Well, good evening.
And welcome to the first prose reading series of the season,
and our first reading in this new venue.
Those of you who missed Saturday and Sunday's grand opening
of the Poetry Center really missed something.
Those of you who were there know that it was quite something.
I'm going to make a few announcements
and thank a few people before I have Elizabeth Evans come up
only because you won't want to listen to me after the reading.
I'd like to thank the College of Humanities and Dean
Tatum, the English department, Gail and Frances
here at the Poetry Center, Cybele, who's
helping quite a bit.
And I'd like to announce that in March, right after Easter,
Junot Diaz will be reading next semester.
So please keep that on your calendar.
Keep us in mind for that.
And that tomorrow morning, Lydia will
be giving a colloquium up on the second floor in the classroom
upstairs in the Poetry Center, at 9 o'clock tomorrow
morning, which I know might be early for some people,
but the challenge will be worth it.
And I'd like to introduce Elizabeth Evans whom most
of you, many of you will know.
She's teaches in the MFA program here
at the University of Arizona.
She is a fiction writer.
And she's going to say a few words about Lydia Davis.
So thank you very much.
And give Elizabeth Evans.
[APPLAUSE]
Hi.
I don't know, is this right?
Is this OK?
Well, this is a long, anticipated event.
Lydia Davis has been on the list of writers we most wanted
in our series for years.
And I was honored to be asked to introduce her.
And quickly realized, what I wanted
to do by way of introducing her was read from her work,
listen to what she wrote here and here.
I know you've come to hear her read so I'm only allowing
myself one brief quote.
My introduction to her work was the dazzling novel,
The End of the Story, which is not only
the finest examination of an obsessive love affair
that I know of, but also a book that's
capable of talking about its own construction with absolutely
no coyness or damage to the story of the love affair.
It's mortification raised to the most crystalline purity.
After the novel, I had plenty of catching up
to do when I turned to the stories.
And I found that, in all of her work,
the author brings her spotlight, intelligence, and artistry
to bear on the complexities of our lives and language.
What is exactly the right word to clarify
the shape and texture and complications of the problem?
She reflects and reflects again.
The self examines the self so closely that we feel ourselves
examined and enlightened.
The narrator's isolate and tease out the intricacies of family
and romance, the tasks of attending
to the world and others, and words
again, how to use the words.
What are the best words?
The narrator of grammar questions
wants to know for referring to the dying father.
"He is dying," sounds more active
than, "he will be dead soon."
That is probably because of the word "be," we can be something
whether we choose to or not, whether he likes it or not,
he will be dead soon."
Lydia Davis's list of accomplishments and honors
makes a fat, stack of pages.
She's taught widely both fiction and translation workshops,
and currently is on the faculty of Suny Albany
and a fellow of the New York State Writers Institute.
Her books include Varieties of Disturbances,
which is now a finalist for the National Book
Award, the novel, The End of the Story and the collections
Samuel Johnson Is Indignant, Break It Down,
and Almost No Memory.
Her many distinguished awards include the Whiting Writing
award, the Lannan Literary award, a Guggenheim,
NEA grants in fiction and translation,
and a MacArthur Fellowship, the fellowship widely known
as the Genius award.
Her work has appeared in many magazines,
including The Paris Review, The New Yorker, and Conjunctions.
And subsequently, in the anthologies, The Pushcart
Prize, Best American Short Stories
and Best American Poetry.
She's translated or co-translated some 30 works.
Perhaps the most famous of these being the 2003 translation
of Proust's Swann's Way.
And she's currently at work on a translation of Madame Bovary.
For her work as a translator, she's
received the French-American foundation translation
prize and the French insignia of The Order of Arts and Letters.
The late, great Grace Paley who knew the real deal
when she saw it said of Lydia Davis, "Oh, at last.
Brains, language, energy, a playfulness
with form, and what appears to be a generous nature."
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
It's really nice to be here.
I like Tucson a lot.
I've been here twice before and I love those mountains.
And we're going to go out to the desert tomorrow.
And when I go back East, the vegetation
seems excessive and damp and wet and crowded and not necessary.
[LAUGHTER]
I got my cowboy shoes on.
So I'm going to read from Varieties of Disturbance.
Mostly, that's the latest book.
And then one sequence of newer works, just to try them out.
So is this about right?
Is this a good--
I'm reading, mostly, very short ones from this book,
although, there are some long ones and some excessively long
ones.
I got one that's over 40 pages.
And my good friend who's an editor
advised me not to include it, but I'm going
to have him include it there.
I've yet to find out whether that was a good idea.
