Diane Williams’ newest collection I Liked Rex is forthcoming this September from NYRB. I think folks either like what Williams is doing or don’t (or don’t know about her and what she’s doing). I like what she’s doing very much. Here’s NYRB’s jacket copy; after that, a selection from the collection, “I Did Trip Over a Very Small Boy” —
Diane Williams is one of the great masters of the American short story: her tiny, coruscating tales are among the most tender, funny, peculiar, and searching works in all of contemporary literature. I Liked Rex explores sex, love, marriage, and all that comes after; it is a book about living, but more importantly, about how to be alive. Williams’s genius lies as much in what is left unspoken as in what is laid out on the page; behind images of startling beauty and strangeness, entire chamber dramas of the heart unfold, and the pleasure of these sphinxlike tales comes from their unremitting mystery, which is the same mystery fundamental to life and to love. A collection of rare originality and daring, I Liked Rex is a complete and utter delight.
“I Did Trip Over a Very Small Boy”
by
Diane Williams
I did trip over a small boy who fell down and cried and I feared very much that I had kicked him.
He must have been wondering about the mon-ster—me—even after his rescue.
But whose glass was I holding? And which bitter drink had I just tasted when Mother said, “Damn it all!”—and laughed? My mother rarely laughs in my presence.
“I want my wife!” I shouted. I surprised myself. “We’re leaving!”
She was back behind the Wassermans and the Cordells, and that little boy I’d knocked down was with them too, speaking softly. His mother had to bend quite low to listen—his legs, I fig-ured, were no more than a foot long.
First, we had to dodge so many people. I was, however, bound by the low ceiling in Mother’s house, and I feel like a giant in her house.
I heard my wife, Jacquenette, say to Dale Cordell, “All right, then,” and this was jarring because she often says that just before bed, where I can grab her, for starters, and then clamp down. But I don’t really mean clamp down—I mean something much nicer.
In bed, my feet found hers and she said my hand was too heavy and that it hurt her hand to hold mine, so she petted my arm, and I thought that that might serve me.
But I want to try again soon to get a better result, when I’ll go rung by rung to different stages.
Too early, the next evening, Jacquenette looked to be asleep in bed.
“Did I disturb you?” I said, and I advanced with care.
The buffeting noise—perhaps it was a flight of birds I heard through the open window—dis-tracted me.
And yet I did set everything into motion by doing some light tapping on her body that did not cost me anything—my brushless style.
My thoughts were: What do you feel if I do this? If I do this? If I do this?
Still, what about my wife’s face? Its shining surface would repay me for my efforts.
You know, I’d much rather note scenes of ev-eryday life around the house—speak to neighbors, dust.
Odd thing—our oatmeal took twice as long as usual to cook this morning.
I don’t think it liked the pot.
Biblioklept 