- 2 M. Blanchot, Space of Literature, (translated by Anne Smock) Lincoln, Nebraska University Press, [1 (...)
1Maurice Blanchot wrote in The Space of Literature, « the need to write is linked to the approach toward this point at which nothing can be done with words2 ». Lydia Davis, who translated Blanchot, is mostly known for her short, short-stories. Though her work is not confined to short pieces, in each collection, they make up from 50-75% of the stories. Virtually ignored during her first years as a writer, it is only when Dave Eggers published her collection, Samuel Johnson is Indignant in 2000 that she started to gain attention — attention that continued to grow into a genuine interest and acclaim which was concretized when she won the Man Booker International Prize in 2013 for the ensemble of her works. Like Alice Munro, her writing has elevated the short story genre into the ranks of great literature. This paper will discuss her story « How I Know What I Like » from her 2015 collection Can’t and Won’t. If Davis’ style might, on a first reading, lead one to find it too stark, too experimental, too repetitive, too quirky, too self-reflexive, too sparse of character, too short on story, closer reading opens up new vistas. Davis, in fact, lets us see the underbelly of language. In one story, « Local Obits », extracts of obituaries from the local paper become the pretense for a story:
Marion, 100, was a homemaker her entire life. She enjoyed playing cards at the Senior Center and going on her many trips to Colorado. She always looked for the good in people.
Nellie, 79, was employed at the former Snow White-Laundry. She enjoyed playing bingo, doing puzzles, and spending time with family. She is predeceased by a brother, eight sisters, and one boy she helped to raise.
John, 73, died suddenly, after being stricken while driving in Grafton. He was an avid farmer who enjoyed hunting.
- 3 L. Davis, Can’t and Won’t, St. Ives, Penguin Random House, 2014, p. 274-275.
Clyde, 90, served in the Navy during WWII and was a meat cutter by trade. He was a member of the American Legion, the Stephentown Fire Company, the Tamrac Twirlers, the Quadrille Square Dance Club, and the Albany Camera Club3.
2In the 68 extracts of obituaries from the local paper, Davis demonstrates how language can fail, how it resists when called upon to express loss, or to capture a life. Yet, it is in the repetition of the seeming banality of these lives that life’s very fragility and beauty come to the fore. It is in the accumulation of these rather frail tributes to loved ones that the reader becomes profoundly moved. Void of any sentimentality, it is through the information non-conveyed, the nothing that these fragments of lives lived, arouse in the reader great emotion.
- 4 Davis explains her surprise and admiration in Malone Dies, where the plot development centres aroun (...)
3Through analysis of her story « How I Know What I Like », I will attempt to show how what is missing story-wise, character-wise, place-wise etc., is more than amply made up for by Davis’ keen awareness of the workings of language. Language itself becomes a character and the main source of action. Her stories are to be read down to the very morpheme. Repetition is never gratuitous, and what may seem to be little more than an amusing aphorism or anecdote reveals itself to be a reflection on language4.
- 5 C. Ricks, « Introduction », L. Davis, The collected stories of Lydia Davis, London, Penguin Books, (...)
4How do we account for the fact, that in this fragment-like text, this devoir, as Sir Christopher Ricks has termed her stories5, we have the kernel of something that is at the very heart of what makes a short story great?
5Davis comes to the short story with her talent as a translator, her intuition as a linguist, and her love for Samuel Beckett and Kafka. In an interview with C.B.C.’s Eleanor Wachtel, she explains how as a thirteen-year old, she copied out lines of Beckett’s Malone Dies to understand how the sentences functioned, and then tacked them on the wall. Davis comments, « There was so little content, such focus, such plain language, no attempt at lyricism or flowery language6. »
6If the reading experience of a Davis story may well be fleeting, the lasting effect is indelible. Jonathan Franzen comments:
- 7 D. Goodyear, « Long Story Short: Lydia Davis’s Radical Fiction », New Yorker, March 17, 2014, p. 21 (...)
She has the sensitivity to track the stuff that is so evanescent, it flies right by the rest of us. But as it does so, it leaves enough of a trace that when you read her you do it with a sense of recognition7.
- 8 Davis has also translated Michel Leiris, Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, and Proust’s Swann’s Way. In 201 (...)
7Davis’ close attention to language undoubtedly stems in large part from her work as a translator8. Paul De Man in one of his lessons on Walter Benjamin’s The Task of the Translator explains:
- 9 De Mann, The Resistance to Theory, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1986, p. 84.