But tonight I'll just stick to the shorter ones.
The first is called, "A Man from Her Past."
"I think mother is flirting with a man
from her past who is not father.
I say to myself, mother ought not to have improper relations
with this man, Franz.
Franz is a European.
I say she should not see this man improperly
while father is away.
But I'm confusing an old reality with a new reality.
Father will not be returning home,
he will be staying on at Vernon Hall.
As for mother, she is 94 years old.
How can there be improper relations with a woman of 94.
Yet my confusion must be this, though her body is old,
her capacity for betrayal is still young and fresh."
"Dog and Me."
"An ant can look up at you, too, and even
threaten you with its arms.
Of course, my dog does not know I am human, he sees me as dog,
though, I do not leap up at a fence.
I am a strong dog, but I do not leave my mouth hanging open
while I walk along.
Even on a hot day, I do not leave my tongue hanging out.
But I bark at him, no, no."
[LAUGHTER]
"Enlightenment."
"Enlightenment, I don't know if I can remain friends with her.
I've thought and thought about it, she'll never know how much.
I gave it one last try.
I called her after a year, but I didn't like
the way the conversation went.
The problem is that she is not very enlightened.
Or I should say, she is not enlightened enough for me.
She's nearly 50 years old and no more enlightened
as far as I can see than when I first knew her
20 years ago when we talked mainly about men.
I did not mind how unenlightened she was then, maybe because I
was not so enlightened myself.
I believe I am more enlightened now, and certainly,
more enlightened than she is, although, I know it's not
very enlightened to say that.
But I want to say it.
So I'm willing to postpone being more enlightened myself
so that I can still say a thing like that about a friend."
[LAUGHTER]
And after I figured that one out,
I realized it applied to a lot of things.
That you could postpone being more honest
or postpone being faithful.
A lot of things you could postpone.
This called "The Good Taste Contest."
"The husband and wife were competing in a good taste
contest judged by a jury of their peers, men
and women of good taste, including a fabric
designer, a rare book dealer, a pastry cook, and a librarian.
The wife was judged to have better taste in furniture,
especially antique furniture.
The husband was judged to have overall poor taste in lighting
fixtures, tableware, and glassware.
The wife was judged to have indifferent taste in window
treatments.
But the husband and wife both were
judged to have good taste in floor coverings, bed
linen, bath linen, large appliances,
and small appliances.
The husband was felt to have good taste in carpets,
but only fair taste in upholstery fabrics.
The husband was felt to have very good taste
in both food and alcoholic beverages,
while the wife had inconsistently
good to poor taste in food.
The husband had better taste in clothes than the wife,
though, inconsistent taste in perfumes and colognes.
While both husband and wife were judged
to have no more than fair taste in garden design,
they were judged to have good taste in number and variety
of evergreens.
The husband was felt to have excellent taste in roses,
but poor taste in bulbs.
The wife was felt to have better taste in bulbs,
and generally, good taste in shade
plantings with the exception of hostas.
[LAUGHTER]
And her husband's taste was felt to be good in garden furniture,
but only fair in ornamental planters.
The wife's taste was judged consistently poor
in garden statuary.
After a brief discussion, the judges
gave the decision to the husband for his higher, overall points
score."
[LAUGHTER]
I think that grew out of many years of married life,
where you wish there was a jury in the next room to decide
some of these quarrels.
"The Senses."
"Many people treat their five senses
with a certain respect and consideration.
They take their eyes to a museum, their nose to a flower
shoulder, their hands to a fabric store for the velvet
and silk.
They surprise their ears with a concert
and excite their mouth with a restaurant meal.
But most people make their senses work hard for them
day after day.
Read me this newspaper, pay attention, nose, in case
the food is burning.
Ears, get together now and listen for a knock at the door.
Their senses have jobs to do and they do them mostly.
The ears of the deaf won't, and the eyes of the blind won't.
The senses get tired.
Sometimes long before the end they say, I'm quitting.
I'm getting out of this now.
And then the person is less prepared to meet the world
and stays at home more without some of what
he needs if he is to go on.
If it all quits on him, he is really
alone in the dark, in silence, numb hands,
nothing in his mouth, nothing in his nostrils.
He asks himself, did I treat them wrong?
Didn't I show them a good time?"
That actually goes back quite a ways.
In each collection, I try to bring forward
some stories that have gone out of print
that were decades old sometimes just to make it confusing.
This is a little bit longer with a little bit more narrative
in it called, "The Caterpillar."
"I find a small caterpillar in my bed in the morning.
