A selection of essays on writing and reading by the master short-fiction writer Lydia Davis
Lydia Davis is a writer whose originality, influence, and wit are beyond compare. Jonathan Franzen has called her “a magician of self-consciousness,” while Rick Moody hails her as "the best prose stylist in America." And for Claire Messud, “Davis's signal gift is to make us feel alive.”
Best known for her masterful short stories and translations, Davis’s gifts extend equally to her nonfiction. In Essays One, Davis has, for the first time, gathered a selection of essays, commentaries, and lectures composed over the past five decades.
In this first of two volumes, her subjects range from her earliest influences to her favorite short stories, from John Ashbery’s translation of Rimbaud to Alan Cote’s painting, and from the Shepherd’s Psalm to early tourist photographs. On display is the development and range of one of the sharpest, most capacious minds writing today.
Lydia Davis is the author of The End of the Story: A Novel and several story collections, including Varieties of Disturbance, a finalist for the 2007 National Book Award and most recently, Can’t and Won’t. She is also the acclaimed translator of Swann’s Way and Madame Bovary, both of which were awarded the French-American Foundation Translation Prize. The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis was described by James Wood in The New Yorker as a “grand cumulative achievement.” She is the winner of the 2013 Man Booker International Prize.
Table of Contents
Preface
THE PRACTICE OF WRITING A Beloved Duck Gets Cooked: Forms and Influences I Commentary on One Very Short Story (“In a House Besieged”) From Raw Material to Finished Work: Forms and Influences II A Note on the Word Gubernatorial
VISUAL ARTISTS: JOAN MITCHELL Joan Mitchell and Les Bluets, 1973
WRITERS John Ashbery’s Translation of Rimbaud’s Illuminations Young Pynchon The Story Is the Thing: Lucia Berlin’s A Manual for Cleaning Women A Close Look at Two Books by Rae Armantrout Small but Perfectly Formed: Five Favorite Short Stories
VISUAL ARTISTS: JOSEPH CORNELL The Impetus Was Delight: A Response by Analogy to the Work of Joseph Cornell
THE PRACTICE OF WRITING (2) Sources, Revision, Order, and Endings: Forms and Influences III Revising One Sentence Found Material, Syntax, Brevity, and the Beauty of Awkward Prose: Forms and Influences IV Fragmentary or Unfinished: Barthes, Joubert, Hölderlin, Mallarmé, Flaubert Thirty Recommendations for Good Writing Habits
VISUAL ARTISTS: ALAN COTE Energy in Color: Alan Cote’s Recent Paintings
WRITERS (2) “Emmy Moore’s Journal” by Jane Bowles Osama Alomar’s Very Short Tales in Fullblood Arabian Haunting the Flea Market: Roger Lewinter’s The Attraction of Things Red Mittens: Anselm Hollo’s Translation from the Cheremiss In Search of Difficult Edward Dahlberg Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary
VISUAL ARTISTS: EARLY TOURIST PHOTOGRAPHS Dutch Scenes: A Portfolio of Early Twentieth-Century Tourist Photographs
WRITERS (3) The Problem of Plot Summary in Blanchot’s Fiction Stendhal’s Alter Ego: The Life of Henry Brulard Maurice Blanchot Absent A Farewell to Michel Butor Michel Leiris’s Fibrils, Volume 3 of The Rules of the Game
THE BIBLE, MEMORY, AND THE PASSAGE OF TIME As I Was Reading Meeting Abraham Lincoln “Paring Off the Amphibologisms”: Jesus Recovered by the Jesus Seminar A Reading of the Shepherd’s Psalm Remember the Van Wagenens