We think we are at ease in our language, we feel a coziness, a familiarity, a shelter in the language we call our own in which we think we are not alienated. What translation reveals is that this alienation is at its strongest in our own original language — that our own original language within which we are engaged is disarticulated in a way which imposes upon us a particular attention9.
8Davis’ stories with so little content are a constant reminder of how we do not pay enough attention to language. Indeed, the reading of a Davis story can give us an idea of alienation, and it is thus that we might get the impression of reading a translation of English into English.
- 10 Ibid.
- 11 L. Davis, op. cit., p. 219.
9Benjamin further explains that meaning is always displaced with regards to the meaning it initially intended10. Davis brings to the fore this displacement of meaning in her short stories. Though she does play with language, in stories such as « The Language of Things in the House » , where, for example, the cat jumping down onto the bathroom tiles, reminds her of the Italian expression va bene11, the outstanding feature of her writing is how she plays with the notion of Standard English.The narrative voice we most often encounter is one who expresses itself in an English that is almost over-correct as though she were drawing attention to the limits of what is called Standard English, which is defined by Trudgill as:
- 12 P. Trudgill, Sociolinguistics: An Introduction to Language and Society, London, Penguin, 1995, pp. (...)
that variety of English which is usually used in print and which is normally taught in schools and to non-native speakers learning the language. It is also the variety that is usually spoken by educated people and used in news broadcasts and other similar situations. The difference between standard and non-standard, it should be noted, has nothing in principle to do with difference between formal and colloquial language, or with concepts of 'bad language'. Standard English has colloquial as well as formal variants […]12.
10Davis very often uses the full forms of verbs rather than the more informal contracted forms, and though she works with the American idiom, her stories are not conversational. This often gives the impression of a foreignization of English. The standardization of English is often taken to almost an extreme, inviting the reader to explore how language means and does not mean.
- 13 dictionary.cambridge.org, https://dictionary.cambridge.org/fr/dictionnaire/anglais/
11Though Davis’ works have also been included in poetry anthologies, and she recognizes why they have, she herself does not view them as poems, firmly categorizing them as short stories. One of course might reasonably question the similarity between the short short-story and a prose poem. The Cambridge Dictionary defines prose poem as « a poem that is written on the page like prose, but that has rhythm, images and patterns of sound13. »
- 14 S. Beckett, Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnameable: A Trilogy, London, Everyman's Library, 1997.
- 15 L. Davis. Essays One. New York, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2019, p.10.
12Davis' works, on the other hand, can be defined as pieces of prose whose brevity and experiments with form are reminiscent of poetry, but which remain resolutely in the category of prose fiction because of her concern for plot, the way she introduces surprise, and her attention to the way her stories end. In regards to plot, one of her very first inspirations as a fiction writer was Beckett's treatment of action. Davis explains her surprise and admiration in Malone Dies14, where the plot development centres around the dropping of a pencil and how she had never imagined anything like that before15.
13Also, and perhaps more importantly, in opting for the classification of her works as fiction is the coherence of a narrative voice — that distant, quirky, oft times obsessional voice that the Davis reader becomes acquainted with when reading her works within collections and not only when they are published individually in anthologies.
14In « How I Know What I Like », the familiar narrative voice rings out loud and clear, and the inspiration Davis found for plot in Beckett can be detected if we examine this story as an exploration of a non-event.
- 16 J. Culbert, « Lydia Davis in 2000 words », https://johnculbert.wordpress.com/.../lydia-davis-in-200 (...)
15What makes a story a story? John Culbert comments: « in order for there to be a story, there has to be a change of state. In most stories the reader’s interest is sustained by the events as they play out in a narrated sequence16 ». Interestingly enough, « change of state » has the same linguistic definition as an event. The SIL glossary of linguistic terms defines event and non-event in the following terms:
Event is a kind of information in discourse that (1) actually occurs; (2) is overt; (3) occurs at the now point on the time line.
- 17 SIL Glossary of Linguistic Terms, https://glossary.sil.org/term/event
A non-event is conveyed by: (1) Negatives (Nothing is described as having occurred.); (2) Questions (Nothing is described as having occurred.); (3) Modal expressions (No claim is made in a modal expression that anything occurred.); (4) Expressions containing verbs in projected time (Nothing is described as having yet occurred.); (5) Expressions containing non-overt verbs (see, feel, hear etc.); (6) Flashbacks and previews (They don't occur at the now point of the narrative.) In other words, « No claim is made that anything has occurred17.
