Davis's seemingly simple story that raises signficant points: Addie and the Chili

Lydia Davis's story Addie and the Chili, in the January Harpers, ring in at 3 pages of magazine text, which for Davis is the equivalent to a Henry James late novel, yet even at this for her long stretch she maintains her wry humor and elusive narrative style. Davis teases us w/ the idea that this story is a strict and direct account of an event in her life, some 30 years back, and it feels as if this may be so, but who's to say?, it could be an entirely fictive statement - and does that matter? She says that a friend of hers, Ellie, years ago urged her to write about an encounter with their friend in common, Addie, and Davis, or at least Davis's narrator, tried, years ago, to do so but was stymied, largely because of issues in her life at the time - divorce, single parenthood, and others. But now 30 years later she has at it again and tells this story, seeming quite simple: She and Ellie go to a movie - we never learn which movie - that seems to have something to do w/ the Vietnam War, and that leaves many in the audience wracked by tears at the end, especially because of the suffering of children. After the movie she and Ellie collect their friend, Addie, and they go out to a restaurant for dinner - all 3 order chili (to the chagrin of the sullen waiter, who expected a bigger order). Addie goes off on a long ramble about herself and he social and sex life. Clearly, this is a mismatch - 2 women distraught about the movie and now listening to his friend yak on about herself. "Davis" berates her for being insensitive to others, which leads to some tears, a brief spat, and a reconciliation. The narrator tells us then that she's lost touch w/ Addie (though she looks up her and sees that she's accomplished some fine things in her life) and Ellie, when asked, says she has no recollection of theser events, or at least of asking Davis to write about them. So we're left with a few points to ponder: The difference between types of crying, sorrow for others and sorrow for one's self; the difference between types of memory, so vivid to this writer and faded away from the mind of her friend; the impossibility of sensing the course of a life based on a brief encounter or an early friendship - people grow and change in surprising ways; the possible unreliability of narrative, as this story, which seems so much like a memoir or a personal essay may be nothing of the sort; and the availability of material for fiction in so many brief encounters: We could dissect and examine almost any sequence of moments in our lives and, if we all had Davis's skill which we don't, find therein a story waiting, maybe even for 30 years, to be told.