tl;dr
― Aimless, Tuesday, 21 February 2012 23:10 (twelve years ago) link
:D
― jed_, Tuesday, 21 February 2012 23:11 (twelve years ago) link
“A Double Negative”
At a certain point in her life, she realizes it is not so much that she wants to have a child as that she does not want to not have a child, or not to have had a child.
― jed_, Tuesday, 21 February 2012 23:15 (twelve years ago) link
"Samuel Johnson Is Indignant:"
that Scotland has so few trees.
― desperado, rough rider (thomp), Tuesday, 21 February 2012 23:32 (twelve years ago) link
yes she is the best the absolute best
― max, Tuesday, 21 February 2012 23:33 (twelve years ago) link
"Certain Knowledge from Herodotus"
These are the facts about the fish in the Nile:
― desperado, rough rider (thomp), Tuesday, 21 February 2012 23:33 (twelve years ago) link
My Mother's Reaction to My Travel Plans
Gainsville! It's too bad your cousin is dead!
― max, Tuesday, 21 February 2012 23:35 (twelve years ago) link
i. i bought her collected short stories for v little money recently and got it dirty before i ever opened it and let it languish for a while because i was sad about that
ii. opening it now, it turns out there is only one collection of hers i have yet to read
iii. bah
― desperado, rough rider (thomp), Tuesday, 21 February 2012 23:36 (twelve years ago) link
i love the cover design for her collected stories but i hate that thing they do with the pages where they dont cut them and theyre a pain to flip through
― max, Tuesday, 21 February 2012 23:37 (twelve years ago) link
hey guys if we have a 'best lydia davis short story collection' poll do u think ppl will vote
― desperado, rough rider (thomp), Tuesday, 21 February 2012 23:39 (twelve years ago) link
it will be like the action film poll, only almost exactly not like the action film poll
"Separate Bedrooms"
They have moved into separate bedrooms now.That night she dreams she is holding him in her arms. He dreams he is having dinner with Ben Jonson.
― desperado, rough rider (thomp), Tuesday, 21 February 2012 23:40 (twelve years ago) link
thanks so much for those, jed, the first particularly, they're gorgeous; i've read a little lydia davis, & bought break it down for friends keen on short stories, but i really ought to read her properly. is anyone as keen on any of the novels as they are her shortform stuff? me and my friend need a book club book.
― john-claude van donne (schlump), Tuesday, 21 February 2012 23:42 (twelve years ago) link
she just has one novel iirc, i have it but have never read it
― max, Tuesday, 21 February 2012 23:42 (twelve years ago) link
"Money"
I don't want any more gifts, cards, phone calls, prizes, clothes, friends, letters, books, souvenirs, pets, magazines, land, machines, houses, entertainments, honors, good news, dinners, jewels, vacations, flowers or telegrams. I just want money.
"Acknowledgement"
I have only to addthat the plates in the present volumehave been carefully re-etchedby Mr. Cuff.
― desperado, rough rider (thomp), Tuesday, 21 February 2012 23:42 (twelve years ago) link
her novel is tao lin's favorite novel, now try and read it
― desperado, rough rider (thomp), Tuesday, 21 February 2012 23:43 (twelve years ago) link
― max, Tuesday, 21 February 2012 23:42 (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
ty. i was thinking of you when her name came up actually, i really want to read chris kraus' i love dick & i think there is an old ilx post in which you enthuse about that & a davis book. my library's got collected stories, so i'm going to pick it up tomorrow.
my friend liked her flaubert translation, also.
xp but tao lin also liked richard yates & the sixth sense though, right, so
― john-claude van donne (schlump), Tuesday, 21 February 2012 23:47 (twelve years ago) link
The best for one-liners, but she can also cut a mean paragraph, as on her translation of Proust.
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 21 February 2012 23:49 (twelve years ago) link
huh, i havent thought about chris kraus in a long time! i still love lydia davis. while were talking about academic-y woman writers who defy genre tags, i am reading anne carson's glass irony and god right now
― max, Tuesday, 21 February 2012 23:50 (twelve years ago) link
i don't know her, i will look her up. i guess this is a scene; i just read & loved eileen myles' inferno, in which kraus & a zillion other people figure peripherally, & have been photocopying pages from it to inflict on people. i think there's a piece on CK in the new n+1 also.
― john-claude van donne (schlump), Tuesday, 21 February 2012 23:55 (twelve years ago) link
part of the reason for starting this thread is so i could ask people to explain particular stories. so can someone tell me about "samuel johnson is indignant"? i don't get it. but she makes me love not getting it so i don't care too much.