16Thus, the non-event dimension of the story comes to the fore because of the verbs like, and be which are non-overt verbs, and the modal might because of the virtual dimension of modal auxiliaries.
17Though there is not much being played out in her stories, there are changes of state. In « How I Know What I Like » the change comes to be through a progression of incertitude. From the short, concise ten-word three-sentence reasoning in the first version, to a 36-word six-sentence exploration of what is becoming a state of ever evolving doubt, the distant narrative voice and the equally remote she in the story are constant reminders that in a Lydia Davis' fiction the main character, and the main action are almost always centered on language.
18If there is one thing that Facebook has accomplished, it is the rendering of the verb like, if not meaningless, at least emptied of any force it might have had. If Lydia Davis were to have a Facebook page, instead of a photo, I imagine she could use this short story as her background page.
19In « How I Know What I Like », the preposition of comparison like and the verb like combine with a hammering repetition of the same idea to take the reader on a psychoanalytical and philosophical inquiry into the concept of desire. The brevity of the text enables me to copy it out in whole below:
How I Know What I Like
(Six Versions)
She likes it. She is like me. Therefore, I might like it.
She is like me. She likes the things I like. She likes this. So I might like it.
I like it. I show it to her. She likes it. She is like me. Therefore, I might really like it.
I think I like it. I show it to her. She likes it. She is like me. Therefore, I might really like it.
I think I like it. I show it to her. (She is like me. She likes the things I like.) She likes it. So I might really like it.
I like it. I show it to her. She likes it. (She says the other one is « just plain awful ».) She is like me. She likes the things I like. So I might really like it18.
20An examination of function words — the preposition like, the conjunction so, and the adverb therefore, as well as the degree adverb really and the modal auxiliary might will help us understand Davis' preoccupations in the construction of her literary texts.
21Function words usually go unnoticed, but linguists working on developing software for semantic analysis discovered that in analysing the essays of people suffering from trauma, for instance, the study of their style was revealed, not through the analysis of nouns, adjectives, and verbs which are content lexemes – but in the study of their use of function words:
- 19 J.W. Pennebaker, The Secret Life of Pronouns, New York, Bloomsbury Press, 2011, p. 12.
Instead of analysing the content of their essays by focussing on the nouns, regular verbs, and adjectives, we asked the programme to focus on the words that reveal writing style. Writing style, we were learning, was generally revealed through function words, including prepositions, pronouns, articles, and a small number of similar short common words19.
22Pennebaker goes on to call them ‘stealth’ words, which have the following characteristics. They are:
- Used at a very high rate
- Short and hard to detect
- Processed in the brain differently than content words
- 21 R. Huddleston and R. Pullum, The Cambridge Grammar of the English language, Cambridge, Cambridge Un (...)
- 22 M.A.K. Halliday and R. Hassan, Coherence in English, London, Longman, 1976.
23The preposition like establishes comparison of equality between a primary term and a secondary term 21. Here, the primary term in the repeated sentence She is like me is always she and the secondary term me. When prepositional like phrases are predicative, something that is said of the primary term is also said of the secondary. Equality is expressed and is interpreted as resemblance. But the sphere of resemblance is not specified here, other than in the vaguest expression of « things liked », which are designated either by the definite pronoun it, the deictic pronoun this, or the definite pronouns one. And as for the referent to she, it is absent. Considered as grammatical elements of cohesion in a text 22, the pronouns as they are used here, draw our attention to other elements that contribute to the construction of text, such as layout and space, information deficit, repetition, and rhythm. Davis, like the other grand virtuoso of the short story, Alice Munro, plays with the prescriptive rules of grammar to not only invite us to become aware of these rules, and to consider what happens when these rules are bent, but also to establish the authority of the reader in the creative act of fiction.
24The verb like functions in what is known as an experiencer and stimulus mode. Huddleston and Pullum explain that experiencer and stimulus prototypically appear in situations of emotional feeling. The experiencer she is the one who feels, while the stimulus is the second argument. We notice again that each of the six versions ends with a linguistic « non-event » because the modal might, in might like it, or might really like it expresses only a virtual possibility.
25Throughout this story, the conjunction so alternates with the adverb therefore, which also has the linking function of a conjunction when it is not introduced by and. So can be paraphrased by since that is the case, or it follows from what precedes. So can be said to create a link between cause and effect, in which case the first term in the comparison is the cause that provokes the effect, thus expressing the idea of congruence.
