I'm most probably attracted to the short story form because it's all I can really manage to write myself. But although I can be impressed by what can be done with so little, as a reader I'm more at home with longer fiction, something that takes longer, and promises more of an immersive experience - something that builds. For all of the skill of a short story like The Swedish Match, I find myself wanting more. And then coming to Lydia Davis - let's face it, she's held in high esteem by the literati - I find something similar. The extremely short pieces, the microfictions, just frustrate me. I'm all in favour of experimentation but how might I read Ph.D, which I quote in its entirety because I can? 'All these years I thought I had a Ph.D. But I do not have a Ph.D.' Should I be amused, should I read it for a second time, or should I read it as a conversation with some of the other pieces in the same collection - A Letter to the Foundation, for example, which is firmly located in academic life - or Her Geography: Illinois, which is just as brief and is a similar sort of reflection on getting it wrong? Or maybe I'm not clever enough, because I've missed the point which could be about my own apparent need for a context and my sense of dissatisfaction with being at sea - of trying to find a context to make meaning out of, in the first place. Then perhaps I'm the one with a Ph.D who shouldn't have one. Dazzling and innovative are a couple of the glittering words that grace the dust jacket. I don't find that description works for Ph.D or Her Geography for that matter. But, I'm talking about myself as a reader, here - someone who thinks that such descriptions should be reserved for the observational acuity and lucid writing of The Cows and the craft and emotional intensity of The Seals, both of which are longer offerings in the collection 'Can't and Won't'.
