This Is About the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time, and Fate: Stories

by Diane Williams

extremely rare,very good condition

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Diane Williams is an American author, primarily of short stories. She lives in New York City and is the founder and editor of the literary annual NOON (est. 2000). She has published 8 books and taught at Bard College, Syracuse University and The Center for Fiction in New York City.

Her books have been reviewed in many publications, including the New York Times Book Review ("An operation worthy of a master spy, a double agent in the house of fiction") and The Los Angeles Times ("One of America's most exciting violators of habit is [Diane] Williams…the extremity that Williams depicts and the extremity of the depiction evoke something akin to the pity and fear that the great writers of antiquity considered central to literature. Her stories, by removing you from ordinary literary experience, place you more deeply in ordinary life. 'Isn't ordinary life strange?' they ask, and in so asking, they revivify and console”).

Jonathan Franzen describes her as "one of the true living heroes of the American avant-garde. Her fiction makes very familiar things very, very weird." Ben Marcus suggested that her "outrageous and ferociously strange stories test the limits of behavior, of manners, of language, and mark Diane Williams as a startlingly original writer worthy of our closest attention."

Reviews

[M. Sarki · Rating 5 out of 5]

https://msarki.tumblr.com/post/174879...

A marvelous and brilliant work by the gifted Diane Williams. Wikipedia informs us that most of these stories were edited by her teacher and friend Gordon Lish, and I suspected as much while reading as I myself was once a student of Lish. But her friendly and professional relationship with Mr. Lish ended in 1996. Nonetheless she went on to enjoy a stellar writing and editing career of her own, and not surprisingly. The Gordon Lish I have known since 1995 resembles this man in one of her stories.

…I have a great deal of money which I have earned. I have physical beauty for a man. I have intelligence. I have work to do which I love to do, but women are what I prefer to anything, to lie down with them, the turning to touch the woman and knowing I will be received for sex as soon as I wish to be welcome.
I have been at it like this, this way for years. It does not matter when I will die. I have had everything I have ever wanted.

It is difficult to explain the writing of Williams. One must have their own personal experience with it. Williams may not be for everyone, but rarely does she not speak a language I understand. Life is full of ambiguities and anomalies. Perversions and obsessions abound. I am smitten by her paragraphs and intuitively know she is making history with her words.

I was saying all of the appropriate things to everyone to get happiness from the happiness, to have a good time at the good time and I was getting it done.

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

The intent was to read the collected stories of Diane Williams, but I had to stop at the first section because the motif of marital cruelty, and an overwhelmingly close focus on gender paradigms begin to get repetitive. As does the sort of Hemingway, infantile run-on sentences that, while using simple language, manage to be confusing the way Williams inverts and twists them. But said confusion isn't always worth the anti-story/koan/riddle we're given.

Every once in a while, this formula works. There are definitely arresting moments, and of course those moments will be different for different people. This is not just because art is subjective, but more specifically because the flash-fiction sort of anti-story leaves so, so much open to interpretation that it really just becomes your brain signaling on aspects of certain stories that are familiar or resonant with the reader. It's certainly a means of saying "art is subjective," but I think there's something more specific going on here. These little nuggets are abstruse and uninviting enough to leave you to your own cognitive schema bringing you some emotion and recognition.

My other concern is that, despite these successes, the actual palette of affect that the reader will actually experience is very limited. It's cerebral far more than aesthetic or visceral, and it's like receiving small jabs to the brain. Over time your head feels a bit punch-drunk and gets a bit, well, tired of it. It's a showcase, in some ways, of what an author can do when they're thinking outside the box, but this collection in particular does not showcase the ability for a short story to affect the reader besides a somewhat limited palette of "being arrested by the story's sudden punchline," or "being fleetingly compelled by the elusive meaning of this," or "yes, we all know that the dynamic both specifically and writ large between men and women is heinously cruel to women."

Past a certain point, I wanted to stop focusing on Williams' decisions regarding form, and actually focus on the heart in each story. But it's not, I think, always there. It's only because of the schema my brain has in place that stories jumped out at me as they did. I knew going into the book that this was a collection that is unique due to Williams' process and what she considers a story. But I felt like that's all I could read the book for: to study what happens in this flash fiction paradigm, to ponder at why she chose what she chose. But after a while, this gets tiresome. I wanted more than the results of an experiment; what do those results mean? How am I to feel them?

