Almost No Memory

by Lydia Davis

Overview

Philosophical inquiry, examinations of language, and involuted domestic disputes are the focus of Lydia Davis's inventive collection of short fiction, Almost No Memory. In each of these stories, Davis reveals an empathic, sometimes shattering understanding of human relationships.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312420550
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	09/08/2001
Edition description:	First Picador Edition
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.47(d)

About the Author

Lydia Davis is the author of several works of fiction, including Break it Down and The End of the Story. She is also a noted translator, and a collection of stories, The Old Dictionary. She teaches at Bard College and lives in Port Ewen, New York.

Table of Contents

	Meat, My Husband	3
	Jack in the Country	8
	Foucault and Pencil	10
	The Mice	13
	The Thirteenth Woman	14
	The Professor	15
	The Cedar Trees	27
	The Cats in the Prison Recreation Hall	29
	Wife One in Country	32
	The Fish Tank	34
	The Center of the Story	35
	Love	41
	Our Kindness	42
	A Natural Disaster	43
	Odd Behavior	45
	St. Martin	46
	Agreement	65
	In the Garment District	66
	Disagreement	67
	The Actors	68
	What Was Interesting	70
	In the Everglades	77
	The Family	79
	Trying to Learn	82
	To Reiterate	83
	Lord Royston's Tour	84
	The Other	115
	A Friend of Mine	116
	This Condition	118
	Go Away	120
	Pastor Elaine's Newsletter	122
	A Man in Our Town	129
	A Second Chance	131
	Fear	133
	Almost No Memory	134
	Mr. Knockly	137
	How He Is Often Right	147
	The Rape of the Tanuk Women	148
	What I Feel	150
	Lost Things	152
	Glenn Gould	153
	Smoke	165
	From Below, as a Neighbor	167
	The Great-grandmothers	168
	Ethics	169
	The House Behind	171
	The Outing	179
	A Position at the University	180
	Examples of Confusion	181
	The Race of the Patient Motorcyclists	189
	Affinity	192

Editorial Reviews

Lydia Davis is one of the quiet giants in the world of American fiction.” —Benjamin Weissman, Los Angeles Times

“Frequently poetic and, without question, memorable.” —Liam Callanan, The New York Times Book Reveiw

From the Publisher

The 51 pastiches in this collection are more experimental than Davis's previous novel, The End of the Story, and short story collection, Break It Down. Ranging in length from a single, six-line sentence ('The Outing') to 29 pages ('Lord Royston's Tour'), the selections explore intense feelings in a variety of situations. Frequently using parallel construction, the pieces reveal how someone facing a minor domestic dispute could contort a conversation into an irredeemable confrontation or could behave unnecessarily obsessively. The emotion is very well conveyed and the use of language apt. Occasionally grotesque, the vignettes will appeal to the sophisticated reader, but the lack of closure may frustrate the more traditional. -- Ann Irvine, Montgomery County Public Library, Silver Spring, Maryland

Library Journal

Soberly eclectic doesn't begin to describe this new assortment of 51 short (often very short) stories from Davis, whose first collection, Break it Down (1986), and novel, The End of the Story (1995), have both received much favorable notice. These disparate tales of quiet desperation range from a long 18th-century travel narrative through the vastness of Russia to views of stultifying small-town life, from a rumination on Glenn Gould to a terse description of marriage as an endless round of bruised feelings and displays of pettiness 'Lord Royston's Tour' chronicles the hardships of a diffident traveler as he encounters one difficulty after another on a journey from the Arctic Circle to Asian deserts, surviving many close calls only to perish at sea on his way home. 'Mr. Knockly' details the pursuit of a strange man by the equally odd narrator, who seeks the reason for the man's despair at her aunt's funeral but never gets the answer: She loses interest, and he is murdered. Other stories also deal with death, including one about a dog that served as part of a house-sitting arrangement ('St. Martin') and another about a woman stabbed by a neighbor as she takes out her trash ('The House Behind"). But the slow torture of a dying relationship is the theme that Davis returns to most frequently, and in such swift, poignant tales as 'Agreement,' 'Our Kindness,' 'The Outing,' and '`How He Is Often Right,' a much larger, yet infinitely more intimate, tragedy involving the loss of love takes shape. With tightly circular and traditionally linear narratives well represented, Atkinson offers a stylistic as well as thematic mix. Meanwhile, strong writing and a somber mood combine tomake this a probing, quietly compelling series of meditations in story form.

Kirkus Reviews