“Techniques and Idiosyncrasies”
by Yiyun Li
from the March 17, 2025 issue of The New Yorker
I‘ve said it often over the years, but Yiyun Li is one of my favorite writers, often exploring even the most personal suffering in her work. This week we get “Techniques and Idiosyncrasies,” in which Lilian, a 51-year-old writer, goes to the doctor’s office. We may remember Lilian from Li’s prior story in the magazine: “The Particles of Order.”
In this new story, Li invites us into a space where vulnerability, loss, and the weight of experience are palpable. The doctor’s office, usually a place for routine checkups, becomes the backdrop for Lilian’s quiet but intense reflections on her past and present. Through her seemingly mundane visit, we are drawn into the subtleties of memory and grief — how personal history can subtly shape even the most ordinary interactions.
Here is how the story begins:
Lilian was the only patient that morning. This was a change from the crowded waiting room she was used to in the days before Dr. Fenton began to charge an annual fee. “Concierge medicine” sounded like “bespoke chocolates” and would not have been Lilian’s natural inclination, and yet she stayed with the clinic. Looking for a new physician would require making calls, meeting strangers, and filling out medical-history forms, and that, even for a healthy fifty-one-year-old, could be complicated. Lilian might be able to omit the two miscarriages—not all experiences, thank goodness, left a trace—but could she also omit the two childbirths, the second by C-section? Small talk happened in doctors’ offices, sometimes about children.
A fee was a manageable price for not having to lie or explain. Lilian did not mind telling the truth, but truths could be startling and leave people uneasy—spooked, Lilian called that state.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this story. Please feel free to comment below.
Yiyun Li’s story, “Techniques and Idiosyncrasies” brilliantly anatomizes how sometimes sensibilities clash or somehow we don’t quite take to one another as mutually expected or don’t quite manage to converse well with one another in ordinary life. How sometimes one tries to overwhelm a listener with their own ideas rather than listen to someone else’s ideas rather than their own. Or how some people are so much easier to connect with than others.
Li’s narrative is very directly probing into the tiny little things between two people new to each other that makes life tick. She doesn’t let emotion intervene or attempt an intervention remark. She’s only interested in looking at what happens in a way that it somehow can be in some way accepted. And life will continue. I admire that and not only as a literary technique.
There is a certain clarity achieved where the whole tension, the whole suspense is whether there can be any clarity at all when things go wrong or some sort of beingness doesn’t persist or continue in the way one had hoped it or they would.
My favorite line is when Lilian, the protagonist is asked, “I hope you don’t need to beat yourself up for what happened.” Lilian’s response, “Oh, I don’t beat myself up,” and then, “Life has done that already.”
People expect one’s emotional reaction over “what happened” but if one can shut out the reaction or at least absorb the impact without it kicking off usual expected chain reactions, the damage can be somewhat minimized or sensibly dealt with. And one can keep going.
This story is sad but redemptive in an unexpected very healing way.
The writing is clear and gives access to a state of being which as the narrator suggests few people may experience, or if they do, will be unable or unlikely to write about with this clarity. I find it unsettling and hard to turn away from. The author’s experience mirrors aspects of the narrrator’s experience and knowing this complicates the piece. As a reader am I like Noah, fondling details, or is the author like Noah taking his passenger to the scene where something awful happened?
This section below stood out for me.
‘Noah’s motive—timid in one sense and outrageous in another—was transparent, but there was no point in letting him know that she had seen through him. Her understanding was precisely what he hankered after: he wanted her imagination to be framed by his imagination; he wanted her undivided attention and intense feelings.’
Is the suggested motivation of Noah similar to the motive of any writer or more particularly this writer ? And is this cruel or an attempt to communicate? Reading the piece I felt the narrator wanted to communicate and feared communicating with others (and with herself if communication might bring her nearer to painful feelings).
I find the ending sad, and deadly, as the narrator seems to turn away from communication and from the potential for understanding, hope, forgiveness, or something less filled with futility. There is a sense of this being a choice,
– ‘She did not seek to understand Tina or Noah, for understanding was not their due.’–
a decision and this is disturbing in the way of a person deciding to take their life. In this state of mind there is a sense that one’s experiences are unique – which if course they are– but in a way which seems to refuse the possibility that there can be any meaningful sharing of understanding with another person. At the same time the piece in itself is an act of communication.
I find it a powerful and unsettling piece.
The combination of erudition, wit, insight, and sadness is really potent. I had felt more “positive” (if that’s the word) about Lillian’s detachment than the two who commented above, as it seems necessary to her survival. It is also selfish, yet she does admit that she may be responsible for others assuming her interest in their thoughts, stories, and ideas.
She does, though, give them attention by discussing them here, even if it’s to deny their overall claim to her attention. The paradox is interesting.
Literary attention and analysis come up against the unspeakable.
Frustration as the strongest of emotions is interesting.
This, and her previous New Yorker story, are impressive work.