Have you ever tried a food, or a drink, or an activity that at first didn't appeal to you, but then, upon greater exposure, became the very thing that you craved?
My admiration for Lydia Davis has grown over the years until I now feel a strong desire to read her work. When Davis read last spring at Susquehanna, I heard from more than one student how they found her reading from The Cows intolerable. In contrast, I loved it. Unabashedly. Listening to Davis describe our bovine neighbors felt like a view into a parallel university, one in which the etiquette, logic, and relationships are all alien and yet eerily familiar. When I reread the stories chosen by T.C. Boyle for DoubleTakes, my brain echoes with other of Davis's worlds I've read, and I feel, like the protagonist of "Almost No Memory" that these books truly have a great deal to do with me, thought it is hard for me to understand, and troubles me to try to understand, just how they have to do with me, how much they are of me and how much they are outside me and not of me, as they sit there on the shelf, being what I have read but do not remember reading, being what I have thought but do not now think, or remember thinking...
Last year, I went to Lydia Davis’s Q+A, and then to her poetry reading later on that night. I was about as put off from both of those as I could’ve been, and after hearing her describe (for about 15-20 minutes)the monotonous actions of cows she could see from her window, I was ready to dismiss her as one of the writers I never wanted to read again. And now, in her Doubletakes, I read in her intro that she likes the Anglo-Saxon words and ideas like “war peace, cow, dog,” and am thinking oh god, not again…
ReplyDeleteThankfully though, I actually enjoyed Davis’s “Almost No Memory.” I think she captured a really unique experience—universal in its particularity, as Burroway would say. Davis describes the woman who forgets everything she writes just as that—“a certain woman”—so we aren’t stuck thinking this is a random case. I think we are meant to relate, and I did, definitely. Reading things I wrote a couple years ago, hell, even a couple weeks ago, can be like reading someone else’s work entirely. It’s one of those things that happens to a lot of people, but isn’t really ever documented, and that to me can make for some of the best writing. Lydia Davis does that, without belaboring the point—and in a very short space creates a kind of poetry I wish I could’ve seen in her actual poems.
When I saw that we were reading Lydia Davis, I had much the same initial reaction as Alex. I went to both her reading and Q&A last year after reading her collection "Break It Down" for one of my other classes and really was not into her work at all. It actually proved really difficult for me to read at all as her work carries a sort of monotony that I couldn't stand even while sitting two feet from her while she was reading it. Contrary to Alex, however, my opinion has not changed in the slightest after reading her stories in Doubletakes.
ReplyDeleteWhen reading "Almost No Memory" I found myself sucked back into the same boredom and confusion as I had when reading "Break It Down" and truthfully had no clue what was going on until in that short page and a half, all I knew was there was a "certain woman" who knew neither what she did for a living nor the ideas she had the day before about things she read. Needless to say, I was once again put off by Davis and have officially dismissed her as one of those authors who I can appreciate, but will never read again unless forced to for class. One thing I do appreciate about Davis, despite my overwhelming distaste for her work, is her ability to cram and entire story into a short page, and even paragraph in many of the stories in "Break It Down." I think that if I were going to learn anything for her at all, it would not be about writing or content at all but space management, and telling a complete story in a confined amount of pages.
I think it is safe to say I never want to read Lydia Davis' Almost No Memory ever again. I truly hated it and wish I could get back those three minutes of my life. That said, I love the idea of writing about memory and it is something that I really would like to try. I think it is (somewhat) interesting how Davis' really mimicked the idea of memory, or lack thereof, and it is something that I could empathize with.
ReplyDeleteAfter I read this piece I tried to write a piece in which the piece mimicked the idea of a loss of memory and it was very hard to do. I think Davis does a good job with this for the most part, but I feel like the use of run-on sentence makes it very hard to read and doesn't make me stumble upon the words in a good way at all. So instead I tried to write simple sentences as if the person was slowly trying to remember something. I feel like this worked much better for me as a reader (although the piece isn't all there yet.)
My freshman year's theme was 'memory,' and there were at least two essays in our common reading that dealt with patients who had lost the use of the part of the brain that turns short term memory into long term memory. "Almost No Memory" took me back to those essays. The character is clearly in a similar situation, with her inability to remember things for the long term--she is able to make extremely long chains of thought, writing them down in order to think more clearly, but in the end those chains and those deep thoughts are forgotten very quickly. What most interested me about this story was how the narration was able to mimic the thought process, as it described things in great detail, going deeper into those thoughts than one would normally think of doing, but not retaining any of the knowledge that those thoughts provide. Unsurprisingly for such a short story, the language is concise, despite the apparent repetition of the lines; all of that repetition is necessary for the story's overall tone, and is a boon rather than an irritation.
