Lydia Davis - "Television"

Music suggestion for this reading: Amy Macdonald - This Is The Life

Well, I must admit that while I wasn't particularly enthralled by this piece, I believe that Davis did manage to create three different, distinct characters. In the persons One, Two, and Three (named after the respective part in which the person was the narrator), I can see distinct differences. These appear mainly in Davis', albeit clever, use of line breaks and white space and in the opinion of the three characters.

Person One chooses the path of acceptance and unity with the televisions. Person One, from the beginning, explains that she believes television to be exciting, equally exciting to dead people walking outside her windows. She has created an emotional connection with the characters on television, and through this she is able to escape but not lose her full attachment to her real world. This attachment begins to blur in Person Two's view of television. Person Two criticizes television, while still passively accepting it. The line breaks in the narration of Two's narrative simulate the constant changing of channels, each paired with small blurb, an observation of what is on television. Finally, Person Three uses television for pure escapism from daily life. To Three, television is a completely different world where life is so much more simple and less-boring that real life. Everything unnecessary is skipped over, and everything is important to the continuation of life. There is no breaks, no dull spots. The important parts of life are compacted into one hour and twenty minutes of narrative that occurs in one day of Three's life.

Perhaps one of the things that I find most fascinating about the construction of this piece is that it turns the character most-receptive of the power and excitement the escapism of the television into the character that most keeps hold of reality while watching it. Unlike with Two and Three, both of whom end the passage still talking about the television, One ends the passage talking about her family watching the television and how happy it makes them. She is observing the television, but she is not engulfed by the television. She never leaves the real world but instead allows the television to affect her real world and bring her time together with her mother and husband. This surprise that one only realizes when one reads through the piece a second or third time is a subtlety that I'd love to have when comparing character's points of view.

I'd also love to have her clever use of line breaks, white space, and length to give a sense of character. As I previously mentioned, both the line breaks and use of white space in Two's narrative seems to simulate changing stations and a lack of attention to the content in front of the character. This shows the dismissive attitude that the character has of the content s/he is viewing. Character 3's trick in construction is even more subtle. It looks the most traditional, but it is also the shortest and only mentions the high points of the night, condensing the night into two paragraphs and one closing statement, much like the movies that s/he envies and is describing.

Overall, I would say that this piece has uses of both white space and line breaks that I've love to bring into my work, and without her talent at constructing a voice through word placement, word choice would make the characters all sound like they similar voices.