Our Strangers, page 1
Selected Praise for Lydia Davis
* * *
“Widely considered one of the most original minds in American fiction today.”
—Dana Goodyear, The New Yorker
“She is our Vermeer, patiently observing and chronicling daily life but from angles odd and askew … Davis takes pure pleasure in the muscular act of looking, and invites us to look alongside her.”
—Parul Sehgal, The New York Times
“Davis is the kind of writer about whom you say: ‘Oh, at last!’”
—Grace Paley
“Davis is a magician … Few writers now working make the words on the page matter more.”
—Jonathan Franzen
“Sharp, deft, ironic, understated, and consistently surprising.”
—Joyce Carol Oates
“The best prose stylist in America.”
—Rick Moody
“I suspect that The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis will in time be seen as one of the great, strange American literary contributions, distinct and crookedly personal …”
—James Wood, The New Yorker
Our Strangers
* * *
Lydia Davis has decided to make OUR STRANGERS available for sale only at independent bookstores, libraries, and on Bookshop.org, a website created to help local bookstores compete against Amazon online. She is concerned about Amazon’s dominance in bookselling and wishes to see book-lovers return to the place where books have been sold with care and thoughtfulness for centuries by dedicated fellow book-lovers—the corner bookshop. This book is the first to be published by Bookshop.org, under the imprint Bookshop Editions, which aims to lead customers back to independent bookstores and contribute further to the ongoing conversation about the importance of a diverse publishing ecosystem.
This book will ONLY be available at independent bookstores, libraries, and Bookshop.org
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2023 by Lydia Davis
All rights reserved
Excerpt from The Granite Pail: The Selected Poems of Lorine Niedecker published by North Point Press, 1985. Copyright © 1985 by the Estate of Lorine Niedecker. By permission of Bob Arnold, Literary Executor for the Estate of Lorine Niedecker.
ISBN: 9798987717110
Jacket design by Robert Bieselin
Book design by Jordan Koluch
Published and distributed by Bookshop Editions, editions@bookshop.org
1. Pingpong ball 2. Chicken egg
Contents
* * *
I
My Briefcase | On Sufferance | Just a Little | The Stages of Womanhood | A Brief News Story from Long Ago | Fear of Loose Tongue | Caramel Drizzle | The Talk Artist | The Other She | Everyone Used to Cry | Father Has Something to Tell Me | A Moment Long Ago: The Itinerant Photographer | Claim to Fame #2: Karl Marx and My Father | The Joke | Fear of Aging | Addie and the Chili | Tantrums | Claim to Fame #7: A. J. Ayer | Young Housewife | Here in the Country | Egg | The Afternoon of a Translator | At the Movies Last Night | Sunday Night at the Summer Cottages | A Theory
II
Community Notice: Example of Redundancy | Conversation at Noisy Party on Snowy Winter Afternoon in Country | A Question for the Writing Class Concerning a Type of Furniture | In a Hotel Room in Ithaca | Incident on the Train | Letter to the Father | Conversation at Noisy Party on Snowy Winter Afternoon in Country (Short Version) | Democracy in France, in 1884 | Claim to Fame #8: On the Way to Detroit | England | Criminal Activity in Historic Colonial Williamsburg | Conversation in Hotel Lounge | Claim to Fame #9: In Detroit | A Friend Borrows a Better Shopping Cart | Sabbath Story #1: Circuit Breaker | Letter to the U.S. Postal Service Concerning a Poster | Mature Woman Toward the End of a Conversation About Raincoats over Lunch with Another Mature Woman | Sabbath Story #2: Minyan | Our Network | William Cobbett and the Stranger | Claim to Fame #3: June Havoc | A Matter of Perspective | Master Builder | Enemies | Lonely (Canned Ham) | That Obnoxious Man | Wistful Spinster | Old Men Around Town | Marriage Moment of Annoyance—Coconut | On Their Way South on Sunday Morning (They Thought) | Claim to Fame #1: Ezra Pound
III
Woman Goes to Racetrack Owner | Aging | Our Strangers | Conversation Before Dinner | Father Enters the Water | Bothered Scholar on Train | Encounter in Landscape | Betrayal (Tired Version) | End of Phone Conversation with Verizon Adjustment Person | An Explanation Concerning the Rug Story | An Ant | Gramsci | Pardon the Intrusion | Hands on the Wheel | Heron in the Headlights | Marriage Moment of Annoyance—Insurance | Marriage Moment of Annoyance—Mumble | Not Yet Ring Lardner | On the Train to Stavanger | How Sad? | Crepey | A Mother’s Devotion
IV
On a Winter Afternoon | Interesting Personal Vegetables | Second Drink | Commentary on “Interesting Personal Vegetables” | Claim to Fame #4: Sally Bowles | A Person Asked Me About Lichens | Spelling Problem | Multiple-Choice Question Posed by Stranger in Pamphlet | Her Selfishness | Three Musketeers | Neighbor Stare | Helen’s Father and His Teeth | Fun | The Investigation | In Truth | Feeling Small | Recurring Turnip Problem | Learning to Sing | But After All, This Is the Necessary First Stage of His Construction Work | Two Mayors and a Word | New Things in My Life | Not Much to Tell | Late Afternoon | Worrying About Father’s Arm | Opportunistic Seed | Our Young Neighbor and His Little Blue Car | Those Two Loud Women | Winter Letter | Caruso | Pearl and Pearline | What You Could Get for Your Turnips | A Woman Offering Magazines | Marriage Moment of Annoyance—Dinner | Marriage Moment of Annoyance—Speculations | Unhappy Christmas Tree | Improving My German
V