― jed_, Tuesday, 21 February 2012 23:56 (twelve years ago) link
http://www.canongate.tv/media/catalog/product/cache/1/small_image/307x307/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/9/7/9780862415884_96.jpg
― desperado, rough rider (thomp), Tuesday, 21 February 2012 23:58 (twelve years ago) link
"A double Negative" is alarming. they way she sketches the life of a woman around that one sentence? breathtaking.
"In this condition", curiously, is one that brought me to the verge of tears.
― jed_, Tuesday, 21 February 2012 23:58 (twelve years ago) link
one of a few displays of her reducing what she does with found texts elsewhere to a deliberately ridiculous minimum, i have been mainly quoting this sort of thing bcz someone said 'tl:dr' and it is quite quick to type these, actually i prefer her writing longer things
― desperado, rough rider (thomp), Tuesday, 21 February 2012 23:59 (twelve years ago) link
okay there aren't many trees in the Hebrides but what else?
― jed_, Tuesday, 21 February 2012 23:59 (twelve years ago) link
actually i prefer her writing longer things
on the whole, me too.
― jed_, Wednesday, 22 February 2012 00:00 (twelve years ago) link
almost no memory > samuel johnson is indignant > the end of the story >>> varieties of disturbance,
i think. haven't read 'break it down', which is the first one. nor have i read her bovary, nor her proust.
xp i don't know there's much more to it! other than: i have read this and had a reaction to it, and here i am presenting it as a thing which is not a part of a longer text
― desperado, rough rider (thomp), Wednesday, 22 February 2012 00:02 (twelve years ago) link
it is funny that samuel johnson is annoyed by a lack of trees
it is funny that there is a book which is a part of the canon or a thing which if not part of it stands by it and in relation to it in which space is devoted to samuel johnson being annoyed by scotland not having enough trees
it is funny that the funniness of this can stand alone / it is a funny idea to pretend it can stand alone and give it its own title, when it is blatantly a pointless fact
― desperado, rough rider (thomp), Wednesday, 22 February 2012 00:04 (twelve years ago) link
thanks thomp.
I've read her proust! but that's as far as i got with him.
― jed_, Wednesday, 22 February 2012 00:05 (twelve years ago) link
it's a reduction of what she is doing with 'historical fiction' in smth like 'lord royston's tour', i guess -- here are all these maybe details marooned in the past, and which can be reanimated in fiction
which fits into her larger concerns about (blech ...) memory and language and writing
― desperado, rough rider (thomp), Wednesday, 22 February 2012 00:07 (twelve years ago) link
"Happiest Moment"
If you ask her what is a favorite story she has written, she will hesitate for a long time and then say it may be this story that she read in a book once: an English-language teacher in China asked his Chinese student to say what was the happiest moment in his life. The student hesitated for a long time. At last he smiled with embarrassment and said that his wife had once gone to Beijing and eaten duck there, and she often told him about it, and he would have to say that the happiest moment of his life was her trip, and the eating of the duck.
― desperado, rough rider (thomp), Wednesday, 22 February 2012 00:09 (twelve years ago) link
really like that one
― the "intenterface" (difficult listening hour), Wednesday, 22 February 2012 00:12 (twelve years ago) link
heh, nabisco used that story in another thread to try and teach shakey mo about fiction
it didnt work very well
― max, Wednesday, 22 February 2012 00:57 (twelve years ago) link
(btw i dont mean to hijack the thread but schlump anne carson is great and i really love her and just bought her translation of euripides and am v excited to read it)
― max, Wednesday, 22 February 2012 00:58 (twelve years ago) link
Anne Carson is my favorite contemporary poet; her Bronte thing was fantastic -- in every sense.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 22 February 2012 01:00 (twelve years ago) link
yeah i was just googling around, she sounds v interesting; the text of the glass poem in yr book is online here but i might get the husbandsy epic poem one that my library has, first. i have a two-man book club with my friend, she maybe fills a space, i am really already sold by EPIC POEM OF RELATIONSHIP DECLINE, which keeps coming up.
just to re-rail back to lydia davis, thomp, break it down's really the only one i've read much of, & i liked it a lot - it's claustrophobic and lonesome and sharp edged. just in case it's fear that it will be not so great/is first book-ish, rather than anything else that's held you back.
― john-claude van donne (schlump), Wednesday, 22 February 2012 01:02 (twelve years ago) link
oh lord i love lydia davis and i only found out about her from ilx quite recently, possibly in that thread where nabisco was trying to teach shakey mo about fiction.
i keep buying her collected short stories for people in hope of finding someone else who will love her. in fact it is my cousin's birthday on thursday, so maybe i will buy another copy of the collected short stories for her. i don't think she really reads fiction but i feel like she might look in the book by accident and find something she likes, maybe.
