We all have an ongoing narrative inside our heads, the narrative that is spoken aloud if a friend asks a question. That narrative feels deeply natural to me. We also hang on to scraps of dialogue. Our memories donโt usually serve us up whole scenes complete with dialogue. So I suppose Iโm saying that I like to work from what a character is likely to remember, from a more interior place.
Lydia DavisI don't feel I have to struggle against allegory. I let the readers do the interpreting.
Lydia DavisThe style developed over decades, really, but I started out writing pretty traditional stories, then became impatient. It was a writer named Russell Edson who showed me that one could write in any way at all.
Lydia DavisIf I was writing about an academic or a more difficult person, I would use the Latinate vocabulary more, but I do think Anglo-saxon is the language of emotion.
Lydia DavisAfter Birth is a fast-talking, opinionated, moody, funny, and slightly desperate account of the attempt to recover from having a baby. It is a romp through dangerous waters, in which passages of hilarity are shadowed by the dark nights of earliest motherhood, those months so tremulous with both new love and the despairing loss of one's identity-to read it is an absorbing, entertaining, and thought-provoking experience.
Lydia Davis