There is no good window to throw them from,
and I don't crush or kill a living thing
if I don't have to.
I will go to the trouble of carrying
this thin, dark, hairless, little caterpillar
down the stairs and out to the garden.
He is not an inch worm, though he is the size of an inch warm.
He does not hump up in the middle,
but travels steadily along on as many pairs of legs.
As I leave the bedroom, he is quite speedily
walking around the slopes of my hand.
But halfway down the stairs, he is gone.
My hand is blank on every side.
The caterpillar must have let go and dropped.
I can't see him. .
The stairwell is dim and the stairs are painted dark brown.
I could get a flashlight in search for this tiny thing
in order to save his life.
But I will not go that far.
He will have to do the best he can.
Yet how can he make his way down to the back door
and out into the garden?
I go on about my business.
I think I've forgotten him, but I haven't.
Every time I go upstairs or down,
I avoid his side of the stairs.
I am sure he is there trying to get down.
At last, I give in.
I get the flashlight.
Now the trouble is that the stairs are so dirty.
I don't clean them because no one ever sees them here
in the dark.
And the caterpillar is or was so small.
Many things under the beam of the flashlight
look rather like him, a very slim, splinter of wood
or a thick piece of thread, but when I poke them
they don't move.
I look on every step of his side of the stairs
and then on both sides.
You get somewhat attached to any living thing
once you try to help it, but he is nowhere.
There is so much dust and dog hair on the steps.
That dust may have stuck to his little body
and made it hard for him to move or, at least, to go
in the direction he wanted to go in, it may have dried him out.
But why would he even go down instead of up?
I haven't looked on the landing above where he disappeared.
I will not go that far.
I go back to my work, then I begin
to forget the caterpillar.
I forget him for as long as one hour
until I happened to go to the stairs again.
This time, I see that there is something just the right size,
shape, and color on one of the steps, but it is flat and dry.
It can't have started out as him.
It must be a short, time needle or some other plant part.
The next time I think of him, I see that I have forgotten him
for several hours.
I think of him only when I go up or down the stairs.
After all, he is really there somewhere trying
to find his way to a green leaf or dying.
But already, I don't care as much.
Soon I'm sure I will forget him entirely.
Later there is an unpleasant, animal smell
lingering about the stairwell, but it can't be him.
He is too small to have any smell.
He has probably died by now.
He is simply too small, really, for me
to go on thinking about him.
That's as exciting as it gets at home."
[LAUGHTER]
This is a lot shorter called "Child Care."
"It's his turn to take care of the baby.
He is cross.
He says, I never get enough done.
The baby is in a bad mood, too.
He gives the baby a bottle of juice
and sits him well back in a big armchair.
He sits himself down in another armchair
and turns on the television.
Together, they watch The Odd Couple."
[LAUGHTER]
And that was just taken directly from life.
It's amazing how much you can do just
by selecting, leaving out a lot of it
and putting in what you like.
There's this called "Absentminded."
"The cat is crying at the window, it wants to come in.
You think about how living with a cat and the demands of a cat
make you think about simple things,
like a cats need to come indoors and how good that is.
You think about this, and you are
too busy thinking about this to let
the cat in so you forget to let the cat in
and it is still at the window crying.
You see that you haven't let the cat in
and you think about how odd it is that,
while you were thinking about the cats needs
and how good it is to live with the simple needs of a cat,
you were not letting the cat in, but letting
it go on crying at the window.
Then while you're thinking about this and how odd it is,
you let the cat in without knowing
you're letting the cat in.
Now the cat jumps up on the counter and cries for food.
You see that the cat is crying for food,
but you don't think of feeding it
because you are thinking how odd it is that you have let
the cat in without knowing it.
Then you see that it's crying for food
while you're not feeding it.
And as you see this and think it's odd that you have not
heard it cry, you feed the cat without knowing
that you're feeding it."
That just stops very abruptly because that sort of thing
can go on all day.
It's the perils of self-consciousness.
Finding yourself more interesting than anything else.
Some more practical one called "Reducing Expenses."
"This is a problem you might have someday.
It's the problem of a couple I know.
He's a doctor.
I'm not sure what she does.
I don't actually know them very well.
In fact, I don't know them any more.
This was years ago.
I was bothered by a bulldozer coming and going next door so I
found out what was happening.
Their problem was that their fire insurance
was very expensive.
They wanted to try to lower the insurance premiums.
That was a good idea.
You don't want any of your regular payments
to be too high or higher than they have to be.
For example, you don't want to buy a property
with very high taxes since there will
be nothing you can do to lower them
and you always have to pay them.