- 23 J.R. Lapaire and W. Rotgé, La grammaire linguistique de l’anglais, op. cit. , p. 288-290.
26Therefore, on the other hand, introduces a logical deduction paraphraseable by we can logically conclude. Moreover, instead of the cause and effect for so, therefore can introduce a consequence or a result23.. Therefore is mostly used in academic English, whereas so belongs to oral English. If in oral English, therefore is often replaced by so, the different steps to arrive at a logical deduction in academic writing demands therefore.
27Therefore and so are what Huddleston and Pullum term impure connectives, because they do more than simply connect24. In our story, they connect but they also announce the expression of effect or the logical conclusion of she is like me. Davis’ narrator is using two different registers, a formal academic one with therefore, and a more informal oral one with so. Ironically, however, we note that with each new version, the steps used to arrive at the conclusion are more numerous, the demonstration evidently more complex. But instead of therefore, more conducive to a logical demonstration, the narrator chooses the more casual so.
28To be noted as well is the use of parentheses in the subtitle: in version 5, to repeat information already given in version 2 and to be repeated in version 6; and in version 6 to introduce another comparison.
- 25 R. Huddleston and G. Pullum, The Cambridge Grammar of the English language, op. cit., p. 1748.
29The function of parentheses, according to standard grammar rules « is to present that element as extraneous to a minimal interpretation of the text, as inessential material that can be omitted without affecting the well-formedness and without any serious loss of information. Parentheses provide an elaboration, illustration, refinement, of, or comment on, the content of the accompanying text25 » .
- 26 C. Bigot, « Alice Munro, le grain de la voix », Confluences Conference : Sounds Foreign, Université (...)
- 27 L. Blin, « Sweet Dissonance in Alice Munro’s ‘The Progress of Love’, ‘Friend of My Youth’ and ‘Free (...)
30The redundancy of the information in the subtitle (the text is so brief, the reader can easily see there are six versions), and the obvious repetition of information make this grammar rule self-obvious. The new information — the implicit comparison in She says the other one is just plain awful however invites us to look beyond the strict grammar rule on parentheses given in the grammar books. In fact, other studies on punctuation have demonstrated how parentheses in literary texts, precisely because they set the segment apart from the rest, signal a source of information that is vital in regards to interpreting the text. In Alice Munro’s short stories, for example, as Corinne Bigot (2015)26 and Blin (2015)27 have explained, the text between brackets can allow for another narrative voice to be heard.
31The study of polyphony in fiction is a key element in explaining and justifying critical interpretations that may often seem rather far-fetched in comparison to the surface story of the narrative. Simply by the way they typographically stand out on the page, a parenthesized element draws attention to itself. As for being extraneous information to the minimal understanding of a text, it is only the unserious reader who would ever be satisfied with that level of grasping a literary text. For close readers, elaboration, illustration, refinement of, or comment on the content, are some of the very tools needed to gain critical insight.
32A further examination of the use of parentheses in this story invites a reflection on the effect and result of parentheses. Repetition not being one of the uses of parentheses mentioned above, what purpose does the repeated information serve in this story? The new information in version 5 can be interpreted simultaneously as: (1) an elaboration (direct speech with only the adjective phrase within inverted commas introducing another point of view); (2) a refinement (another object of comparison is introduced, thus moving the story forward. So it can reasonably be considered as vital to even a minimal comprehension of the text): and (3) a commentary (not only by the anonymous she, but also of another narrative voice, which I identify as the author herself drawing attention to how she is present in the construction). Even if we consider how I, myself, have used parentheses in this paragraph, we could conclude that the information therein is just as vital as the other information for a minimal understanding of the text.
33Repetition in a literary text is a stylistic feature, but in a short story where, compared to the novel, every sentence counts in the construction of meaning, we must account for this repetition, to which the narrator further draws our attention by placing She is like me. She likes the things I like in parentheses.
- 28 Quirk et al., op. cit. p. 553. As one peer reviewer pointed out, this analysis of Quirk et al. is n (...)
