Status
Available
Genres
Publication
New York : Picador USA, 2002.
Description
From one of our most imaginative and inventive writers, a crystalline collection of perfectly modulated, sometimes harrowing and often hilarious investigations into the multifaceted ways in which human beings perceive each other and themselves. A couple suspects their friends think them boring; a woman resolves to see herself as nothing but then concludes she's set too high a goal; and a funeral home receives a letter rebuking it for linguistic errors. Lydia Davis once again proves in the words of theLos Angeles Times "one of the quiet giants in the world of American fiction."
User reviews
LibraryThing member Osbaldistone
A wide ranging collection of Davis's short (and very short) stories. Wide ranging in length, style, and subject matter. Many appear to be biographical; some are quite introspective; others are clearly fiction. Overall, I'd say this collection rates 3 stars, simply because a healthy number of the
A few of the 'stories' are basically a title and a one-liner. Some of these are great, some just so-so. One that really hit home for me is "Certain Knowledge from Herodotus" because I just recently read the part of Herodotus's Histories that is referenced in this short-short piece, and it made me laugh out loud. Another is "Happiest Moment" with it's wonderful surprise in the last sentence.
The middle-length stories seemed to have struck the right chord for me. There's "Mown Lawn", a wonderful excercise in word play - just plain fun to read. "Happy Memories", which struck more than a few chords for me, as did "Selfish", though for very different reasons. And "My Husband and I" has one the best opening lines I've read in a long time.
All in all, there's plenty here to recommend this book. I expect any reader will find gems and duds, but, again, that's often the nature of collections, especially from such an unpredictable writer as Davis. And thanks to McSweeneys for making sure things like this get published.
Os.
Show More
pieces are good but not great and a few fall flat. But this is the difficulty in rating a collection like this - there are some wonderful pieces in here as well, and you should read them. In addition, I know some pieces worked for me ("Certain Knowledge...", mentioned below, for example) partly because I read them at the right time. If I read this collection again in a year or two, I expect others may hit home. On the other hand, I'm not sure I've read a more poignent, touching, respectful, purely enjoyable and thorough biography (of any length) than "Marie Curie, So Honorable Woman", and I expect I'd feel the same way 10 years from now.A few of the 'stories' are basically a title and a one-liner. Some of these are great, some just so-so. One that really hit home for me is "Certain Knowledge from Herodotus" because I just recently read the part of Herodotus's Histories that is referenced in this short-short piece, and it made me laugh out loud. Another is "Happiest Moment" with it's wonderful surprise in the last sentence.
The middle-length stories seemed to have struck the right chord for me. There's "Mown Lawn", a wonderful excercise in word play - just plain fun to read. "Happy Memories", which struck more than a few chords for me, as did "Selfish", though for very different reasons. And "My Husband and I" has one the best opening lines I've read in a long time.
All in all, there's plenty here to recommend this book. I expect any reader will find gems and duds, but, again, that's often the nature of collections, especially from such an unpredictable writer as Davis. And thanks to McSweeneys for making sure things like this get published.
Os.
Show Less
LibraryThing member amydross
I'm not sure what to make of this book. I got it because I wanted something that undermined our expectations of what fiction is -- something strange and unexpected and maybe a little mind blowing. What I got was... well, about half of the stories are really boring, in a sort of comfortable,
For example, there's a story about a road trip, and no matter who you are, you know someone who has been on a more eventful road trip than this one. It's hard to read without thinking, why are you telling me this?
The other half of the stories are really short, only a few words long, and feel like stuff you might jot down on a post-it at 3 am and in the morning not be able to remember what you were on about, if anything.
Anyway, maybe my expectations were a little off.
Show More
inoffensive way. Kind of like going to tea at an elderly neighbor's so she can spend a couple of hours telling you the mundane details of her life while you smile and nod. And sometimes you think, "huh, that was actually a mildly insightful comment," but mostly you're discreetly checking your watch and calculating when you can politely leave.For example, there's a story about a road trip, and no matter who you are, you know someone who has been on a more eventful road trip than this one. It's hard to read without thinking, why are you telling me this?
The other half of the stories are really short, only a few words long, and feel like stuff you might jot down on a post-it at 3 am and in the morning not be able to remember what you were on about, if anything.
Anyway, maybe my expectations were a little off.
Show Less
LibraryThing member ncnsstnt
If you are only going to read one of Lydia Davis' story collections, this would be the one to read. It contains my favorite Davis story, "The Old Dictionary". Here's a hint, though. Do not read her stories back-to-back. Read one or two and then put it down and read something else. Let her language
Show More
be something to cleanse your palette. Her stories are so short that if you read 5 or 6 in a row their power is greatly diminished. Sort of like poetry. Show Less
LibraryThing member amyfaerie
Davis's newest book, and she's still the same author. If only she wrote more, so that I could read more.
LibraryThing member donp
Truth to tell, I can't put my finger on exactly what made this feel one star better than [book:Varieties of Disturbance]. That's really the only difference between this review and my review for VoD.
LibraryThing member SeriousGrace
Lydia Davis is funny. But, more importantly she has an amazing range of subject material. So much so that I found myself asking what subject does Lydia Davis NOT cover in a short story? What's more, Lydia Davis has a wide range of writing styles. Everything she writes has a common theme: strange
Show More
and wonderful, but no two stories could be characterized as "the same." Her stories are eerie and contemplative, funny and sad, wise and irreverent. Show Less
LibraryThing member jwhenderson
Rather than comment on the stories in this collection I will let the author speak for herself. Here are selected paragraphs from "Blind Date";
""There isn't really much to tell," she said, but she would tell it if I liked. We were sitting in a midtown luncheonette. "I've only had one blind date in
...