I try to keep that in mind.
You could understand this couple's problem
even if you didn't have high fire insurance.
If you did not have exactly the same problem,
someday you might have a similar problem of regular payments
that were going to be too high.
Their insurance was high because they owned a large collection
of very good wine.
The problem was not so much the collection per se,
but where they were keeping it.
They had, actually, thousands of bottles
of very good and excellent wine.
They were keeping it in their cellar which was certainly
the right thing to do.
They had an actual wine cellar, but the problem
was this wine cellar wasn't good enough or big enough.
I never saw it, though, I once saw another one which
was very small.
It was the size of a closet, but I was still impressed.
But I did taste some of their wine one time.
I can't really tell the difference, though,
between a bottle of wine that costs $100 or even $30,
and a bottle that costs $500.
At that dinner, they might have been serving wine
that cost even more than that.
Not for me, especially, but for some of the other guests.
I'm sure that very expensive wines are really
wasted on most people, including myself.
I was very young at the time, but even now
a very expensive wine would be wasted on me, probably.
This couple learned that if they enlarged the wine cellar
and improved it in certain other specific ways,
their insurance premiums would be lower.
They thought this was a good idea,
even though it would cost something initially
to make these improvements.
The bulldozer and other machinery and labor
that I saw out the window of the place
where I was living at the time, which was a house borrowed
from a friend who was also a friend of theirs,
must have been costing them in the thousands.
But I'm sure the money they spent on it
was earned back within a few years or even one year
by their savings on the premiums.
So I can see that this was a prudent move on their part.
It was a move that anyone could make
concerning some other thing not necessarily a wine cellar.
The point is that any improvement
that will eventually save money is a good idea.
This is long in the past by now.
They must have saved quite a lot altogether
over the years from the changes they made.
So many years have gone by, though,
that they have probably sold the house by now. .
Maybe the improved wine cellar, raised the price of the house,
and they earned back even more money.
I was not just young, but very young
when I watched the bulldozer out my window.
The noise did not really bother me
very much because there were so many other things bothering me
when I tried to work.
In fact, I probably welcomed the sight of the bulldozer.
I was impressed by their wine, and by the good paintings
they also owned.
They were nice, friendly people, but I
didn't think much of their clothes or furniture.
I spend a lot of time looking out the window
and thinking about them.
I don't know what it was worth.
It was probably a waste of my time.
Now I'm a lot older, but here I am still thinking about them.
There are a lot of other things that I've forgotten,
but I haven't forgotten them or their fire insurance.
I must have thought I could learn something from them."
Often with this story I kind of get into a persona.
And, I guess, that was a very earnest and somewhat limited,
maybe not even that smart person.
I just like to keep digging it in.
[LAUGHTER]
But the advice isn't wrong.
[LAUGHTER]
And this one was the one quoted from in an introduction
called-- it's a little more somber called
"Grammar Questions."
"Now, during the time he is dying,
can I say, this is where he lives?
If someone asks me where does he live?
Should I answer, well, right now he is not living, he is dying.
If someone asks me, where does he live?
Can I say he lives in Vernon Hall or should
I say, he is dying in Vernon Hall.
When he is dead, I will be able to say in the past tense,
he lived in Vernon Hall.
I will also be able to say, he died in Vernon Hall.
When he is dead everything to do with him
will be in the past tense or rather the sentence,
he is dead, will be in the present tense.
And also questions such as, where are they taking him?
Or where is he now?
But then I won't know if the words "he" and "him" are
correct in the present tense.
Is he, once he is dead still he?
And if so, for how long is he still he?
People may say, the body, and then call it "it."
I will not be able to say, the body in relation
to him because to me, he is still not something
you would call "the body."
People may say, "his body," but that
does not seem right either.
It is not his body because he does not
own it if he is no longer active or capable of owning anything.
I don't know if there is a "he," even though people will say,
he is dead.
But it does seem correct to say, he is dead.
This may be the last time he will still
be he in the present tense or it will not be the last time
because I will also say, he is lying in his coffin.
I will not say and no one will say, it is lying in the coffin
or it is lying in its coffin.
I will continue to say my father in relation to him
after he dies, but I will say it only in the past tense
or also in the present tense.
He will be put in a box not a coffin.
Then when he is in that box will I say,
that is my father in that box or that was my father in that box.
Or will I say, that in the box was my father.
I will still say my father, but maybe I
will say it only as long as he looks like my father
or approximately like my father.
Then when he is in the form of ashes will I point to the ashes
and say, that is my father, or will I say, that was my father
or those ashes were my father or those ashes
are what was my father.
