Language Barriers
I met Beckett in the mid ’60s. I’d started to read him in the mid ’50s and I wanted to meet the man. I didn’t often want to meet… More
A Suffering Conscience
A good writer helps to create other writers, and I can recall the first time, in the ’30s, when I read John Steinbeck’s early books, and his stories. To… More
Lonesome Animals
And Mr. Steinbeck wanted to do this interview, but before we got started on it, he died. He did speak of a diary that he kept when he was… More
The Architecture of Thought: Lydia Davis on Proust
Proust felt that a long sentence contained a whole, complex thought. The shape of the sentence was the shape of the thought, and every word was necessary to the… More
The Subtleties of Violence
As in the movies, there are in literature certain kinds of violence that themselves seem to do harm, that seem be acts of violence committed upon the reader as… More
Pure Magic
I want to tell you the three most important theatrical events of my life. There have been many—my first Sophocles, my first Shakespeare, my first Molière, my first Uncle… More
Family Secrets
One of the conditions of being a writer is that all those authors you have loved and learned from, and by necessity have taught yourself to forget, the better… More
Recognitions
I had read no Proust at the time. I was much struck by the freedom from constraint and expectation I suddenly enjoyed. Thereafter, I could complicate my sentences and… More
On Wise Blood
As Flannery’s friend, as well as her editor and publisher from the start, I marveled at her excellence as a writer and regretted her early death. I first met… More
Father of Choice
Life clung to Samuel Beckett, irritatingly, for eighty-three and three-quarter years. When he told me he’d lost his teeth, I mumbled an inanity: “It could be worse.” Without pause, he… More