Alvin The Typesetter by Lydia Davis, 1981
The magic trick:
Showing the strange way American society works to keep people from being themselves
Great story here, if a bit depressing. It becomes an excellent portrait of early Reagan Era New York.
Alvin works with the narrator at a weekly newspaper. They are both educated, though in a way that does not necessarily make them overqualified for the work they do. It puts them – like so many of us – in a strange position.
There is a nagging resentment that builds up from the feeling that we are better than our fates. Yet we also know that our fates are not some form of complicated injustice.
The world just isn’t very easy to fit into for most people.
This story does a great job of illustrating that.
And that’s quite a trick on Davis’s part.
The selection:
He usually worked without any props. In the week of Election Day, in November, he carried to the nightclub a special patriotic kerchief covered with red, white, and blue American symbols to wear over his head. Most often, though, what he took out onstage was only himself, as though his long, solemn face were a mask, or his body a marionette that he controlled with strings from above, slim, loose-jointed, floating over the floor. He had his stance, his silences, his bald head, and his clothes. He wore the same clothes onstage that he wore to work: dark formal pants and often a shirt of cheap synthetic material covered with palm trees or pine trees on a white background.
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