I should start checking The Stranger more often--Seattle's Only Newspaper always has great literary coverage. Case in point: "Cows, Collards, and Heroin," posted on October twenty-seventh, in which Lydia Davis discusses short stories, "the existential hum," and translating Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary.

The most immediately unusual thing about your stories is their brevity. Why so short? When did you first realize you could write--were allowed to write--such short, short stories?

Although I had read Kafka's Parables and Paradoxes in college, I never thought of trying such short forms, as though this "classic" were enclosed in an untouchable box. The only form I seriously considered was the traditional short story. Then, at a time when I was stuck in my writing, a few years later, I happened to read the stories--what he calls poems--of Russell Edson. The volume of his that I read contains short, mostly domestic tales in which not all the protagonists are human. It also helped me that not all the pieces were successful--I could see how to attempt something and not mind failing. I set myself the exercise of writing two paragraph-long stories each day. Although I've written many longer things since then, including a novel, I still find the short form wonderfully flexible and effective.

I've got to get my hands on her collection.