AWAY FROM HOME
It has been so long since she last used a metaphor!
This has become a homage to Lydia Davis day! And why not – she has a dead pan delivery and sharp eye worthy of Beckett. And how tenacious too!
This tale embraces Milan Kundera’s astute premise that relationships fail due to our inability to understand another’s metaphors. If I don’t ‘get’ your range of reference and you don’t get mine, then there is little room for growth or care?
Davis captures the very real sense that ‘home’ is where we are appreciated linguistically. You don’t have to look too far in books to find how true this is. Linton’s marriage to feisty Cathy in Wuthering Heights founders upon his register of complacency and restrictive ‘decency’. Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day explores the tragedy of cowardice, expressed through the stilted vocabulary of a man who does not dare to interpret the words of his companions metaphorically ‘otherwise’ and so consigns himself to terminal loneliness; a death-in-life.