âTo Revive a Person Is No Slight Thingâ by Diane Williams, recommended by Deb Olin Unferth
AN INTRODUCTION BY DEB OLIN UNFERTH
âMany times I feel the prickle of a nearby, unseen force I ought to pay attention to.â
When I read this sentence in Diane Williamsâs new book Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, I recalled yet again how much I love Diane Williams. I loved her work from the first story I read back in 1998. I wasnât cautiously interested, coming to it slowly and falling in love bit by bit; I loved it ferociously on first contact. I memorized full stories of hers (there is one I can still recite most of today). I wrote her my first real fan letter. I treasured every life detail that I learned about her. She was so important to my development as a writer that her work and her person have been fully integrated into my soul and are a part of me, part of the permanent filter I see through. The Williams lens.
I think I loved the work so passionately because as I read I could hear a murmur that I recognized faintly, one that Iâd heard before but never clearly. A murmur that said: Donât listen to them. Listen to me. Life and art are peculiar. Life and art respect and embrace the error, the asymmetrical. It is lonely to be an error, but it is yours. It is mine!
Still today I read her work and hear this message. They give me shivers of recognition. âTo Revive a Person Is No Slight Thingâ is no exception. This small quiet story is of a woman putting together an average dinner and eating with her husband. But Williams is expert at turning the calm and ordinary into the classical: the private surprise that one has found oneself in a fresh life, sitting with a ânew spouseâ (a phrase that implies both newness and familiarity). I read this and I feel the drums thrumming, the effort of revival, of coming back to life, after God-knows-what. Not in a dramatic wayânot snakes and tongues, roll away the rockâbut in the simplest, smallest, most beautiful manner: âHow unlikely it was that our home was alight and that the dinner meal was served.â
Deb Olin Unferth
Author of Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War
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To Revive a Person Is No Slight Thing
Recommended by Deb Olin Unferth
People often wait a long time and then, like me, suddenly, theyâre back in the news with a changed appearance.
Now I have fuzzy gray hair. I am pointing at it. Itâs like baby hair I am told.
Two people once said I had pretty feet.
I ripped off some leaves and clipped stem ends, with my new spouse, from a spray of fluorescent daisies heâd bought for me, and I asserted something unpleasant just then.
Yes, the flowers were cheerful with aggressive petals, but in a few days Iâd hate them when they were spent.
The wrapping paper and a weedy mess had to be discarded, but first off thrust together. My job.
Who knows why the dog thought to follow me up the stairs.
Tufts of the dogâs fur, all around his head, serve to distinguish him. Itâs as if he wears a military cap. He is dour sometimes and I have been deeply moved by what I take to be the dogâs deep concerns.
Often I pick him upâstop him mid-swagger. He didnât like it today and he pitched himself out of my arms.
Drawers were open in the bedroom.
Many times I feel the prickle of a nearby, unseen force I ought to pay attention to.
I turned and saw my husband standing naked, with his clothes folded in his hands.
Unbudgeableâbut finally springing into massive brightnessâis how I prefer to think of him.
Actually, he said in these exact words: âI donât like you very much and I donât think youâre fascinating.â He put his clothes on, stepped out of the room.
I walked out, too, out onto the rim of our neighborhoodâinto the park where I saw a lifeless rabbitâears askew. As if prompted, it became a small waste bag with its tied-up loose ends in the air.
A girl made a spectacle of herself, also, by stabbing at her front teeth with the tines of a plastic fork. Perhaps she was prodding dental wires and brackets, while an emaciated man at her side fed rice into his mouth from a white-foam square container, at top speed, crouchedâswallowing at infrequent intervals.
In came my husband to say, âDiane?â when I went home.
âI am trying,â I said, âto think of you in a new way. Iâm not sure whatâhow that is.â
A fire had been lighted, drinks had been set out. Raw fish had been dipped into egg and bread crumbs and then sautéed. A small can of shoe polish was still out on the kitchen counter. We both like to keep our shoes shiny.
How unlikely it was that our home was alight and that the dinner meal was served. I served itâour desideratum. The bread was dehydrated.
I planned my futureâthat is, what to eat firstâbut not yet next and lastâtap, tapping.
My fork struck again lightly at several mounds of yellow vegetables.
The dog was upright, slowly turning in place, and then he settled down into the shape of a wreathâsomething, of course, heâd thought of himself, but the decision was never extraordinary.
And there is never any telling how long it will take my husband, if he will not hurry, to complete his dinner fare or to smooth out left-behind layers of it on the plate.
âAre you all right?â he asked meââFinished?â
He loves spicy food, not this. My legs were stiff and my knees ached.
I gave him a nod, made no apologies. Where were his?
I must say that our behavior is continually under review and any one error alters our prestige, but thereâll be none of that lifting up mine eyes unto the hills.
Diane Williams is the author of eight books, including a collection of her selected stories. She is also the founder and editor of the literary annual NOON, the archive of which, as well as Williamsâs personal literary archive, was acquired in 2014 by the Lilly Library at Indiana University. She lives in New York City.
Deb Olin Unferth is the author of three books. Her fourth is forthcoming from Graywolf Press.
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âTo Revive a Person Is No Slight Thingâ by Diane Williams is excerpted from Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine by permission of Mcsweeneyâs. Copyright © 2016 Diane Williams.
