Taking “What She Knew” Seriously

Joonas Säntti"People did not know what she knew, that she was not really a woman but a man, often a fat man, but more often, probably, an old man.The fact that she was an old man made it hard for her to be a young woman.It was hard for her to talk to a young man, for instance, though the young man was clearly interested in her.She had to ask herself, Why is this young man flirting with this old man?"This is "What she knew" by Lydia Davis (1986), a story that consists of 83 words and four sentences.Such extreme minimalism is not rare for Davis, who is known as one of the greats of what is sometimes called flash fiction, sometimes microfiction, and even the short-short story form. 1 Texts belonging to this genre often become mixed with other, less narrative genres, because their tone (and occasionally their rhythm) appear close to texts published as prose poetry.Unsurprisingly, this text by Davis was first published in Paris Review as a "poem", as were two other texts later published in the author's first short story collection 2 .1 Word limits for a text to merit the status of "micro" or "short short" differ greatly, as do definitions based on the likely time of reading them.For a summary of definitions, see Nelles 2012, 89.