ReplyDelete"St. Martin," on the other hand, retained some of this language style without providing any of its benefits. The story, if it can be called that, is about a couple in France who house-sit... though they apparently aren't very good at their job. The narrative is basically their observations about their surroundings and their description of their living style--but there is really no plot to be found in all of this. The main characters are basically very spacey people, who spend all their time observing without spending any in order to interact. By "interact," I partially mean "fend for themselves." Interestingly, they complain about the photographer for being extremely disorganized and forgetful, and then repeat his mistakes themselves. I found them to be very annoying overall, even before this hypocrisy turned up in the narrative; after it, I found them to be infuriating.
For this blog, I would like to talk about Lydia Davis and “Almost no memory.”
ReplyDeleteThis story is short, but very dense. I had to read it a few times to fully understand exactly what was happening. She uses run-on sentences and many commas, to keep the story flowing. I also noticed a repetitive nature to each individual sentence, and of the paragraphs, such as “….She wanted to make a note of a note she was reading…” This is written after several lines referring to notes and writing notes.
The entire piece was a mere 13 sentences, and the final sentence was 12 lines. Some of the sentences just seemed to drag on and on, and I disliked this at first, but came to admire it. Davis takes a bit of a risk with this writing, and I think it works really well. It is different, and yet it is still considered good enough to be published. I think this really encourages me to takes risks with my own writing.
There is not much symbolism within the story, but I like that. Everything is concrete and said in a plain manner. The story is called “Almost No Memory,” and is about a girl with almost no memory. No metaphors, no clichés, just plain and simple.
I have to admit I had a very hard time reading Lydia Davis. I do admire her for being experimental and having the format mimicking the title but after awhile the repetition and run on sentences got too much for me. But if I had to choose between “Almost No Memory” and “St. Martin”, I would choose “Almost No Memory”. I did not like “St. Martin” at all for many different reasons but mainly because I hated the whoever the “we” was. They were very careless and from what I could see had no good traits at all. The only characters I did like were the dogs and the “we” managed to loose one of them. Also “St. Martin” confused me a lot because I felt that there was too much detail. I felt like I was drowning in her words and it made me very hard to get through it.
ReplyDelete“Almost No Memory” confused me as well but the way it was written kind of interested me. Every line was repeated to signify short-term memory loss. I really felt like I had short-term memory loss. But even though I liked it, I wouldn’t read it again for I didn’t really get the message at all for there was too much repetition and not enough detail. If I had to take anything from Lydia Davis it would be how she wrote “Almost No Memory” in that the content and the format really reflected the title. For “St. Martin” I would not want to copy anything except maybe to add myself so that I could fire the narrator and find the dog myself. I was very upset when I found out that they lost the dog for the way Lydia described the dog, it sounded like he was a sweetheart. Besides I could not relate to them at all because to me they seemed one sided and I didn’t really see anything any good about them. Lydia Davis as an author would not be in my family tree because she didn’t really influence me as a writer in her confusing stories.
Lydia Davis seemed to be an interesting enough author for me. I liked her story called "Almost no memory" however the story "St. Martin" was, almost ironically, forgettable. I read these stories five days ago, and no matter how hard I try I can't seem to remember anything that happened in "St. Martin." This could be because I didn't even follow the story in the first place. All I remember from when I was reading it was sitting there, being bored, and constantly counting down the number of pages I had left until I finished. I thought it was just me at first, but judging from the comments above, I think it is safe to say that Lydia Davis is the kind of author that you need to put a serious effort into in order to appreciate.
ReplyDeleteI did enjoy "Almost no memory" though. I though the whole thing was intriguing. The way she repeated things, and used run on sentences really worked to fit the subject. I thought it was very cleverly done. I do think that the way she wrote this story helped to fade the line between fiction, poetry, and pros. personally I feel like there doesn’t need to be a difference. I actually think reading this fiction story will help me write my poetry. I think I should read some of her poetry, and see how that could help me as well. I would bet that reading her poetry would help me with my poetry, fiction, and my writing in general.
- Ryan