When Lydia Davis wrote this flash story, she may have been reminded of a quote attributed to Albert Einstein: Never memorize what you can look up. Some people have a knack for remembering almost every detail of past events; others have a talent for putting names to faces or remembering facts and figures. However, most of us forget more than we remember. A word that often comes up in describing Davis’s writing is “playful”. Here she takes a playful look at memory (or rather lack of it!), and then moves on to memories and their relationship to original thought. More…
Category Archives: Quick Reads
The Harvest
This is one of a series of stories by Tomás Rivera about Mexican-American seasonal farm workers. The harvest is over and, as a group is looking forward to returning to their home base in Texas, they begin to wonder about the unusual behaviour of one of their older members. The single man with no family walks alone into the fields each afternoon, and refuses to allow anyone to follow. Rumors circulate among younger workers that he either is hiding his wages somewhere, or has found buried treasure. Themes include materialism, ritual, spiritual connection to nature and the land. More…
The Slump
In this story by John Updike, a professional baseball player tries to analyze why he is no longer hitting the ball as well as he used to. He was recruited for his batting, and is worried about losing his position on the team. He identifies that the problem is psychological (in the batting cage I own the place) and concludes that he has lost his passion for the game because it has no meaning for him anymore. Themes include self-knowledge, pressure to succeed (dread), liberation, the fleeting nature of fame, frustration, futility, shame, existentialism. More…