This story from Lydia Davis is sad enough to make you want to cry. It paints a bleak picture of how our lives are dominated by the little things that go wrong, and how these can lead to depression and tears. Some respite may come at the end of the day, but only if things are going well at home. Most of the story is told in the past tense, about a time when I was young. Does this imply that as we get older we become so accustomed to these daily frustrations that they don’t bother us as much? More…

This flash story by Lydia Davis starts with the narrator foreshadowing a visitor to his/her home who will require around the clock care and attention. The visit reminds the narrator of two similar experiences, one by a family member and the other by a friend. In both cases, healthy old men with whom they were living deteriorated physically to the point that their bodily functions collapsed and they became dependent on others for their day-to-day care and well-being. The story takes an unexpected twist in the heart-warming final paragraph, where the narrator reminds us of the circle of life. More…

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…