What We’re Reading: Can’t and Won’t

Can’t and Won’t by Lydia Davis (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2014)

Lydia Davis is a master of short fiction. Whether it’s ten words long or two hundred, Davis packs emotions, connections, and an astute reflection on the human condition into each and every story in this collection. Her writing is so captivating and evokes so much emotion that I found myself turning each page with fervor, eager for more, even though it’d be an entirely different story with a different narrator, setting, and point of view.

The stories began to bleed together, but not because they were indistinguishable; they flowed well back to back. It was a fun challenge to discover the next new protagonist and plot with each page turn. Just as often as I’d quickly turn the page for a new story, I’d also stop and pause, dropping the open book onto my lap and gazing out the bus window during my snowy commute, contemplating the last brief story.

Davis’s observations and character struggles are deceptively simple. Flash fiction is quick and easy to read and comprehend, but, when done well, the story sneaks up on the reader. Whether it reminds you of a personal experience or makes you look around and imagine the lives of strangers, these few well-organized words can make an impact. The best part of reading flash fiction is that you can easily read the piece again, two or three times in a row, to soak up the depth of emotion that flows in such a shallow, short story, as in “The Dog Hair”:

The dog is gone. We miss him. When the doorbell rings, no one barks. When we come home late, there is no one waiting for us. We still find his white hairs here and there around the house and on our clothes. We pick them up. We should throw them away. But they are all we have left of him. We don’t throw them away. We have a wild hope—if only we could collect enough of them, we will be able to put the dog back together again.

Of course, not all of the stories in Can’t and Won’t qualify as “flash” fiction. Some of them are four, even five pages long. I am overwhelmed by the amount of information Davis crams into a single page, inspiring the reader to wonder more about the life of the narrator. However, it is just as important to consider what isn’t written. What she omits is just as important as what she leaves on the page, especially when it comes down to telling an entire story in one page.

For example, “On the Train” is ten sentences, four characters, and one setting. There aren’t many descriptive words about the characters, but I instantly relate to them, because I know the sudden bond that connects strangers experiencing something together.

We are united, he and I, though strangers, against the two women in front of us talking so steadily and audibly across the aisle to each other. Bad manners. We frown.

Later in the journey I look over at him (across the aisle) and he is picking his nose. As for me, I am dripping tomato from my sandwich onto my newspaper. Bad habits.

I would not report this if I were the one picking my nose. I look again and he is still at it.

As for the women, they are now sitting together side by side and quietly reading, clean and tidy, one a magazine, one a book. Blameless.

It seems unfair to describe fiction writing as “vague”, but Davis uses it to her advantage. Her characters become more relatable the less we know about them. We see just a small moment of their grand lives, and it makes us dig internally for the rest of that story. Even when it’s just a snippet, simply an observation by the character, as in “Circular Story”:

On Wednesday mornings early there is always a racket out there on the road. It wakes me up and I always wonder what it is. It is always the trash collection truck picking up the trash. The truck comes every Wednesday morning early. It always wakes me up. I always wonder what it is.

In not so many words, Davis describes the feeling of being jolted awake, and for a moment not knowing why, and then calmly remembering the pattern. I, too, do this every Wednesday when the trash collection truck comes.

Throughout the collection, some of the stories are inspired by dreams. They may be something Davis herself has dreamt, or she heard the recount from a friend. Either way, they provide a surprising jolt of imagination amongst all the day-to-day observations and mundane reality that Davis captures so well.

She also works as a translator and has translated many of Gustave Flaubert’s works from French. Sprinkled throughout are stories inspired by Flaubert’s letters. It’s difficult to say how much is translated and how much is original content by Davis, but I found myself not caring. Nestled between some simple, modern flash fiction by Davis, you’ll find a story about somebody in the 19th century, and their challenges and wishes are not far off from our own today.

That’s the magic of Davis’s writing. No matter how brief, whether real or imagined, each story is relatable and could be pulled from an entire novel on that subject. When I finished reading a story, I found myself wanting more, but I was mainly impressed that she didn’t need to provide more to the story to keep my interest. I can just wonder, and sometimes that’s exactly what I want to do after reading.

Which short stories make you wonder, eager for more? Any writers inspire you to keep it concise?