The Importance of Reading Short Stories

Lydia Davis did the translation of Swan's way, and that's great. Have you read her own short stories? No, I don't think so. Are they good? Oh, they're very good. They're very economical and sort of mysterious. A lot of them are as short as a page. You know, you read Debbie Eisenberg's short story and you've read a whole novel. That's the way I feel about Richard Gates and his short stories.