On the occasion of the last Book Fair, Black Coffee brought the American author to Italy Diane Williams and published the collection of short stories In short, you are rich with the preface and translation by Chiara Barzini.
Barzini she is an Italian writer, journalist, screenwriter; she lives in the United States and her latest novel is Earthquake (Mondadori, 2017). He studied creative writing at UCSC in California and some of his stories have been published in the magazine NOONdirected by Williams herself.
NOON is one of literary magazines cutting-edge ofAmerican publishingand Diane Williams is a pioneer of the short story, very short, so much so that we talk about flash fictionbetween 300 and 1000 words maximum: stories reduced to the bone.
Student of Gordon Lish – the well-known editor who brought success to the stories of Raymond Carver – is considered by Jonathan Franzen “a true heroine ofAmerican avant-garde”. He has encouraged and given space to some of the most interesting voices on the American scene, including Ben Marcus (The fire alphabetBlack Coffee, 2018), Ottessa Moshfegh And Lydia Davis (Observation on household choresMondadori 2022).
Household chores recall theessentiality of poetics by Diane Williams: le daily scenes of married life they are an opportunity to provoke deeper reflections.
From a small accident or detail comes forth a hymn to life and its unpredictability. A emerges in the stories primitive instinct of the authorial voice to penetrate the mystery of naturelistening to the birds chirping or exploring the richness of the human dimension: just observe a child picking some nuts to make them emerge from the abyss uncertainties about identity.
“And I wonder, dear God, what will I be known for now?”, a question in poetic form that recalls the contemplative voice of Emily Dickinson.
In the story Cimicifuga, listening to the melodic singing of birds is intertwined with the theme of a love that shattersperhaps broken by jealousy, with the emblematic image of a man tearing a flower to pieces: “I intend to triumph unreservedly in love, and be successful in all other drastically risky aspects of life,” declares the narrator.
The danger it’s always around the corner, on a physical or symbolic level, as in CatalpaWhere a husband stumbles, once again distracted by fits of jealousy.
Then there are stories about fragility of the human soul: a man who indulges in a love story and doesn’t feel ready, or a wife who brings coffee to the table and wonders how she must appear to her husband, feels wrong, the atmosphere is full of contempt: even a Vespa seems better than her.
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L’envy towards others, the inability to love oneself is reflected in multiple stories as in Vthere a littlewhere the children playing with the sand seem to possess all the ardor and anger and above all theenthusiasm for life that parents don’t have.
There banality of life it is precious, a moment is enough to ignite feelings of gratitude for what surrounds us, and as in Fatality, a fan can ignite new life “with its gentle and delicate ticking”.
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In short, you are rich it is an operation of redefinition – or better than reduction – of reality to the second essential seemingly bizarre points of viewbut which ultimately reveal one deep compassion for life that flows while the ego is imprisoned by disappointments and failures; a collection of poetic fragments between the tragic and the humorous capable of shedding a new light in the exploration of the abyss of human feelings.
