The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis

Am enjoying the humor of Lydia Davis, and the nice, thick book this is! Lots of short and long pieces. Hadn't heard of her until I read about her in The New Yorker magazine. Definitely worth a read...I also like the stories of William Trevor and Alice Munro, just for a comparison...Lydia Davis might be a little bit "weirder" than those, but the stories are satisfying when taken in snippets.

There are many defensible reasons for writing reviews on Amazon. One of them is to try to move the needle when you think the average star rating is unjustifiable. I contend there is absolutely no way a score of less than five stars can be justified for Lydia Davis.Of course many difficult or stylistically advanced writers are frustrating for the unsuspecting reader, particularly writers who haven't the grace to be dead for years and thus enshrined in the pantheon. Nevertheless.I had read, I am sure, some of her work in the pages of Harpers or the New Yorker, but while possibly amused or charmed I had no idea of the variety and breadth of her imagination, which is part of the dynamic here. In a "story" involving her observations of the new realities imposed by the care of a young baby, she recalls the best of Nicholson Baker's deicious rhapsodies on minutae; some stories resemble Georges Perec, had he possessed a more active sense of humor; still others recall the deadpan absurdism of Beckett. I was initially disappointed to find so many stories written in extremely flat prose until I saw the Beckett tie-in: Davis is ultra-sophisticated, has read everything you have and finds particular comraderie with the flat stylists rather than the baroque movers and practitioners of language. This isn't the night on the town but the morning after.It's true that not all of these "stories"--I have to use quotes because the term really fails to cover her variety of formats--are winners; what is probably true, though, is that readers will likely disagree as to which fail and which succeed. Entries vary between those of highbrow and lowbrow and nobrow literary heft. Some are one-line notations, others run to 20 pages. One of my favorites was an account of trying to read Beckett's "Worstward Ho" while riding in a van, achieving an absurdist hilarity at once parody, celebration and autobiography that Beckett himself would have appreciated. She is a good mimic; "Kafka Cooks Dinner" is another example. But then there are intense examinations of familial tensions that must themselves be autobiographical, all the more moving for having taken on the dispassionate form of lists or convoluted verbal exercises. As with some of the best authors, she makes language reach into places others haven't touched.Cutting to the chase, Ms Davis deserves at least five stars here if you value literary innovation, the self-invention and daring of writers who create their own genres, and the value placed on your time by writers who don't waste it. Here's one example in its entirety, from a raft of experiences I can relate to. Keep in mind she is a stylistic chameleon, and the sentence constructions are peculiar to this example only:How She Could Not Drive She could not drive if there were too many clouds in the sky. Or rather, if she could drive with many clouds in the sky, she could not have music playing if there were also passengers in the car. If there were two passengers, as well as a small caged animal, and many clouds in the sky, she could listen but not speak. If a wind blew shavings from the small animal's cage over her shoulder and lap as well as the shoulder and lap of the man next to her, she could not speak to anyone or listen, even if there were very few clouds in the sky. If the small boy was quiet, reading his book in the backseat, but the man next to her opened his newspaper so wide that its edge touched the gearshift and the sunlight shone off its white page into her eyes, then she could not speak or listen while trying to enter a large highway full of fast-moving cars, even if there were no clouds in the sky. Then, if it was night and the boy was not in the car, and the small caged animal was not in the car, and the car was empty of boxes and suitcases where before it had been full, and the man next to her was not reading a newspaper but looking out the window straight ahead, and the sky was dark so that she could see no clouds, she could listen but not talk, and she could have no music playing, if a motel brightly illuminated above her on a dark hill some distance ahead and to the left seemed to be floating across the highway in front as she drove at high speed between dotted lines with headlights coming at her on the left and up behind her in the rearview mirror and taillights ahead in a gentle curve around to the right underneath the massive airship of motel lights floating across the highway from left to right in front of her, or could talk, but only to say one thing, which went unanswered.By the way, this particular book, as a physical entity, is a joy to hold: lightweight for its 733 pages, a tidy block of woodpulp only 4 1/2 by 7". Yet with readable type, since ultra-short entries involve a lot of blank space. And there's a pleasant salmon-colored cover. Get the physical book if you can.

To say she's an original is to beg the question, there's no such thing as an original, and I think that Ms. Davis would appreciate that. The mystery of it all, the mystery of life, love, death, longing, loneliness, conflict, obscurity, etc., although there' not much happiness here. The existential dilemma she captures, what is life, what are people, what the hell is anything all about. Well she's here to tell you and it's not much but she pulls the covers off the bed to reveal the corpse of life, she has nothing much to say and that's the point, the less is more she achieves so brilliantly and so easily although with surgical precision like an autopsy peeling off layer after layer, down to the bone, and than what's left nothing and that's whats so wonderful about all these "pieces." She gets to the core of the meaningless meaning of life and it's not much but that's the point. These are brilliant, courageous, take no prisoners works of art. Don't read them at your peril.