34Although « like » is a preposition, Quirk et al. point out that in She is like me, like is adjective-like, because it can be modified by an adverb28, i.e. She is rather like me. Thanks to this repetition, we are called to notice that if a logical deduction about how the narrator knows what she likes is to be drawn by comparison, the premise through which this is to be drawn should be I like what she likes. I am like her. If a logical conclusion about the narrator is to be put to demonstration, the experiencer should be I and the stimulus she. The fact that therefore followed by a comma is abandoned for so without comma, emerges as narrative coherence that reinforces the discovery that the narrator is dealing with faulty logic and thus equally distorted feeling. From a 12-word argument in version 1 we arrive at a 35-word frenzy that is a sample of quintessential Lydia Davis. The reader thus discovers that this is a complex story on mimetic desire told through the reflections of what could be the narrative voice of an immature teenager.
35This discovery in turn sends us back to investigate more fully the change from therefore, to so. If both so and therefore can be used to conclude an argument, the fact that so is for informal use and therefore more formal, the reasons for this are partly encoded in their morphology.
- 29 Ibid. p.16015.
- 30 J.R. Lapaire and W. Rotgé, op. cit. p. 289.
36If both so and therefore can be said to refer back to what has already been stated, Quirk remarks: « As with many other connective adjuncts, there is a slight anaphoric compound in the meaning for this reason, as a result of29 » . Therefore, on the other hand, is a compound adverb, which Lapaire and Rotgé remind us is made up of THERE + Preposition FORE, the etymology of which is that which precedes in space and time. It is thus, more strongly anaphoric than so. They continue: « We are thus in presence of an operator fundamentally turned towards what precedes it, and which causality — which transplants itself easily onto the before/after dichotomy to become source/consequence — had no trouble recuperating30 ».
37The mental work going on is again, according to Lapaire and Rotgé « organized and dynamic31 ».
38The comma is not compulsory after therefore and it could be added after so. One of the purposes of a comma is to set off an intonation group, which means that if the sentence is to be read aloud, it would receive a word accent. The comma marks a pause and this is important in what Hirotami, Frazier, and Rayner term « sentence wrap-up ». In a study of eye movement, they tested the actual split second pause during silent reading by measuring the eye movement of the readers in the experiment:
- 32 M. Hirotami, L. Frazier, K. Rayner, « Punctuation and Intonation Effects on Clause and Sentence Wra (...)
They found in one experiment that the presence of a comma did incite the reader to pause and to — as they termed it — 'wrap up'. They also tested the understanding of sequences and found that though the presence of the comma does cause a temporary slowdown, the punctuation helps rather than hinders the reader. They pose two hypotheses: dwelling at the ends of clauses is specific to reading — an adaptation to the peculiar demands of processing language in the visual modality. Alternatively, it is possible that the processing of punctuation in reading is on par with the processing of intonation boundaries in speech 32.
39The comma gives a drum-roll announcement effect enabling the reader to more fully realize an important conclusion. In this story, since the conclusion steadily loses its force, therefore will be abandoned and replaced by so and the end-wrap comma will also be abandoned. Because, of course, there is no end-wrap here. The story does end but with an unfinished impression stemming from the fact that this faulty argument could go on and on. This feeling of irresolution is cohesively built into the narrative by the general vagueness of the text and repetition of the modal auxiliary, might.
40The general impression of vagueness in the text is created by the use of pronouns she, it, this, and one with no overt referents as well as the use of the noun phrase « the things » which have not been identified. The I refers to the homodiegetic narrator, who might be compared to the mouth in Beckett’s play Not I where the only character on the blackened stage is a disembodied mouth that talks at breakneck speed rendering the monologue only comprehensible by fragment.
41Vagueness is a characteristic of some predicates, such as the following:
Katy is old.
This paper is red.
Burt is bald.
42OLD, BALD, and RED appear straightforward, but upon closer examination, these adjectives, remain elusive when it comes to determining the truth value of the propositions. Even if we determine Katy’s exact age, it is still difficult to tell whether that counts as old without knowing the context. And when the context changes, so does the truth value of the proposition.
- 33 N. Klinedinst and P. Egre, Vagueness and Language Use. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, pp 1- (...)
43For Burt is bald the truth condition is subjected to what is known as Sorites susceptibility. The Sorites paradox comes from the Greek word soros meaning pile. The original version of the Sorites paradox is a challenge to determine at which point a set of individual grains of rice becomes a pile. If it can clearly be deduced that a single grain does not make a pile, nor does a second grain, at some point a pile is formed after sufficiently many grains are added. How can we know the definition of the word pile when we can’t tell the moment one is created? Likewise, with Burt is bald, how many strands of hair is Burt allowed to have to be considered bald, so that Burt is bald is true33?