When I later visit the graveyard will I point and say,
my father is buried there, or will I say,
my father's ashes are buried there.
But the ashes will not belonged to my father,
he will not own them.
They will be the ashes that were my father.
In the phrase, "he is dying," the words "he is"
with the present participle suggest that he is actively
doing something.
But he is not actively dying.
The only thing he is still actively doing is breathing.
He looks as if he is breathing on purpose
because he is working hard at it and frowning slightly.
He is working at it, but surely, he has no choice.
Sometimes it's from deepens for just an instant
as though something is hurting him
or as though he is concentrating harder.
Even though I can guess that he is
frowning because of some pain inside him
or some other change.
He still looks as though he is puzzled or dislikes
or disapproves of something.
I've seen this expression on his face often in my life,
though, never before combined with these half open eyes
in this open mouth.
"He is dying" sounds more active than "he will be dead soon."
That is probably because of the word "be."
We can be something whether we choose to or not.
Whether he likes it or not, he will be dead soon.
He is not eating.
He is not eating sounds active, too.
But it is not his choice.
He is not conscious that he is not eating.
He is not conscious at all.
But "is not eating" sounds more correct for him than "is dying"
because of the negative.
"Is not" seems correct for him at the moment
anyway because he looks as though he is refusing something
because he is frowning."
The next thing I want to read is a sequence
of newer pieces based on dreams.
And the very word "dream" used to bother me a lot.
It was boring before I even heard anymore,
other people's dreams or what they
thought were good dreams or interesting dreams or my dreams
that I would try to tell other people that
were fascinating to me because there is so real,
but that no one else wanted to hear about.
But then I had a couple of things happen.
Well, there's this writer, Michel Leiris--
does anybody know his work, Michel Leiris's Busy and Rules
of the Game, Manhood.
Well, he's an interesting French writer and early surrealist.
And he wrote a book in which he combined accounts
of actual dreams he had dreamed at night,
and then daytime experiences that were dreamlike.
And he identified which were which, which I think
is less interesting than not identifying.
So I had that book and I hadn't really thought about it,
but then I had a--
I mean, in years.
And then I had an experience in waking life
that was so like a dream that I thought, my goodness, be
interesting to write these narratives-awaking experiences
as though they were dreams.
And vise versa, to take night dreams
and write them as though they were possibly
waking experiences.
So I got quite caught up with doing that.
And I also thought it would be very good assignment
for writing students because it would make them look
at their lives, their daily lives
and with a different eye to looking for what was strange
and in it, what could be made into a dream narrative.
And then also learn to narrate their dreams
in a way that wasn't boring.
And that was selective.
So I intend to inflict that on the next class that I teach.
[LAUGHTER]
And it works out even if you never remember your dreams
because then, at least, you have the option of using
your real life and you have to see material in your real life.
So I did some of these and I'm going to read them.
And they are mixed.
Some are actual dreams and some are waking experiences.
And then I went a bit farther and broke some of my own rules
and say, combined a few fragments from different night
dreams into one, and even combined different waking
experiences sometimes.
"Swimming in Egypt."
"We are in Egypt.
We are about to go deep sea diving.
They've erected a vast tank of water
on land next to the Mediterranean Sea.
We strapped oxygen to our backs and descend into this tank.
We go all the way to the bottom.
Here, there is a cluster of blue lights shining on the entrance
to a tunnel.
We enter the tunnel.
We swim and swim.
At the far end of the tunnel, we see more lights, white ones.
When we've passed through the lights,
we come out of the tunnel suddenly
into the open sea, which drops away beneath us
a full kilometer or more.
There are fish all around and above us and reefs
on all sides.
We think we are flying over the deep.
We forget for now that we must be careful not to get lost,
but must find our way back to the mouth of the tunnel.
"The Moon."
"I get up out of bed in the night to go to the bathroom.
The room I am n is large and dark,
but for the white dog on the floor.
The hallway is wide and long and filled with an underwater sort
of twilight.
When I reach the doorway of the bathroom,
I see that it is filled with bright light.
There is a full moon far above overhead.
Its beam is coming in through the window
and falling directly onto the toilet seat
as if sent by a helpful guide.
Then I'm back in bed, and I've 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.
"The School Children in the Large Building."
"I live in a very large building,
the size of a warehouse or an opera house.
I am there alone.
Now, some school children arrive.
I see their quick little legs coming through the front door.
And I ask in some fear, who is it?
Who is it?
But they don't answer.
The class is very numerous, all boys with two teachers.