― inspector george gentlyfallingblood (c sharp major), Wednesday, 22 February 2012 01:22 (twelve years ago) link
My only digressive link here I swear, Taking a break from the Anne Carson Glass Essay link above to mention this is pretty amazing (writers get so exhilarated when they get public attention while talking to a friend about writing instead of writing)http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5420/the-art-of-poetry-no-88-anne-carson
― dow, Wednesday, 22 February 2012 01:32 (twelve years ago) link
thread where nabisco was trying to teach shakey mo
lol i half-remember this? anyway
did anyone else read samuel delany's paris review interview? it has the most depressing opening ever:
"Between the time you were nineteen and your twenty-second birthday, you wrote and sold five novels, and another four by the time you were twenty-six, plus a volume of short stories. Fifty years later, considerably more than half that work is still in print. Was being a prodigy important to you?"
― desperado, rough rider (thomp), Wednesday, 22 February 2012 09:23 (twelve years ago) link
haha that is the 3rd time on ilx that story's been written out, i remember nabisco talking about it and then it was also on another thread im sure. anyway its beautiful
― just sayin, Wednesday, 22 February 2012 09:51 (twelve years ago) link
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?
― JacobSanders, Wednesday, 22 February 2012 10:37 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― Fonz Hour (Eazy), Wednesday, 22 February 2012 14:56 (twelve years ago) link
i keep buying her collected short stories for people
I have bought two copies so far and am about to buy another.
― jed_, Wednesday, 22 February 2012 15:09 (twelve years ago) link
“Example of the Continuing Past Tense in a Hotel Room”
Your housekeeper has been Shelly.
― jed_, Wednesday, 22 February 2012 15:36 (twelve years ago) link
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, Wednesday, 22 February 2012 21:19 (twelve years ago) link
estela i kind of cant believe youd never read lydia davis before!
― max, Wednesday, 22 February 2012 21:22 (twelve years ago) link
thankyou!
― estela, Wednesday, 22 February 2012 21:24 (twelve years ago) link
haha
― horseshoe, Wednesday, 22 February 2012 21:30 (twelve years ago) link
i've just been admiring her face on google images, she has got exactly the right face.
― estela, Wednesday, 22 February 2012 21:32 (twelve years ago) link
yes, that is an excellent face
― horseshoe, Wednesday, 22 February 2012 21:33 (twelve years ago) link
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/nov/10/feel-compassion-for-beleaguered-proust?CMP=twt_b-gdnreview
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 13 November 2017 23:28 (six years ago) link
That book of letters is OK. But it doesn't deliver the comedy of a noise-maddened Proust I was hoping for. I did like the way he'll go on for pages about some fabric or whatever, but mentions in one sentence that he no longer has a secretary because the guy fell out of a plane into the sea, and offers no further details.
― Mince Pramthwart (James Morrison), Tuesday, 14 November 2017 03:44 (six years ago) link
'ESSAYS' next -- later this year. The best of her essays on Reading & Writing, beginning with 'A Beloved Duck Gets Cooked: Forms & Influences I'— Simon Prosser (@HamishH1931) March 1, 2019
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 1 March 2019 18:01 (five years ago) link
Nearly here:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374148850
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 16 October 2019 14:30 (four years ago) link
Have not yet connected with her own stories, but love her translation of Swann's Way---can't read French, haven't read previous translations, but as a stand-alone experience, it's amazing.
― dow, Wednesday, 16 October 2019 16:31 (four years ago) link
otm, i switched to her translation halfway through reading another mustier one and the difference was shocking
― flopson, Wednesday, 16 October 2019 18:27 (four years ago) link
sry i did that for madame bovary
― flopson, Wednesday, 16 October 2019 18:28 (four years ago) link
also i love her short stories
What I've read of her criticism has been really great. Her tastes in lit are very similar to mine too.
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 17 October 2019 14:39 (four years ago) link
have you ever read joy williams?
― plax (ico), Thursday, 17 October 2019 17:09 (four years ago) link
they may not be as similar as I sometimes think because I read them at the same time. Joy Williams is quite gothic.
― plax (ico), Thursday, 17 October 2019 17:10 (four years ago) link
i love joy williams. she should be hipper imo, it's really hard to find her books
― flopson, Thursday, 17 October 2019 17:37 (four years ago) link
she's kinda the anti-Lydia Davis tho lol
Yeah I guess, but they are both really interested in dreams and dream interpretations and they both have a large interest in gaps and ommissions.