[Jack Rousseau · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am not going to look it up in a book or do research. There are those of you who probably know why the small switching tail of a small animal makes me remember how I want to copy lewd people.
If the answer to the question is: Animals set an example for people, then I accept the answer. Do I have a choice?
I gave my husband no choice.
The last time I shoved something down my husband's throat was when I cheated on him. Now I say to him, "I didn't want to shove anything down your throat."
"It's because I love you," was the puny thing to say. It was puny compared to the size of the power which had made me say it to him.
The power has made me see things too. The power had turned him into the shape of a man wearing his clothes so he could leave me in the dark, standing beside his side of it, our bed. I knew I was seeing things.
He said, "I hear you."
I may or may not cheat on him again. But the last time, I was standing up when I knew I was going to do it. I see myself on the street, deciding. I am holding onto something. Now I cannot see what it is. This is no close-up view. I am a stick figure.
I am the side of a pin.

- Science and Sin or Love and Understanding

[Jason Fickett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this after having started with her later work, it feels like she's still bound somewhat to the form of a story. They're still alien, still bizarre diction and shifts, but not as free as her later work. They're also more concerned with blatantly disturbing subjects - that seems like more of the energy - which doesn't appeal to me as much.

[Holly · Rating 2 out of 5]

these stories all read the same...the same voice, structure, odd sentence forms, and abrupt endings. if some of them were a little longer or more distinct i probably would have enjoyed this more.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

After I read her latest book (Vicky Swanky), I decided to go and see where she was at when she first started publishing. I'm even more impressed now - it's like she was born prepared, with a fully-formed vision for what prose should be and what it can do. Some might think it's too poetic, or it's poetry in the form of prose. But they are wrong, and don't understand just why her writing so exactly fits the world of prose. It's about understatement in the guise of explanation.

At first glance, because these stories are a little bit, just a little bit longer than what's in the Vicky collection, I thought the blanks were also a little more filled in. But on second read, no. I was wrong.

What's interesting is how absolutely perfect her endings are compared to her beginnings. It just goes to show that when you are creating entire worlds, it takes some buildup. Some of these stories in fact read kind of like someone running off a cliff: she writes and figures out a thing she wants to say or plant in our head, and then she backs up and lays the groundwork for it and makes us run to the cliff and jump off and then hear the jewel echo.

here are excerpts:
a lapse to reckon with

This is unrequited love, which is always going around so you can catch it, and get sick with it, and stay home with it, or go out and go about your business getting anyone you have anything to do with sick

ribbed and rosy, i saw seashells were the color mouths should be

I have to force myself to love the ones i am supposed to love, and then i have to force myself on the ones i am not supposed to love.

I thought I was not done with something. Something was not undone yet––something like that

I drank my iced drink while it was changing color from a deep gold color that had satisfied me deeply to a gold color that certainly did not.

I took this to mean he has not loved me for a very long time. Everything means something, or it does not. I have expressed an opinion. It's all so evil.

Who does the follow-up?

a fast good guess about what was wrong with people

Cauliflower was what my aunt left on her plate. It looked like some bleached-out tree.

even if Chrissy is only just a nurse, even if she cannot explain very much about the brain, because she explained to me she has been out of school for too long––I can tell she is serious, that she is serious about me too. If she were a man I would call what we have shared romantic love––we have shared so much, so often here––talking about my father with feeling. If she were a man––even if she couldn't remember half of what she had learned about the brain––even if she had forgotten it all––no––if she had forgotten it all, totally, I don't think I'd want to spend the time of day in her presence.

We hardly speak in theaters

I decided her boyfriend was no one I would want touching from
just think about how much better that is than the typical "wouldn't want to be touched by"

squashed up waxy rim

When the ringing of the telephone woke us in the middle of the night, we both knew what it could mean––everybody does–– or it could have just been somebody borderline, wanting to hear the sound of anyone in a fright. That's what it was that time.

she intended for her face to be pretty, and it was!

Something about cute and safe means the same thing to me. But I didn;t stop there. I got myself degraded.


She was breathing the same air, not as before, deprived.

It was unbelievable, unbelievable that a daughter such as me, whose father had been so loving to her all of her life, who wanted to tell me what I needed to know anytime that I needed to know, that I should deliberately ask my father a question after the doctors had rendered him positively without the power of speech, that i should ask him a question, and then act as if it were a matter of life and death that my question had no answer.