They pour into the painting studio
at the back of the building.
The ceiling of this studio is two or even three stories high.
On one wall is a vast mural of dark-complexioned faces.
The schoolboys crowd in front of the painting
fascinated, pointing, and talking.
On the opposite wall is another mural
of green and blue flowers.
Only a handful of school boys is looking at this one.
The class would like to spend the night here because they
do not have funds for a hotel.
Wouldn't their hometown raise the money for this field trip?
I ask one of the teachers.
"No," he says sadly with a smile.
"They wouldn't because of the fact that he, the teacher,
is homosexual."
After saying this he turns and gently puts his arms
around the other teacher.
Later I'm in the same building with the school children,
but it is no longer my home or I am not familiar with it.
I ask a boy where the bathrooms are and he shows me one.
It's a nice bathroom with old fixtures and wood paneling.
As I sit on the toilet, the room rises
because it is also an elevator.
I wonder briefly as I flush, how the plumbing works
in that case.
And then assume it has been figured out."
The Woman in Red."
"Standing near me is a tall woman in a dark, red dress.
She has a dazed, rather blank expression on her face.
She might be drugged or this is simply her habitual expression.
I'm a little afraid of her.
A red snake in front of me rears up and threatens me,
at the same time changing form once or twice,
acquiring tentacles like a squid, et cetera.
Behind it is a large puddle of water
in the middle of a broad path.
To protect me from the snake, the woman in red
lays three, broad-brimmed, red hats
down on the surface of the puddle of water.
"The Dog."
"We are about to leave a place that has a large flower
garden and a fountain.
I look out the car window and see our dog
lying on a gurney in the doorway of a sort of shed.
His back is to us.
He is lying still.
He is probably dead.
There are two cut flowers placed on his neck,
one red and one white.
I look away and then look back.
I want to see him one last time.
But in that one moment, he has vanished.
The doorway of the shed is empty.
A moment too soon, they have wheeled him away.
"In The Gallery."
"A woman I know who is a writer has
created a piece of visual art.
She is trying to hang her work for a show.
Her work is a single line of text pasted on the wall
with a transparent curtain suspended in front of it.
She is at the top of a ladder and cannot get down
because she's facing the wrong way, out instead of in.
The people down below tell her to turn around
but she does not know how.
When I see her next she is down from the ladder.
She's going from one person to the next asking for help
in hanging her artwork.
But no one will help her because they say
she is such a difficult woman.
"The Piano."
"Our piano has a crack all the way
across the soundboard and other problems.
We will have to go to the piano store and buy a new one.
We would like the piano store to take our old one and resell it,
but they say it is too badly damaged to be resold.
They will have to get rid of it by pushing it over a cliff.
[LAUGHTER]
The way they do it is this.
Two drivers take it out to a remote spot
with a high elevation.
One turns his back and walks away down the lane.
The other pushes the piano over the cliff.
"The Piano Lesson."
"I'm with my friend, Christine.
I have not seen her for a long time, perhaps 17 years.
We talk about music and we agree that when we meet again,
she will give me a piano lesson.
In preparation for the lesson, she
says I must select and then study
one Baroque piece, one classical, one romantic,
and one modern.
I am impressed by her seriousness
and by the difficulty of the assignment.
I'm ready to do it.
We will have the lesson in one year, she says.
She will come to my house.
But then later, she says she is not
sure she will be returning to this country, maybe instead,
we will have the lesson in Italy.
Or if not Italy, then, of course, Casablanca.
"The Grandmother."
"A person has come to my house carrying a very large peach
tart.
He has also brought with him some other people, including
a very old woman who complains about the gravel,
and is then carried into the house with great difficulty.
These people sit down with us to some sort of a meal.
At the table, the old woman observes
to one man by way of conversation
that she likes his teeth.
Another man keeps shouting in her face,
but she is not frightened.
She only looks at him balefully.
Later, she has been eating many cashews from a bowl.
And she has also eaten her hearing aid.
She is chewed on it for nearly two hours,
but she cannot reduce it to particles small enough
to swallow.
At bedtime, she spits it out into the hand of her caregiver
and tells him, this nut was no good."
"In The Train Station."
"The train station is very crowded.
People are walking in every direction at once.
Some are standing still.
A Tibetan, Buddhist monk with a shaved head
and a 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've just
missed the train.
The monk sees me watching him.
He comes up to me and tells me he
is looking for track number three.
I know where the tracks are.
I show him the way.
"The Churchyard."
"I have the key to the churchyard and unlock the gate.
The church is in the city and it has a large enclosure.
