Lydia Davis. The Professor. Analysis. Summary. If you came looking for anything related to these words, then you came to the right place. I have been really digging Lydia Davis recently. Been reading her story collections and some scholarly articles on her work. I started with Break it Down and I'm currently reading Almost no Memory, which contains the story I am writing about today.
Lydia Davis is more philosophically concerned than the average writer. Her stories don't really possess narrative as you would traditionally think of narrative. Instead her stories exist in the minds of her characters. There is some action but it clearly takes place in the form of memory, which is less exciting than action that takes place in reality, but I don't really mind. It's all the same to me and I actually enjoy many elements of Davis's writing style. She's a good writer and more importantly, she's a writer who does her own thing regardless of what anyone else thinks. The following is a summary and analysis of Davis's story "The Professor".
Summary
The narrator tells us that a few years ago she fantasized about marrying a cowboy. She admits that she lives on the East Coast and she is currently married to a someone who is not a cowboy. The idea of marrying a cowboy is appealing because it would stop the narrator from thinking so much. Feel free to take offense if you're a cowboy. The narrator says she got this idea from watching a movie with a friend which causes her to envision herself as a tough businesswoman who owns a motel. Around this time the narrator also met a student who was the closest thing to a cowboy that the narrator would ever find. She asks this guy out on a date and he says yes. On the date the man reveals a gun in his car and says that dangerous men are looking for him. The date goes well but the man says that he can never see the narrator again, which she understands.
The story ends with the narrator admitting that she thinks about marrying a cowboy much less often than she used to. She is so used to her husband that if she married a cowboy, it would essentially be a threesome.
Analysis
"The Professor" is classic Lydia Davis in that it presents a problem without an answer. The narrator is clearly longing for a great change. This longing takes the form of a cowboy fantasy. The fantasy merely occupies the narrator's thoughts while she does her job and lives the life that developed naturally for her.
It's interesting that the problem is never resolved. The narrator admits that she still thinks about marrying a cowboy today. This is par for the course with Davis's fiction. In a different story the narrator would end up actually meeting and marrying someone who fits her view of a cowboy and they would go off and live an idealized lifestyle. This is the traditional narratives of many stories in the romance genre. In Davis's world, she merely goes out on one date with someone who somewhat resembles a cowboy and that's that. It's a truncated and more realistic version of that much longer traditional narrative. Davis shows us that real life is often much different than what we read in fiction. This by itself is an old and cliche idea. Davis's stories may be fun to read although they seem to focus on the same ideological territory too frequently.
I am still pretty deep into the Lydia Davis rabbit hole so expect more posts on her work in the future. Thanks for reading.
Buy The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis here:
https://amzn.to/2B916W1
Lydia Davis is more philosophically concerned than the average writer. Her stories don't really possess narrative as you would traditionally think of narrative. Instead her stories exist in the minds of her characters. There is some action but it clearly takes place in the form of memory, which is less exciting than action that takes place in reality, but I don't really mind. It's all the same to me and I actually enjoy many elements of Davis's writing style. She's a good writer and more importantly, she's a writer who does her own thing regardless of what anyone else thinks. The following is a summary and analysis of Davis's story "The Professor".
Summary
The narrator tells us that a few years ago she fantasized about marrying a cowboy. She admits that she lives on the East Coast and she is currently married to a someone who is not a cowboy. The idea of marrying a cowboy is appealing because it would stop the narrator from thinking so much. Feel free to take offense if you're a cowboy. The narrator says she got this idea from watching a movie with a friend which causes her to envision herself as a tough businesswoman who owns a motel. Around this time the narrator also met a student who was the closest thing to a cowboy that the narrator would ever find. She asks this guy out on a date and he says yes. On the date the man reveals a gun in his car and says that dangerous men are looking for him. The date goes well but the man says that he can never see the narrator again, which she understands.
The story ends with the narrator admitting that she thinks about marrying a cowboy much less often than she used to. She is so used to her husband that if she married a cowboy, it would essentially be a threesome.
Analysis
"The Professor" is classic Lydia Davis in that it presents a problem without an answer. The narrator is clearly longing for a great change. This longing takes the form of a cowboy fantasy. The fantasy merely occupies the narrator's thoughts while she does her job and lives the life that developed naturally for her.
It's interesting that the problem is never resolved. The narrator admits that she still thinks about marrying a cowboy today. This is par for the course with Davis's fiction. In a different story the narrator would end up actually meeting and marrying someone who fits her view of a cowboy and they would go off and live an idealized lifestyle. This is the traditional narratives of many stories in the romance genre. In Davis's world, she merely goes out on one date with someone who somewhat resembles a cowboy and that's that. It's a truncated and more realistic version of that much longer traditional narrative. Davis shows us that real life is often much different than what we read in fiction. This by itself is an old and cliche idea. Davis's stories may be fun to read although they seem to focus on the same ideological territory too frequently.
I am still pretty deep into the Lydia Davis rabbit hole so expect more posts on her work in the future. Thanks for reading.
Buy The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis here:
https://amzn.to/2B916W1
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