44She likes the things I like also is subject to Sorites susceptibility. Do the things she likes include everything — Brussels sprouts? blood sausage? the color purple? playing bridge? What, for example do the degree adverbs just and plain add to the absolute adjective awful, or the adverb really add to the verb like? Of course, they increase the degree of awfulness, and that of liking, but awful and like are self-explanatory. What the degree elements add to the text here is basically to inform the reader more about the utterers. In their propensity to add degree to basically empty propositions, they render them even emptier.
45The topic of vagueness is relevant to the linguist in Davis who invites us to ponder what implication the existence of vagueness has on our knowledge of lexical items — but it is also relevant to the philosopher in Davis who has to deal with predicates that lead to paradox— how propositions are true and false at the same time.
- 34 Linguists agree on the non-factual, non-actual, non-occurring characteristic modals introduce in a (...)
46The use of the verb think in I think I like it in versions 4 and 5 and might in I might like it and I might really like it reinforce the non-event dimension of this story34. They simultaneously highlight the obsessive tentativeness, and hesitation of this narrator in what seems to be a Sisyphean attempt to know herself. Again, using as our barometer the concept of linguistic events, the obvious conclusion to this story is that knowing what he/she really likes is another non-event.
47The story can also be read as a comment on the Lacanian maxim that, man’s desire is the desire of the Other. Firstly, that desire is essentially a desire for recognition from this ‘Other’; secondly that desire is for the thing that we suppose the Other desires, which is to say, the thing that the Other lacks.
- 35 J. Lacan, translated by B. Fink, « The mirror stage as formative of the I function » in Ecrits; the (...)
The necessary and sufficient reason for the repetitive insistence of these desires in the transference and their permanent remembrance in a signifier that repression has appropriated – that is, in which the repressed returns – is found if one accepts the idea that in these determinations the desire for recognition dominates the desire that is to be recognised, preserving it as such until it is recognised35.
48As Owen Hewiston explains:
- 36 O. Hewitson, « What does Lacan say about Desire? », http://www.lacanonline.com/index/2010/05/what-d (...)
In other words, desire pushes for recognition. It is less a question of what we desire as much as it is that we be recognised. Moreover, Lacan believes that this dependence on the other for recognition is responsible for structuring not only our desires, but even our drives36.
- 37 I would like to thank Emanuel Vernadakis for his suggestion of the Lacanian link to this story. All (...)
49As the signifier is only rendered through the pronouns it, this, the other one and the broadly generic, the same things, the narrator’s relentless drive to find out what she likes and her dependence on the Other to discover what this might be, is rendered vague. The signifier that repression has appropriated remains unspecified. However, in a Lacanian interpretation of the story, the use of really to modify like would confirm the idea of an eager striving for recognition37.
- 38 R. Girard, Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 19 (...)
50The story also concords with what the philosopher René Girard had to say about mimetic desire. According to Girard, once our fundamental necessities are acquired, we look around us to what other people are doing, and wanting, and we copy them. For Girard, imitation is at the root of all behavior and in this age of social media, where the verb like has taken on a new significance and in so doing has also lost a great deal, Girard’s belief that we do not know what we desire and have to turn to others to make up our minds also takes on renewed importance38 .
51To conclude, Davis’ narrator has taken the self as tragi-comic hero and her story reminds us that the difficulty we may have with language comes from the fact that language has a life of its own.
52The seeming inconclusiveness of this story turns out to be the plot itself as well as Davis’ acknowledgment of Aristotle’s belief that exactness in capturing reality will inevitably evade us:
- 39 Aristotle, https://www.quotes.net/quote/40981
It is the mark of an instructed mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness when only an approximation of the truth is possible39.
53It is in understanding this that she has managed to write stories that provoke the reader in a way that more conventional stories cannot. More precisely, it is in her creative recognition of an inherent irresoluteness in language; in her attentive preoccupation with the complexity of grammatical details down to the very last comma, parenthesis, or italic, that « How I know What I Like » represents so finely the feeling of plenitude readers discover in her stories.
- 40 S. Beckett, « Act Without Words » in Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett, London, Faber & Fab (...)
54In Beckett’s play, Act Without Words40, the most prominent element of the scenario consists of a nameless character being intermittently poked into action by a long goad that stretches across the stage. « How I Know What I Like », as in so many of Lydia Davis' short short-stories, functions a little the same way as this goad. Its extreme brevity and tightly knit narrative work like an electro shock to the weary existential postmodern readers reminding us that we are alive.
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