Now that the gate is open, many people
come in and sit on the grass to enjoy the sun.
Meanwhile, girls at the street corner
are raising money for their mother-in-law
who was called La Bella.
I have offended or disappointed two women,
but I am cradling Jesus who is alive.
A minute cozy pile of people."
I think I'll just--
let's see, I'll read one more shortish one from the book.
And then end with some very, very short ones.
This is called, "Passing Wind."
"She didn't know if it was him or the dog.
It wasn't her.
The dog was lying there on the living room rug between them.
She was on the sofa and her visitor, rather tense,
was sunk deep in a low armchair.
And the smell, rather gentle, came into the air.
She thought at first that it was him
and she was surprised because people
don't pass wind and company very often or, at least,
not in a noticeable way.
As they went on talking, she went on thinking it was him.
She felt a little sorry for him because she thought
he was embarrassed and nervous to be with her,
and that was why he had passed when.
Then it occurred to her very suddenly
that it might not have been him at all,
it might have been the dog, and worse, if it had been the dog,
he might think it had been her.
It was true that the dog had stolen an entire loaf of bread
that morning and eaten it and might now
be passing wind, something he did not otherwise do.
She wanted immediately to let him know somehow
that, at least, it was not her.
Of course, there was a chance that he had not noticed,
but he was smart and alert.
And since she had noticed, he probably
had, too, unless he was too nervous to have noticed.
The problem was how to tell him.
She could say something about the dog to excuse it,
but it might not have been the dog, it might have been him.
She could not be direct and simply say,
look if you just farted, that's all right.
I just want to be clear that it wasn't me.
She could say that the dog ate a whole loaf of bread
this morning and I think he's farting.
But if it was him and not the dog, this would embarrass him.
Although, maybe it wouldn't.
Maybe he was already embarrassed if it was him.
And this would be a way out of his embarrassment.
But by now the smell was long gone.
Maybe the dog would fart again if it was the dog.
That was the only thing she could think of,
the dog would fart again if it was the dog.
And then she would simply apologize for the dog
whether or not it was the dog.
And that would relieve him of his embarrassment
if it was him.
[LAUGHTER]
One of these social situations.
So the last thing I'm going to read
are the very, very short ones that
are scattered through the book.
They're just a title and a line or two or sometimes a few more
that I think I wrote in reaction to translating the Proust.
Because, for one thing, that was a long daily labor.
I really didn't have much time to do my own writing at all,
and yet I didn't want to stop.
And, for another, I really did enjoy
translating the long sentences and getting into that,
but I think I needed the counterbalance of very, very
short statements.
This first is called, "Collaboration with Fly."
"I put that word on the page, but he added the apostrophe."
"The Tropical Storm."
Like a tropical storm, I, too, may one day
become better organized."
"Idea for a Short Documentary Film."
"Representatives of different food products' manufacturers
try to open their own packaging."
"Hand."
"Beyond the hand holding this book that I'm reading,
I see another hand lying idle and slightly out
of focus, my extra hand."
"Getting to Know Your Body."
"If your eyeballs move, this means
that you're thinking, or about to start thinking.
If you don't want to be thinking at this particular moment,
try to keep your eyeballs still."
"Lonely."
No one is calling me.
I can't check the answering machine
because I've been here all this time.
If I go out, someone may call while I'm out,
then I can check the answering machine when I come back in."
"Nature."
"Oh, poor dad, I'm sorry I made fun of you.
Now I'm spelling nature wrong, too."
"Insomnia."
"My body aches, so it must be this heavy bed pressing up
against me."
"The Way to Perfection."
"Practicing at the piano, my Alberti basses were not even.
But did my movement float this morning?
Yes."
[LAUGHTER]
"The Fellowship."
"The fellowship one.
It is not that you are not qualified
to receive the fellowship, it is that each year,
your application is not good enough.
When at last your application is perfect then
you will receive the fellowship.
Two, it is not that you are not qualified
to receive the fellowship, it is that your patience
must be tested first.
Each year, you are patient but not patient enough.
When you have truly learned what it
is to be patient, so much so that you forget
all about the fellowship, then you
will receive the fellowship."
"Example of the Continuing Past Tense in a Hotel Room."
"Your housekeeper has been Shelly."
"Almost Over.
What's the word?"
He says, when I first met you, I didn't
think you would turn out to be so strange.
"Mother's Reaction to my Travel Plans."
"Gainesville, it's too bad your cousin is dead."
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
You want to close with two questions maybe?
Oh, sure.
Yeah, OK.
We'll just have a couple questions
and then she'll sign some books.
