal to spousal abuse and unrelenting desire, Williams illuminates the lives of her characters in prose as sparse and stark as it is beautiful. These stories are as short as prose poems and as complex as novels. In them, meanings remain ambiguous and consequences seem uncertain. In the novella “On Sexual Strength” she describes the intense and sometimes strange relationship between two neighboring couples and the rage that comes with adultery, and a narrator whose social inadequacies and lack of inhibitions lead to destruction.   The world Williams creates is a sensual place where quiet epiphanies—such as   the one that occurs after an extramarital affair— are also possible: “It was like My Trying to Have a Tender-Hearted nature. This is how love can be featured.” Such flashes of insight and emotion glue together the fragments of life Williams lays before the reader, and the reader rejoices at the revelations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Alabama Press
• Release date: Oct 15, 2007
• ISBN: 9780817380519

Diane Williams

Diane Williams is an oral historian, performance artist and storyteller living in Mississippi. She is the director of grants for the Mississippi Arts Commission, board member of the Mississippi Alliance for Arts Educators and member of the Mississippi Humanities Council Speakers Bureau. She has presented at numerous Mississippi museums and writers' festivals in addition to acting as an enrichment instructor at Millsaps College and Jackson State University.

Book preview

ON SEXUAL STRENGTH

A Novella

1

THE WIFE WOULD COME TO US

Mr. Bird was sexually strong. That sounds good. Three—four times a night—he'd wake his wife up and thereby pass himself off as a man who encourages one to get certain ideas.

The wife would come to us and cry! That sounds harsh.

They're all dead now and perhaps I am.

She is not a slut, Bird had said, when he introduced me to his wife.

From his wife we heard she spent her life obtaining troubles.

Mrs. Bird's name was Blanche. I am the neighbor.

My eyes are brown with a dash of green, with a dash of gray.

2

STAY FOR LUNCH!

One late morning when Mrs. Bird came over, I said, Stay for lunch. Why won't you stay for lunch? Do you want to stay for lunch?

No, she said.

I did not manage to exit the room. It may have been that I opened my trousers and I regarded my long penis.

Blanche smoothed out her blouse. Her blouse was very lavish. Lavish? I mean that her blouse was very large and very