I was so excited to see
’s comment on my May Reading Provocation, letting me know she’d be picking up one of the suggestions, Our Strangers by Lydia Davis. She’s written engagingly about short works in her newsletter, and we got to chatting about our shared love of “tinies” and literary synchronicities. I’m so glad she said yes to letting me record a Book Talk discussion. I hope these highlights from our conversation will help you decide if you’d like to add this one to your list, too.In getting to know each other better, Petya and I found a lot in common in our reasons for writing newsletters about books, each wanting to create consistency and connection around reading and writing and thinking, independent of the kind we do to meet the day-to-day external demands of career and family. We laughed hard as we discussed how Our Strangers piles up close observations of those same everyday details we sometimes want to set aside, creating this collection of 144 ultrashort stories to enjoy.
The Booktender: Petya, I am so excited to talk to you. You wrote lovingly about short works on
. What drew you to this particular book?Petya: I’ve read Can’t and Won’t and I know she’s a translator, but beyond that I don’t know much about Lydia Davis’s biography. But when Paul Auster died recently, I realized they had been married in the 1970s. I thought ‘I don’t know if this is appropriate, but I’m going to honor this man by reading a book by his first wife.’
BT: That’s funny— it sounds like a thought that would be included in one of her stories.
Petya: I do find her so funny and the subject matter of this book is very much on my mind. Aging, marriage, “Stages of Womanhood” which is the title of one of the stories, the life of the mind, travel on trains— these are the topics I always seem to be drawn to, too. I love her neighbor stories.
BT: Yes, me too. The title story, “Our Strangers” is all about conflict and misunderstandings between neighbors, how people navigate them and get over them. Or not. I thought of my neighbor. She asked me to keep a little angel statue she had placed behind a bush, as a memorial to the lady who originally owned this house. They were very close and she’d left this property to them. It’s not my style and it felt like an intrusive request, but put on the spot on Day One— I agreed. Now it will be there forever.
Once, I locked myself out during the pandemic. I didn’t even have shoes on or a phone, so I went to her house to ask to call a locksmith. She wasn’t there, but her son said he’d call her to ask where she kept our key. I was shocked they had retained a key to our house after the sale. In my heart, I knew it wouldn’t work—my husband is meticulous about security and changing locks. But also I was kind of hoping it would, you know?
Do you have any neighbor stories?
Petya: I’m reminded of one. My husband and I were moving into a new apartment and we’d bought this large plant. It was heavy so we unloaded in front of the building, thinking we wouldn’t have to carry it, and then we went to park the car. By the time we got back, it was gone. We were devestated. We were newly married, so it was a major purchase. So we posted this long letter in the mail room, and we got the plant back. Turns out one of the 20-somethings in the building took it in as a joke.
BT: And you didn’t have to carry it!
Petya: It reminds me of that story in the book “Pardon my Intrusion.” What did you think that one was about?
BT: Yes, I know which one you mean! It’s one of the longer stories in the book, pages of what seemed like posts from an internal classified message board for a college academic department.
Petya: Yes, I was imagining it as the Fac-Staff channel. All the posts of the things they need or want to get rid of. I loved that even though I can’t quite decide what’s so funny about it.
BT: The theme of complaints and letters, a window into how people write and the minutiae they think is important, runs through the stories.
Petya: Yes, I’m thinking of another one: “Winter Letter.” I told my husband I’m going to make photocopies of it and assign it to him and each of his siblings. It’s a letter from an elderly couple on a vacation to Austin, Texas. Nothing much happens. This could be my mother-in-law.
BT: Yes, that one stood out to me, too. My parents don’t travel much but the rest— same. There’s the story about the woman reading in German on the train, “After Reading Peter Bichsel.” This can’t be the same narrator of “Winter Letter,” who fell asleep reading Michael Crichton on a plane. But on some level it feels like it could be. No matter the narrator, the mundanity of the details persists.
