Lydia Davis

I feel like I should read Lydia Davis. She translated Maurice Blanchot and Michel Leiris who are two of my favorite authors. She even tackled Swan's Way. I read upthread that she has longer works? Where should I start?

The collection Break It Down is a great place to start. (Most or all of it is reprinted in her Collected Stories.) Her novel, The End of the Story, is good but not the place to start.

You could also just start by hearing her read/talk in this Bookworm interview.

i keep buying her collected short stories for people

I have bought two copies so far and am about to buy another.

“Example of the Continuing Past Tense in a Hotel Room”

Your housekeeper has been Shelly.

i read this thread last night and then i bought the kindle version of collected stories and then i read her for hours and didn't get nearly enough sleep but today i am much too thrilled to feel tired.

estela i kind of cant believe youd never read lydia davis before!

thankyou!

haha

i've just been admiring her face on google images, she has got exactly the right face.

yes, that is an excellent face

nice one estela!

the uk edition doesn't have the rough cut pages, thankfully. my copy takes a lot of flipping so i can see that would be a pain with rough cut pages.

she has a face like shes the best professor on whatever campus shes at

she has a face that seems like it can see the world and still be amused by the world and not unduly saddened by it

thats something i think about when i think about lydia davis, bearing witness without being overburdened with grief

since she was mentioned itt anne carson's nox is really fantastic and worth looking at

we should start an anne carson thread probably

she has a face that seems like it can see the world and still be amused by the world and not unduly saddened by it

perfect, really. and not just her face but her fictions.

"Syr-ee, ah, o lah"?

I love that one novel of hers, The End of The Story. Soooo good. I've been slowly working my way through the Collected Stories. So far I've only finished the first two. I also loved her Madame Bovary translation. Its the only translation of MB I've read so I can't compare, but what made me buy it was this interview with her where she basically said she decided to translate MB because all the other translations sucked so bad ... so I'm not sure I want to bother with other MBs. I need to check out some of her other translations though. Maybe Blanchot?

(Stupid gossipy fun fact: she used to be married to Paul Auster, and their kid, Daniel, was a DJ/drug dealer that was involved in the Michael Alig ("Party Monster") murder case.)

http://www.incendiarylit.com/2007/12/12/for-your-reading-pleasure-a-mown-lawn-by-lydia-davis/

^^^ one of my favorite of her short stories. I would copy it here, but that would necessitate a lot of italics formatting.

I read that, she introduced Paul Auster to Francis Ponge which led to their love Affair. That's a dreamy love affair!

francis ponge <3

La Fabrique du Pré might be the most amazing piece of literature I've read.

http://quarterlyconversation.com/modernist-anecdotes

q.c. is having a lydia davis extravaganza, this amongst other essays

I like this writer.

also a new yorker story about her this week

I do not like this writer. Or, better put, I do not like the writing of this person.

is there a new book coming or

She is an excellent writer. She makes you think. She makes me think, this writer.

Yep, new book of stories out next week.

All this being true of my friend, it occurs to me that I must not know altogether what I am, either, and that others know certain things about me better than I do, though I think I ought to know all there is to know and I proceed as if I do. Even once I see this, however, I have no choice but to continue to proceed as if I know altogether what I am, though I may also try to guess, from time to time, just what it is that others know that I do not know.

She worked surprisingly well in an EFL classroom, it turned out.

http://www.londonreviewbookshop.co.uk/events/2014/8/cant-and-wont-an-evening-with-lydia-davis

Hopefully there will be a podcast of this event.

I think she's brilliant, but I tried to read a whole collection on holiday and it was too much, you need to approach her sparingly I think, just reading one or two and letting them linger.

I spent July reading The End of the Story and Samuel Johnson is Indignant

I'm enjoying her new book, but so far I think her texts adapted from Flaubert's letters and her brief accounts of dreams tend to outshine her more characteristic pieces.

Hopefully there will be a podcast of this event.

She's done some good interviews recently that are available online -- WNYC Leonard Lopate; KCRW Bookworm.

seems like something i would like. is almost no memory what i want? i found this because i just read i love dick and it's mentioned in this thread.

I prefer 'Samuel Johnson ..' but that's 50% because I read it first

or at least because of all the things i read as a teenager in an attempt to be cool its the one i would be least tempted to dismiss today and to me at least that counts for something

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/books/review/05bkr-bythebook_davis.html?ref=review

She can read in Norwegian!

tick.jpg

i downloaded the big orange complete stories thing onto my phone and read it during brief idle moments like waiting for a bus or in a boring class. a+ recommended

i downloaded the big orange complete stories thing onto my phone. I read it during brief idle moments like waiting for a bus or in a boring class. Or I read the book on my phone. We read books on phones and sometimes these phones are orange but not big. A+ recommended.

thanks alfred

it needs a title

http://lithub.com/lydia-davis-at-the-end-of-the-world/

The big orange short story collection (textured paper! rough pages!!) was my first encounter with her as anything other than an excellent translator & I foolishly sold it when money was tight because I knew I could get 5 bucks for it easy :/

i was in a really bad/weird mood last week and i couldn't read her. got so impatient and annoyed. that ever happen to you? not with her maybe, but with someone you ordinarily like? she felt so precious all of a sudden. and i'm usually so impressed when someone can maintain that same tone page after page but last week it was driving me up a wall. in my head i was shouting: she's the rich man's richard brautigan!

but it'll pass.

My friend basically got the hives from reading "the grouch and old mother" and was furious at me for recommending it.

Although this friend is also someone who's always telling other people what they shouldn't be eating and why not, which is one topic of that story and a recurring topic in Davis's stories.

hi, flopson!

hey :)

every writer should publish their lecture notes for the fancy MFA classes they teach imo

oh god i guess i was wrong to hold out on this

What's amazing is how continuous they are with her actual fiction (opening and expanding its themes) but simultaneously how straightforwardly demystifying they are

i just started reading essays one and it’s really good. i am in quarantine and it’s going to be a very pleasing time chewer upper

lydia could (and did, and still can) get it

https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/a-letter-from-lydia-davis-on-independent-bookshops

New collection not available on Amazon