Poem of Greeting | Two Stories About Boys | Claim to Fame #5: Rex Dolmith | Unfinished Business | Lost by Yanda Hedge (Personal) | After Reading Peter Bichsel | Claim to Fame #6: Theodoric | Overheard on the Train: Two Old Ladies Agree | More Corrections | Dear Who Gives a C*** | Sneezes on the Train | (Some of) His Drinking Habits | The Interests of Old Age | The People in My Dreams | The Sounds of a Summer Afternoon | Three Deaths and One Old Saying | True Fact | Wedding | Trying to Get in Touch with Her | Two Drunks at Dinnertime | Ugly? | What I Understand | How He Changed over Time | Wise Old Men | Unusual Ornament | Emergency Preparation | The Left Hand | Up So Late | Your Music Selection of the Day | When We Are Dead and Gone
Acknowledgments
My Briefcase
* * *
Obviously, it was because of my briefcase that they hired me to teach again the following term. They were impressed because my briefcase looked so much like a briefcase.
I also knew how to walk down the halls and carry my briefcase. I could unlock my office door and walk into my office. I had a swivel chair on wheels in my office. I left my door open during my office hour and closed it firmly the moment the office hour was over. The department secretary did anything I asked her to, within reason. I was careful about what I asked her to do. I was brisk and preoccupied in front of her, but with a polite smile. There was my mailbox, with my name on it in bold letters, below the clock. Also, I spoke to a student, when I met one in the hallway, with the correct expression, a little dazed and distracted, but my answers were always clear and final.
On Sufferance
* * *
The cat says, “I’m only here on sufferance.” The dog doesn’t understand, so the cat defines the word sufferance. It has to do with a kind of tolerance. It has to do with permission that is only indirect, permission through failure to prohibit. She uses the word tacit. The dog doesn’t understand tacit. The cat gives up. She thinks he probably got the idea anyway.
The cat knows they love the dog and merely tolerate her. There is real enthusiasm when they greet the dog, when they come in the front door. She sits off in the background, watching, because the dog is so wild when he jumps on them. They see her in the background and say, “Hello, kitty!” but without much warmth. The dog is more demonstrative than she is. He wouldn’t understand the word demonstrative, though he enacts it. (He wouldn’t understand the word enact.)
Later, the cat says to the dog, who stands below her, in the kitchen, watching her and sniffing the air, “Now she has left the room and I’m sitting up here within an inch of her chicken sandwich. That puts a strain on me.” She reaches out a forepaw and touches the sandwich, but she is not comfortable.
The dog likes her and is interested in her. Although he doesn’t know the word strain, he would not find it a strain to be near the chicken sandwich.
Then she says she has trouble with her salivary glands in certain situations and can’t help opening and closing her mouth.
Later the cat is chewing on the broom again.
The dog does not understand why she would do that.
The cat says, “She scolds me because I’ve been chewing on the broom. She leaves it out and I see it. Then she sees me chewing on it and comes and puts it away between the refrigerator and the wall where I can’t get at it, though I try. I try when it seems to be where I can reach it.”
The dog listens to her explain all this. At least it is a change from going back to sleep again in that pool of sunlight, as he has been doing from time to time all morning, as it shifts across the floor.
Just a Little
* * *
Agnes Varda, the French film director,
said in an interview
that she liked to do a little sewing,
a little cooking, a little gardening,
but just a little.
The Stages of Womanhood
* * *
It was in the midst of these days when I was struggling to complete the—what would it be?—seventh, no, sixth stage of my growth as a woman, being a year late already with that, according to the (ineffective) anthroposophic doctor I had consulted about my persistent ear infections, when I was awoken yet again during a particularly restless night of being awoken, first, by my child, then by a mosquito, then by my child again, then by the tickling in my ears, then by my child again—when I was awoken yet again, this time by the high-pitched wail of an air-raid siren that I mistook at first for a malfunctioning fan in one window and then a fan in another, going around turning off and unplugging the fans one by one, then finally making my way downstairs and out the back door to stand in the yard looking up until the sound of the siren died abruptly, the wail descending. Of course I thought of war, since our country was in conflict yet again with another country. I thought maybe the mosquito that had been bothering me would live longer than I would. I thought of calling the local police station. I wondered if my husband had heard the siren through his ear plugs. He was sleeping downstairs so that he would not be bothered by me, since I was sleeping so badly these days, or by the child, who was waking so often. The doctor had told me that the next stage, the last stage of womanhood in which a woman is reproductive, was very important creatively. The stage that came after that was very different—also wonderful, she said, but very different. But I had not yet completed this stage, which was supposed to be a growth into full womanhood. As far as I could see, I was exactly the same this year as I had been last year and the year before.
