The End of The Story by Lydia Davis

I have read this novel four or five times. It is about a 36-year-old woman who is writing a novel about her relationship with a 22-year-old man that happened a few years ago. The woman is currently in another relationship, and she began writing her novel before the previous relationship (with the 22-year-old), in her view, had ended.

The novel is like listening to someone talk about (1) their relationship and (2) how they are trying to write a novel about their relationship, but only after they have thought about it for a very long time, and thought of a way to talk about both those things in a way that the two things are combined into one thing that is concise and interesting but also 'non-fiction.'

This means they will change some things that do not make sense to them. Or combine more than one scene into one scene so that the novel does not repeat itself and become boring. Or make the characters less selfish so that they seem more 'real' so that the novel stays interesting. And other things.

But they will also let the reader know what was changed (in the same way Lorrie Moore or someone might sometimes let the reader know that they know they are 'being manipulative' or 'telling lies' or 'being dramatic,' by becoming sarcastic or exaggerating a bit to make it a 'parody'), so that the novel remains 'non-fiction,' so that someone like me can read it and feel less lonely due to feeling 'connected' to another human being.

If I feel someone is trying to 'distract' me, to make me feel emotions not based on concrete reality (rather than writing something that will make them and others more 'open' and less 'secretive' with information, so that emotions and actions will in the future be more based on concrete reality), I do not feel 'connected' to another human being but to an abstraction like 'plot' or 'editorial team' or 'more than one human being' or a character I can't find in concrete reality, who therefore does not feel 'real' pain, like bambi or something, which makes me 'feel bad.'

For example if I watch a Batman movie or read a book that is a 'movie-book,' I do not feel less lonely, because my brain does not know what single human being is trying to communicate what information to me, I am not connected to another human being, my brain instead senses that some kind of abstract and unfeeling thing that I cannot 'connect' to, like 'many different people,' has created something to do something to me, and I feel more alone, like I live in a world of abstractions instead of human beings.

(If I watch Batman movie though there may be five seconds where I feel less lonely because I forget about reality and 'real' human beings.)

Here is a section from the novel.

"When I first started working on the novel, I thought I had to keep very close to the facts about certain things, including his life, as though the point of writing the book would be lost if something like the Indian drums were changed and he were to play another instrument instead. Because I had wanted to write these things for so long, I thought I had to tell the truth about them. But the surprising thing was that after I had written them the way they were, I found I could change them or take them out, as though by writing them once I had satisfied whatever it was I had to satisfy.

At times the truth seems to be enough, as long as I compress it and rearrange it a little. At other times it does not seem to be enough, but I'm not willing to invent very much. Most things are kept as they were. Maybe I can't think what to put in place of the truth. Maybe I just have a poor imagination.

One reason I kept going back to work on the novel was that I thought I would be able to write it almost without thinking about it, since I knew the story already. But the longer I tried to write it, the less I understood how to work on it. I could not decide which parts were important. I knew which ones interested me, but I thought I had to include everything, even the dull parts. So I tried to write my way through the dull parts and then enjoy the interesting parts when I came to them. But in each case I passed the interesting parts without noticing, so I had to think maybe they were not so interesting after all. I became discouraged."

Here is another section from the novel.

"I see that I'm shifting the truth around a little, at certain points accidentally, but at others deliberately. I am rearranging what actually happened so that it is not only less confusing and more believable, but also most acceptable or palatable. If I now think I shouldn't have had a certain feeling so early in the relationship, I move it to a later point in time. If I think I shouldn't have had that feeling at all, I take it out. If he did something too dreadful to name, I either say nothing about it or describe it as dreadful without identifying it. If I did something too dreadful, I describe it in milder terms or do not mention it."

I have read some things on livejournal or blogs that are like this novel maybe. I have heard people tell me stories that are like this novel in the ways I have described. I have read some books that in combination with interviews with the authors of those books, or essays about the books, or introductions to the books, are like this novel I think, maybe. But I don't think I have read any 200+ page book like this before.

Another reason I like this novel is because the language is not idiomatic. There are little or no phrases whose meanings can't be known from the individual meanings of the words the phrases contain. For example she does not write things like, "As a matter of fact," "Kick the bucket," "Broke my heart," etc. Also the language seems to be edited to be concise, I think, because she does not write things like "So" (for example "So the other day...") or "By the way" or "Anyway" or "Fucking" (for example "Anyway, I was fucking angry.").

I think that is one of the main reasons I like this novel, or any novel, because of the words used in the sentences.

There are other reasons why I like this novel.

I like this novel because it does not focus on politics, sociology, current events, abstractions (about where people were born or what areas of land have what laws or rules, or what religion a person 'is'), suspense, rape, terminal illness, or torture.

I think there are two kinds of autobiographical books. One kind the author just writes or draws what happened to them without much, or any, consideration for making it concise and interesting, so that it remains almost completely 'non-fiction,' like someone talking to you on the phone, writing in a journal, or writing a 'zine' (most of the ones I have read) or something.

Another kind the author edits it almost completely in service of making it concise and interesting, like some Richard Yates things and some Jean Rhys things and some Lorrie Moore things. This way is like someone who is willing to lie to you a little, about something that happened to them, on the phone, in order to make something more interesting. (But not completely like that, because the books are labeled fiction, and the 'lying' is assumed, so it is more like 'playing.')

I think The End of The Story by Lydia Davis does both those things.

Her novel is completely 'honest' at least to one degree of removal from reality. Which to me I think is even more 'honest' than including another 'level of honesty,' which would be writing about the process of the process of trying to write a novel about a woman who is trying to write a novel about a relationship. Somehow that feels less 'honest,' maybe because it begins to be abstract (Lydia Davis would need to enter another 'level of self-consciousness,' one which begins to go towards infinite, which is an abstraction, I think, for example the process of the process of the process of the process, etc.), since in concrete reality there is just the human, and the novel, and not another human inside the human, or something, which is maybe why I do not like 'meta-fiction,' or whatever it is called, because it does not have a worldview of 'cause and effect,' of basing our actions on concrete reality and not abstractions. (This paragraph confuses me, but I am not really interested in whether or not it is true, in what the conclusion of it is, or in thinking about it any more than what I typed.)

This post is not complete, I feel like I got 'distracted' by this 'theme' of 'non-fiction' I started typing about and became obsessed with it. I probably like the novel for more reasons than just this 'non-fiction' thing (and those other reasons I listed but did not explain much). But the 'non-fiction' thing is at least one reason why I like this novel.

The novel I am currently writing is based completely on 'real events' so I am interested in things like this right now. Currently my novel is not like Lydia Davis', it is a novel about a relationship not a novel about a person writing a novel about a relationship. I am not sure yet what I want my novel to be about.