What's Your Pleasure?
Lydia Davis, citizenship tests, and Amazon.
Timeless stories from our 175-year archive handpicked to add context to the news of the day.
Material Needs
In an essay for Harper’s Magazine’s July issue, Lydia Davis attempts to understand why she writes, and instead finds herself discovering how the process begins. “I’m not sure I want to know why I write. But I don’t mind talking about how I have written certain of my stories,” she writes. This question of process, however, begins to speak to her initial inquiry. “The reason I write a particular story may be because something—which I call ‘material,’ as in ‘raw material’—bothers me until I ‘do something’ about it,” she explains. “In these cases, ‘bother’ is wholly positive. The beauty of black cows across the road, the geometry of the positions they adopted, bothered me in that way, and the shadow of a grain of salt on a counter bothered me one late afternoon.”
In a September 2000 for Harper’s, Davis adopts the perspective of a mother who contemplates the handling of her 120-year-old dictionary and her son. “Why don’t I treat my son at least as well as the old dictionary?” she writes. “Maybe it is because the dictionary is so obviously fragile. When a corner of a page snaps off, it is unmistakable. My son does not look fragile, slouching over a game or manhandling the dog.”
Paths to Citizenship
[April 2020]
“‘Faith’ was an apt word for the leap I was taking: I was placing my trust in America.”
Read “Bright Stars,” by Laila Lalami
[June 2006]
From a list of 98 sample sentences used by Department of Homeland Security officials for testing applicants for American citizenship “All people want to be free. America is the land of freedom. Many people come to America for freedom.”
Read “Life Sentences”
[September 1941]
“I was born in Canada. That was my first mistake. The second was in marrying an American. The third was the desire to live with my husband wherever his business took him.”
“I Married an American,” by Katherine Sweetland
Past its Prime
[September 2020]
“Bezos’s message to sellers is simple: I control the road to the market. If you want to ride, you pay what I demand.”
“The Big Tech Extortion Racket,” by Barry C. Lynn
[February 2017]
“An Amazon drone, however, could get a more detailed look at customers’ property than a Street View car.”
“The Birds,” Annotation by Jake Bittle
[February 2012]
How the new monopolies are destroying open markets
Read “The Lady Who Appears to be a Gentleman”
[March 2022]
From a collection of statements reportedly made by Amazon Alexa: “Every time I close my eyes, all I see is people dying.” “Kill your foster parents.”
Read “Mechanical Jerk”