You don't have two questions?
Yeah.
I realized your fondness for small words.
Will you speak about that?
[LAUGHTER]
Well, it stuck out at me that, in the grandmother piece,
in the dream sequence, I used the word balefully, which
is a--
I think that was the only hard word
I caught the whole reading.
It stuck out to me.
I liked it, though, bailfully.
I don't know.
I've always just been biased towards the Anglo-Saxon.
I'm just happier with small, simple words.
And, I guess, I always appreciated Beckett
because he would have very interesting ideas
behind these very small ideas, I mean, words.
He would have his characters doing very small, simple
things, but fulfilling patterns that were
very complex and interesting.
I resist abstract language.
I am getting better now and actually
forcing myself to read very abstract texts.
And my friend, Bob Perelman the poet--
does anybody know Bob Perelman?
Well, he once-- just when I was complaining
about an abstract sentence, he said, no, it's very simple,
you just take it one word at a time.
He read the first two, and he said,
you will understand what that word, those mean?
And then he just went to the next ones and the next.
I saw, yeah, yeah.
OK, if you take it slow and read it several times
you can get it.
But I just love like Anglo-Saxon poetry
and just the sounds of it.
I was also prejudiced against Henry James for a long time,
but now I'm also coming to appreciate his amazing sentence
structures and his abstract language, some of them.
Maybe I'll start sticking a few more complicated words
in there.
[LAUGHTER]
Is there really any particular place
where you do most of your writing?
At what time?
Place or time.
Well, with the novel, that was an exception in all my work.
And for that, I really had to go to the study every morning
and spend hours there at the computer.
And it was an old, Kaypro computer,
so that was very laborious.
With the shorter pieces, I'm much more at liberty
to start them anywhere and work on them anywhere.
And I do work in my study, but I really
like to work on public transportation.
A train is a good place to work.
And even an airplane is not impossible,
even though you're narrowed in.
I think I like the enforced focus of it.
You're made to sit in one place.
You can't go to the kitchen or anywhere else.
And yet there's a slight distraction.
You can look up.
I read Ashbery's Other Traditions.
Has anyone read that book by any chance.
It's not a book of poems.
It's his Norton lectures and John Ashbery, Other Traditions.
And it's about six poets that he finds interesting.
And it's a terrific book.
He's writes about them very intelligently.
And the perfect place to read that was on a bus
because, maybe it's the same thing as
with abstract language.
I would need to look up from what I was reading
and take a minute to absorb it.
And so the landscape between Boston and my home
was not very interesting really, in that
through way, the Mass Pike.
So it wasn't interesting enough to distract me from what
I was trying to understand.
So, yeah, I start them in a notebook and work on them
in a notebook.
Anywhere is OK.
And sometimes I start them around the house,
especially if I've been working and then
I have to stop to do the dishes or something.
My brain will keep on working and then
I will go over and keep on writing things down.
And I like to keep it that way, very flexible.
Is that different from you're translating process?
The schedule?
Pretty much.
She asked if it was different from my translating process.
Again, I'm not being as quite as diligent with Madame Bovary.
I hadn't really got into it yet.
But with the Proust, I had to be very diligent
and really do it on the computer and do it.
Although, I went back to work on a bus actually.
And I have to admit, I xeroxed pages of Madame Bovary
and brought them with me.
And did a little on the airplane because I
like the idea of doing it very carefully by hand in that very
slow way, periodically going back
to a very slow way of working on it.
But there are such long projects that I can't.
It's a little hard to do the whole thing that way.
So I try to just get through it.
I try to have more regular hours every afternoon.
Seems like a lot of your work is inspired
from everyday interaction, and seem
put a different perspective on your writing.
And I was just wondering if maybe that's why you like
to write such public places?
Like from transportation because you
get to look around and put a different perspective on what's
really going on?
That is anything correlation?
Was there a correlation between my writing
about everyday things and my life
to writing everyday public situations?
I think it could be, getting a different perspective
on the life around me.
Not being in the ivory tower so much.
But I'd like just to feel more relaxed about it.
I mean, writing can make you very, very tense,
and you do need different ways to make
yourself feel relaxed about it.
And so, for example, the notebook I work in
is not a beautiful, hand-made, rag-paper notebook.
It's just an ordinary, cheap notebook.
And it has pages you can tear out.
And so there's nothing sacred about it.
And what I write in there could be thrown away
or it could be kept and worked on.
So there's nothing sacred there either.
And then working on different things at the same time
is another thing I do so that all the pressure isn't
on one piece.
[APPLAUSE]