― plax (ico), Thursday, 17 October 2019 19:09 (four years ago) link
I will check Joy Williams out, thanks!
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 17 October 2019 21:47 (four years ago) link
it's been a while since i've read either and there was a long gap between reading them so don't remember too specifics, but just in terms of prose style williams' sentences are so knotty long and wild whereas davis' are immaculate short and cute
― flopson, Thursday, 17 October 2019 22:01 (four years ago) link
I was so into Gordon Lish's baroque-ification of Carver's posthumous collection Cathedral that I followed up with other authors he edited, this was my intro to Williams. She's great, I read a collection of hers in a couple of days
― i could chug a keg of you (flamboyant goon tie included), Thursday, 17 October 2019 23:21 (four years ago) link
Sorry, what's Williams' connection to Carver?
― What a ridiculous clusterfuck of totally uncool jokers (jed_), Thursday, 17 October 2019 23:55 (four years ago) link
Oh, they have/had the same editor?
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've been there, too. it is hard to shake the regrets. it can take a decade or more of quietly mourning for the loss. (sighs)
― A is for (Aimless), Friday, 18 October 2019 00:07 (four years ago) link
it’s still in print. i can buy you a copy if u want bro
― flopson, Saturday, 19 October 2019 15:03 (four years ago) link
lol
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 19 October 2019 15:05 (four years ago) link
The original paperback collections I bought for a buck apiece
xyzzzz u r herne hill right? i'm leaving on wednesday (moving to islington) and discovered I have two copies of joy williams escapes if u want one? otherwise its going to oxfam. not sure how i'd get it to you i guess dm me if ur interested.
― plax (ico), Sunday, 27 October 2019 20:22 (four years ago) link
Hi plz indeed I am. Let me try and DM you my address now
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 28 October 2019 10:22 (four years ago) link
*plax
Just did it now, did you get it.
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 28 October 2019 10:25 (four years ago) link
got it!
― plax (ico), Monday, 28 October 2019 11:26 (four years ago) link
Thanks 👍
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 28 October 2019 11:47 (four years ago) link
my pleasure. hope you enjoy it. I read an interview with her once where she said something about how her difficulty with writing dialogue was solved when she realised that she could make her characters say whatever she wanted them to. it might have been in her paris review interview which is very good and worth reading. I think she is very good, honored guest is the collection I like the most and escapes is patchier but the good stories are very good and there's a couple that I have read more than several times.
― plax (ico), Monday, 28 October 2019 13:00 (four years ago) link
👏👏👏
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 28 October 2019 13:59 (four years ago) link
Omg did you get this?
― plax (ico), Saturday, 16 November 2019 01:28 (four years ago) link
Hey plax sorry should've updated. Yes thank you v much for this. Hope the move went well.
― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 16 November 2019 15:47 (four years ago) link
Lol, I don't know why this suddenly seemed urgent late last night!
― plax (ico), Saturday, 16 November 2019 16:35 (four years ago) link
Hope you enjoy it
essays 1 is incredible. i read the ‘lydias tips for writing’ one last night
― flopson, Saturday, 16 November 2019 19:16 (four years ago) link
essays 1 is an insane book. the thing i've enjoyed most after the end of the story
― plax (ico), Monday, 16 March 2020 21:40 (four years ago) link
Agreed. I read the essays on writing three weeks ago; they had their effect.
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 16 March 2020 21:53 (four years ago) link
might buy this for the lockdown.
― Alain the Botton (jed_), Monday, 16 March 2020 22:04 (four years ago) link
essential for any writer. it’s incredible how much insight into the craft she gives
― flopson, Monday, 16 March 2020 23:31 (four years ago) link
hi, flopson!
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 16 March 2020 23:41 (four years ago) link
hey :)
― flopson, Monday, 16 March 2020 23:47 (four years ago) link
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
― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Tuesday, 17 March 2020 00:12 (four years ago) link
What's amazing is how continuous they are with her actual fiction (opening and expanding its themes) but simultaneously how straightforwardly demystifying they are
― plax (ico), Tuesday, 17 March 2020 06:47 (four years ago) link
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
― estela, Friday, 20 March 2020 00:24 (four years ago) link
lydia could (and did, and still can) get it
― mookieproof, Tuesday, 18 July 2023 04:43 (one year ago) link
https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/a-letter-from-lydia-davis-on-independent-bookshopsNew collection not available on Amazon
― Boris Yitsbin (wins), Saturday, 14 October 2023 08:28 (eleven months ago) link