"I was fifteen or sixteen, I guess," she said. "I was home from boarding school. Maybe it was summer. I don't know where my parents were. They were often away. They often left me alone there, sometimes for the evening, sometimes for weeks at a time. The phone rang. It was a boy I didn't know. He said he was a friend of a boy from school—I can't remember who. We talked a little and then he asked me if I wanted to have dinner with him. He sounded nice enough so I said I would, and we agreed on a day and a time and I told him where I lived."
...
"Well, when the day came, I didn't want to go out to dinner with this boy. I just didn't want the difficulty of this date. It scared me—not because there was anything scary about the boy but because he was a stranger, I didn't know him. I didn't want to sit there face-to-face in some restaurant and start from the very beginning, knowing nothing. It didn't feel right. And there was the burden of that recommendation—'Give her a try.'
"Then again, maybe there were other reasons. Maybe I had been alone in that apartment so much by then that I had retreated into some kind of inner, unsociable space that was hard to come out of. Maybe I felt I had disappeared and I was comfortable that way and did not want to be forced back into existence. I don't know.
""There isn't really much to tell," she said, but she would tell it if I liked. We were sitting in a midtown luncheonette. "I've only had one blind date in
Show More
my life. And I didn't really have it. I can think of more interesting situations that are like a blind date--say, when someone gives you a book as a present, when they fix you up with that book. I was once given a book of essays about reading, writing, book collecting. I felt it was a perfect match. I started reading it right away, in the backseat of the car. I stopped listening to the conversation in the front. I like to read about how other people read and collect books, even how they shelve their books. But by the time I was done with the book, I had taken a strong dislike to the author's personality. I won't have another date with her!" She laughed. Here we were interrupted by the waiter, and then a series of incidents followed that kept us from resuming our conversation that day." ...
"I was fifteen or sixteen, I guess," she said. "I was home from boarding school. Maybe it was summer. I don't know where my parents were. They were often away. They often left me alone there, sometimes for the evening, sometimes for weeks at a time. The phone rang. It was a boy I didn't know. He said he was a friend of a boy from school—I can't remember who. We talked a little and then he asked me if I wanted to have dinner with him. He sounded nice enough so I said I would, and we agreed on a day and a time and I told him where I lived."
...
"Well, when the day came, I didn't want to go out to dinner with this boy. I just didn't want the difficulty of this date. It scared me—not because there was anything scary about the boy but because he was a stranger, I didn't know him. I didn't want to sit there face-to-face in some restaurant and start from the very beginning, knowing nothing. It didn't feel right. And there was the burden of that recommendation—'Give her a try.'
"Then again, maybe there were other reasons. Maybe I had been alone in that apartment so much by then that I had retreated into some kind of inner, unsociable space that was hard to come out of. Maybe I felt I had disappeared and I was comfortable that way and did not want to be forced back into existence. I don't know.
Show Less
LibraryThing member stillatim
I'll save you another review about how Lydia Davis is good when she's writing really short stories that break the rules/writing standard short stories that are really emotionally affecting, and bad when she's writing standard short stories that are really emotionally affecting/writing really short
That aside, I have no idea what all the hype is about. Having read all of one book by Davis and two by Knausgaard, I'd put them in the same basket: formally adventurous, more or less devoid of content, unless you count what I (and probably you) do every day to be interesting content, which I do not. I've already done it. I barely care about my own little incidences of domestic unhappiness (to be fair, they are very rare and very minor, because my wife is a wondrous human being); I sure as shit don't care about someone else's; and that goes double for invented versions of the same.
So yes, there is some formal inventiveness here, and I don't mean the one line stories, which are neither cute nor interesting. Davis at the very least varies her means of delivering domestic unhappiness, and sometimes even branches out into some slightly more imaginative territory. But I honestly have no idea what people would get out of this if they weren't obsessed with literary form. In that sense, Davis is in pretty good company. I feel the same way about James Joyce, for instance. She's also in pretty bad company, e.g., James Joyce.
I am a philistine. I care that people write about something worth writing about. I'll read more of Davis's work, because hey, it's easy to turn the pages and her sentences are okay and really, it's no small thing to be constantly futzing with form. But I lash back at the critics on this one. "A clear eyed and surgical inquiry"? Well yes, Dave Eggers, I agree. "into the nature of existence itself". Er... no.
Show More
stories that break the rules. Suffice it to say, she does both of these things fairly well. That aside, I have no idea what all the hype is about. Having read all of one book by Davis and two by Knausgaard, I'd put them in the same basket: formally adventurous, more or less devoid of content, unless you count what I (and probably you) do every day to be interesting content, which I do not. I've already done it. I barely care about my own little incidences of domestic unhappiness (to be fair, they are very rare and very minor, because my wife is a wondrous human being); I sure as shit don't care about someone else's; and that goes double for invented versions of the same.
So yes, there is some formal inventiveness here, and I don't mean the one line stories, which are neither cute nor interesting. Davis at the very least varies her means of delivering domestic unhappiness, and sometimes even branches out into some slightly more imaginative territory. But I honestly have no idea what people would get out of this if they weren't obsessed with literary form. In that sense, Davis is in pretty good company. I feel the same way about James Joyce, for instance. She's also in pretty bad company, e.g., James Joyce.
I am a philistine. I care that people write about something worth writing about. I'll read more of Davis's work, because hey, it's easy to turn the pages and her sentences are okay and really, it's no small thing to be constantly futzing with form. But I lash back at the critics on this one. "A clear eyed and surgical inquiry"? Well yes, Dave Eggers, I agree. "into the nature of existence itself". Er... no.
Show Less
Subjects
Awards
Village Voice Favorite Books (2001)
Notable Books List (2002)