Lydia Davis's stories are like nobody else's. They are odd and original, with every word accounted for and considered. Some stories are two sentences long and one story is 40 pages long. Each story lands in your brain with a heap of questions: Who is this somewhat removed yet pushy narrator? What is the narrator not telling us? And how are those negative spaces of what's not being told us shaping our vision of what's happening on the page? How is the seemingly objective narrator shaping our vision in distinct ways? How can a story two sentences long feel so complete? Or a story 40 pages long seem so incomplete and yet right at the same time? Sometimes there is a brutal, intellectual clarity at work. She pins down those tiny, almost imperceptible exchanges in a marriage or parenthood like a scientist pinning down a butterfly to examine every dot and flicker. If you think clarity of language and the mystery of life are at odds, this volume will prove you wrong. Take in small doses - a story or two before bed - and let your brain work through the magic of Lydia Davis's stories as you sleep. You'll wake up more awake for having done so - although sometimes these stories are so cerebral that you become almost painfully conscious of just how alone in your own mind you actually are.

I'm giving it five stars because it is the complete work of an author many consider the best in the genre -- micro fiction. I find her work unreadable mostly, but so many people I respect love her that I'm willing to accept it's my problem, not her's. Maybe it'll grow on me over time. It's serious work, and gives a lot to chew on in a very short space each time.

Break it down is a favorite. Otherwise my tastes have changed since I read her 20 years ago.

I'll start with the physicality of this book as it is so lovely...textures, typeface, edges of the pages and such a tender coral tone.Such space....hummm to breathe, and such succinct honed stories that capture the essence of a moment ,a human thought, a disgrace.Some books ask us to be lost in another's tale....in this book you end up startled that somehow, what you just read, has so much to do with you& you marvel at how witty you can be.

A trailblazer in short story form. This collection ranges from one sentence to less than 10 page stories. Focus on interior lives and lack of exterior action or conflict resolution which nevertheless remain compelling.

I have read a good number of Lydia Davis’s short stories from this collection. I am on page 285 of 700+. I’m not sure I will read every single one but I have a good idea of Davis’s style now. I will probably dip in and out of the remainder.All the stories are heavy on narrative and exposition. Not much in the way of action or dialogue. So they take on a kind of confessional or contemplative air. As the stories are generally quite short I don’t think they suffer for this idiosyncrasy. Though one or two, like ‘St Martin’ and ‘Lord Royston’s Tour' are a bit longer, and, in these cases, I did find myself itching for some live action, or conversation.You could say there are two types of story here: the miniatures, sometimes only a paragraph or two; and the longer ones. I didn’t care much for the miniatures. They are sort of poetic, clever, amusing little cameos, or they aim to be. I’m not so convinced they succeed on all counts. They remind me a little of some of Leonard Cohen’s poetry.For all that, I did find some of the optimal length stories exquisite - original and expertly composed. Like ‘The Letter’, ‘French Lesson I’ and ‘Meat, My Husband’.

Amazing how vitriolic the one-star reviews have been so far! This book delighted me-and I can only imagine it will gain in popularity.The stories,some of which are no more than poems or thoughts or meditations are all about human consciousness and the drama is usually in the depth of the feelings experienced rather than what happens.You can dip in and out of the book depending on how much time you have available to read-and get a fair idea of her style in a short time.She claims to have been greatly influenced by Kafka-but is he ever this funny? Don't be put off by hearing that she is a writer's writer or 'experimental' as she is not at all hard to read or understand.

I love literature, am a big fan of books, and learned Lydia Davis when she won the Man Booker International Prize. The critics gave a few examples of her short stories and I was immediately won for her style: the example of "a thing" that happens, probably you can fill pages with it, and Lydia just get's it together in a few lines: something happened, for a moment there was chaos and panic, but then the people came back to reality. Something like that, with more words, but every word is necesarry, no word to much, no word missing, everything exact as it should be. The perfection !!!!! Incredible. Read her stories.

Lydia Davis has a unique set of styles. Repetition plays a large part in her writings and indeed repetition plays a large part in her writings. One-liners, tomes, one-pagers, paragraphs and sentences all pass as stories. The incredible thing is that it works and is a very powerful tool when applied by such a talented writer. If you do nothing else this year, buy this collection and throw away your prejudices and preferences, then just read.

The stories are beautifully written, evocative and often enigmatic. I am enjoying reading them--but best not to read all at once, as they do at times get a little repetitive. She is a good writer, but I find it difficult to see her as someone with the weight of earlier winners like Achebe and Munro; and I can certainly think of other world writers who might seem more deserving of this recognition.--e.g. William Trevor or Toni Morrison