A Brief News Story
from Long Ago
* * *
We heard this story years ago on the evening news: a bride and groom on their wedding night did some heavy drinking with friends and then got into the bride’s car and drove away. In a dead-end road near an overpass, they stopped the car, turned off the engine, and began to argue loudly. The argument was audible to the houses nearby and went on for so long that several neighbors began to listen. After a while, the groom shouted to his bride, “All right, run over me then.” By now, the neighbors were also watching out their windows. He left the car, slamming the door behind him, and lay down in front of the front wheel on the passenger side. The bride started the car and drove the 4,000-pound vehicle over him. He died instantly. The marriage was only a few hours old. At the time of his death, he was still wearing his tuxedo.
Fear of Loose Tongue
* * *
Please be kind, Ron, she says.
No mention of anything
that may or may not have occurred
at Hamburger Mary’s!
Caramel Drizzle
* * *
“Caramel syrup or caramel drizzle?”
“Sorry?”
“Caramel syrup or caramel drizzle?”
This is overheard conversation. I look up: it is a tall slim woman with a ponytail buying the drink at a Starbucks counter. She is wearing a dark blue uniform. We are in an airport. She is probably a flight attendant.
Long pause for deliberation. She has not encountered this choice before.
“I’ll take the drizzle.”
Now I see her from behind, over there, with her blond ponytail and sticking-out ears, drinking her caramel drizzle.
While she stood at the counter and deliberated, I was deciding that the drizzle was a smaller amount of caramel than the syrup, even though surely syrup must be involved in the drizzle.
Later, she walks away with another airline employee, the empty cup in her hand, the caramel drizzle inside her.
And then she turns out to be the attendant on my flight—her name is Shannon. So, her caramel drizzle will also be going with us to Chicago.
The Talk Artist
* * *
His literary form is the live talk, without notes, without script. After he has given them, these talks may be published. Now I am reading a talk he has given in Philadelphia—the words are there on the page, and I hear him speaking them, though I don’t know him or the sound of his voice. I am reading this in the bath, and even if I weren’t in the bath, I would find there was a certain intimacy in reading something written by someone who cares about writing, especially a talk he once delivered in person.
Then I am at a party, and I see the author of the talk. He leans across several people to shake hands with me, clutching with his other hand the two lapels of his corduroy jacket and smiling with the friendliness of someone who has just arrived at a party, but not speaking. He doesn’t speak, and all evening I am not within earshot of him and don’t see him speaking, so for me, for that part of the evening, he remains speechless. But back at home, the book still lies open over the rim of the bathtub, and in it, though a little less friendly than in person, a little more serious, he is speaking at great length and without interruption.
The Other She
* * *
From where she is, in another part of the house, she hears his voice in the bedroom, in the distance, speaking gently, domestically, thoughtfully to her. He does not know she is not in the room.
And for a moment, then, she feels there is another she, with him, maybe even a better she, and that she herself is a spurned she, a scorned she, there at the end of the hall, far away from the room where they have something nice going on together.
Everyone Used to Cry
* * *
It is not easy to live in this world: everyone is upset constantly by the large or even small things that go wrong. One is insulted by a friend, another is neglected by her family, yet another has a bad argument with his spouse or teenage child.
Often, people cry when they are unhappy. This is natural. For a year or so, when I was young, I worked in an office. Toward lunchtime, as the people in the office grew hungry and tired and irritable, they would begin to cry. My boss would give me a document to type, and I would push it away crossly. He would yell at me, “Type it!” I would yell back, “I won’t!” He himself would become petulant on the phone and slam it into its cradle. By the time he was ready to leave for lunch, tears of frustration would be running down his cheeks. If an acquaintance stopped in at the office to take him to lunch, he would ignore that person, and turn his back. Then that person’s eyes, too, would well up with tears.
After lunch, we all felt better, and the office was filled with its normal hum and bustle, people carrying folders and walking briskly here and there, sudden bursts of laughter rising from cubicles, and work would go well until late in the afternoon. Then, as we all grew tired again, even more tired than in the morning, and hungry again, we would begin crying again.
Most of us actually continued to cry as we left the office. In the elevator, we would push one another aside, and on the walk to the subway we would glare at the people coming toward us. On the stairs descending into the subway, we would force our way down through the crowd coming up.
It was summer. In those days there was no air-conditioning in the subway cars, and while the tears wet our cheeks, the sweat also ran down our faces, backs, and legs, and the women’s feet swelled in their tight shoes, as we all stood packed together, swaying between stops.
Some people, though they were crying when they got into the subway car, would gradually stop crying as they rode toward home, especially if they had found a seat. They would blink their damp eyelashes and begin contentedly biting on their knuckles as they read their newspapers and books, their eyes still shining.