Petya: I’m so glad you mentioned that one, because I marked it too. The way she describes Peter Bischel as a writer describes the same quality of these stories. She writes, “He will also sometimes begin a story, or remark in the middle of the story, ‘Some stories are hardly worth telling,’ or ‘There is almost nothing to say about X.’” It’s such a good description of what Lydia Davis does.
BT: You’re right. And the rest of that paragraph, too: “He goes on to tell a lovely, quiet, modest story, a story that glows with human kindness, or love, or some combination of compassion, understanding and honesty.” Here you might have found and answer to the question of what exactly makes the stories funny. That combination of honesty, not trying to make more of the details than what they really are, finding the humor without making the characters themselves ridiculous. You can empathize with them.
Petya: Yes, as in “Marriage Moment of Annoyance—Coconut.” It’s one sentence. Lydia, are you in my house?
BT: That’s hilarious. Or the insurance document edition. I felt like she must have been listening in on me. It’s so funny.
BT: But then a few pages later, she’ll devestate you. On one page, the narrator will describe a tiny detail from life, a long shadow from a grain of salt. On the next, we’re reminded of a dead parent. Their specific eyelid, or a freckled arm—it no longer exists.
Petya: I feel like her books are good to give as gifts because you can just have it lying around the house and open to a random page to have a moment that’s funny or transcendent. It’s so good-natured and confident.
BT: I love that description. And in being so specifically observant, she has created something so strange, so unique, yet so relatable.
Petya: I think she just decided to take this approach to writing about what she likes as far as she possible could. I saw an interview with her in which she gave the advice to writers never to give in to pressure about writing to some external standard of form or length from agents and publishers. You wrote about Alice Munro recently, and Lydia Davis reminds me of that same level of confidence in what she’s doing as a short story writer. Fiction is not all about the novel.
Check out A reading life with Petya Grady
Petya was so great to talk to— she’s so open and real about what it means to follow your own inner voice and that extends to her writing on
—check it out!I’d love to know: What’s your favorite Lydia Davis story? What makes a good gift book? Any short works you’ve read and loved lately?
If you have been enjoying this newsletter, please consider whether it might be a good time for you to upgrade to a paid subscription or buy me a coffee. All proceeds in 2024 go to supporting librarians and organizations mounting legal challenges to book bans. If you purchase Our Strangers or any other book using The Booktender’s affiliate link, I may receive a small commission I’ll put toward the cause as well.
Have you tried Bookshop.org yet?
Petya and I didn’t get around to talking about it, but one really unique thing about Our Strangers: Lydia Davis didn’t want it sold on Amazon, but none of the existing publishers could agree to that. Enter Bookshop.org. The site was created by its founder, former magazine editor Andy Hunter, to be the “third-best option” for purchasing books (after walking into an indie bookstore or ordering directly from your locally-owned store’s website). They found a way to publish Our Strangers at Davis’s request. You can find it on Bookshop.org (which distributes a portion of every sale to its indie bookseller members), or in indie stories and libraries.
As far as I can tell, no other authors have contracts on their books with Bookshop Editions. It’s a significant sacrifice to imagine giving up those sales—especially if you’re not yet a MacArthur genius grant winner like Lydia Davis.
I like buying from Bookshop.org because the catalog and interface are much more user-friendly than my favorite local store’s online ordering system, but they still receive a portion of the sale. Caveat: there’s no option to pick up in store, and no free next-day shipping. Ordering from Bookshop.org requires more patience— and a willingness to absorb more of the real cost of convenience in resistance to monopoly.
Curious? If you haven’t tried it yet, this weekend might be a good time to give it a go.
In Case You Missed It
My tribute to another of the short story greats:
A list of other short works I’ve been reading this month:
And Petya’s joyful take on reading tiny books:
What a great conversation! I feel like I got the perfect intro both to a newsletter and an author, both of which I hadn't heard of previously. Thank you! Those marriage moments--perfect drop of funny.
I love Lydia Davis. And thanks for introducing me to a reading life substack!