And with all this beauty going on, my knife, I kept slicing competently through my meal.

I was saying all of the appropriate things to everyone to get happiness from the happiness, to have a good time and I was getting it done.

She went and got another bad egg and gave it to the dog to eat out of the bowl, so thta the bowl was scoured and banged about.

uncomfortable, perhaps upset, not ruined

Then she said "You do with your eyes what they can do with their hands."

Something momentous was being revealed to me which goes up and down over and over again. It was being revealed. I had to put my head down between my legs. There is nothing I can think of that is fair. There is nothing I can think of that is fair there enough. There is nothing I can think of that is there enough.

What the fuck was wrong with him? He left the party early, without me; he said to get a little––I don't know how he was spelling it––I'll spell it peace.

Here's my favorite in it's entirety:

DROPPING THE MASTERS
There was a clatting sound, for all this kissing, for all this copulation. My boys could get those Masters of the Universe up and onto the dresser top in one swoop up––a kiss to the bride! a kiss to the bride!––it was the only way they got them married, the way my youngest boy had decided they should get them married. One swoop down and then they could rock a pair and make those Masters copulate just as long as they wanted them to. Until I let me boys see me so that I saw the faces of I'm hot and I'm caught, and I saw the faces of this has got to stop––that's the way I saw them when they were stopping, when a hand was up with a Master, when a boy the height of our dog begging was up on his knees like he was handing out a bone.
I was going nowhere after I stopped them, just down the hall toward the bathroom, just stuck almost at the end of the top of our house so that of course I didn;t want to stay there where I had no business being or intention, where I felt stupid and strange almost in the bathroom. Now their door was shut so that I could hear the sound of them, but I could get no meaning, I could hear rough scrubbing and more clatting and not know anything about it at all. But I was back in front of the shut door of their room and there was nowhere else I wanted to be more than watching again or just to know what they knew––to know everything about what they knew, and so that is where I stood.
So then I opened their door.
But this time the stopping was not like the stopping before, it was an altogether different kind of stopping. This was how dare you with the Masters being deeply ground down I thought maybe so they would break because these Masters break.
What I got so see then was the sluggishness of let's do another thing––the turning away and then the boys hopping the Masters and then dropping them.
These Masters weren't broken, they were only done––and my boys were walking out on me, finished.

[Suhrob · Rating 4 out of 5]

While this might surprise you, with all the similarities and what-not, riding Williams is not quite like reading a bike.

You might forget...

About a year ago I read 2.7 collections and kept increasingly enjoying them, going from bamboozled to enthralled, despite every collection being the same and every story being the same as a fractal is the same, but different, but same.

Then I fell off the bike and forgot the remaining 0.3 collection. When I picked it up now, nothing worked anymore... I'm pretty sure I just need more practice. It used to be such a joy.

[Bill · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very short somethings — not really stories, not poems, definitely not essays. Sadly, also not very interesting. Disjointed, vaguely sexual (but never sensual), rarely memorable. Two pieces stand out, though — “The Future of the Illusion” and “Mystery of the Universe,” both of which I read then read again. Ah well, they can’t all be winners to everyone.

[Brice Fuqua · Rating 2 out of 5]

More ideas for stories than actual stories. Most are in the first person. Most deal with unhappy marriages. Several conclude with sudden, unexplained bursts of violence. None are more than a few paragraphs long. After reading a few, you'll get the formula.

[Jesse · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unfortunately, Williams’ first collection strengthened my belief that flash fiction is a waste of everyone’s time. These stories are a bunch of nothing. I’ll likely read more of her work before I dismiss her completely, but this collection did nothing for me at all.

[Joseph]

over my head.

[Tao · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The thought expelled itself with such force from me that it startled me."

[Steven · Rating 2 out of 5]

This collection of 46 flash-fiction length pieces was published in 1990 and thus has the feel of (the Lish-edited) The Quarterly because that's where a lot of these were first published. So a lot of play in the sentences, a lot of clause stacking, a lot of word wanking. The endings especially do their own thing, as if the say to heck with what came before, this is where we are. Fair amount of metafiction and anti-stories in this collection, so think you'll need to have an interest in that or be on the Lish writing tree to enjoy these. I prefer the edginess of contemporary flash fiction to these adventures in form.