I've finished The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, which I first wrote about a couple weeks ago, here, when I was maybe half-way through it. There are 198 "stories" in all, and, as the book has 733 pages, you can see that most are very short. Like this one, titled "Index Entry":
Christian, I'm not a
There are several others that aren't much longer. I'm not sure what I'd make of any one of these if I came upon it, individually, in a magazine. But in this volume, intermixed with longer ones like "Helen and Vi: A Study in Health and Vitality," the cumulative effect is--here comes a paradox--overwhelming in an understated sort of way. Perhaps nothing is more impressive than the portraits of old age, the depredations endured by those who live long enough to experience them and the responses of their children. It's pretty clearly a subject close to Davis's own experience. One can make out a sequence on the topic that concludes with this shattering prose poem, called "Head, Heart":
Heart weeps.
Head tries to help heart.
Head tells heart how it is, again.
You will lose the ones you love. They will all go. But even the earth will go, someday.
Heart feels better, then.
But the words of head do not remain long in the ears of heart.
Heart is so new to this.
I want them back, says heart.
Head is all heart has.
Help, head. Help heart.
Many in our neighborhood are mourning the death, last Saturday, of Dr Suzanne Grant. The claims made in the obituary for her excellent personal characteristics are as true as the date of her birth, the names of her relatives, and the number of years she practiced medicine. She was a great favorite of our 7-year-old and you can't trick people of that age. Whenever she spotted me gardening, she'd hobble over and begin quizzing me about this plant or that one. Finally one day I told her to stop wasting her breath: "If there's something you don't know about these flowers, Dr Grant, it's a sure thing I won't know either." One thing the obituary doesn't mention: hers was a death freely chosen. She had a perforated ulcer, which might have been repaired by a surgery, but she declined, and now her many friends are hosting the head-heart colloquy.
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