Reading Lydia Davis inspires critics to come up with fun metaphors to describe the experience, so here's mine: her "Collected Stories" is kind of like a modern art museum. For folks accustomed to representational art-- which in literature, I guess would entail plots, character development, conflict, dialogue, themes, resolution etc-- the museum of Lydia Davis must be a baffling and frequently annoying place. "How does this one line constitute a STORY?," such people might ask, perhaps rightfully. However, to people who are a little more, let us say, "open" to "modern" developments-- things like intertextuality, "bricolage," unreliable narrators, stylistic flights-of-fancy, and irresolution-- the museum of L.D. is a pretty interesting little place, if not always a satisfying one. Some of her works are tremendously moving-- she is excellent at describing children, animals, and death-- and will be returned to several times. Others do not resonate at all-- I find the longer pieces here very hit-and-miss, especially those written in the clinical style of sociologist (though "I Miss You" is nice)-- and you'll forget about them almost immediately after your initial encounter. The majority of the pieces, though, will make you smile, and maybe say "huh!," and maybe make you wonder how the devil the woman did it/them, even if your soul remains untouched. You read Davis for her style, and that style is flawless, sometimes to the detriment of her "substance." But unlike, say, Donald Barthelme, there is a sense of reality here. Things ARE at stake in Davis's work, so even if she is not always engaging your heart, you can usually count on some kind of wit, or philosophical insight, or stroke of observational precision. And if those things are not to be found in the story you're reading, you can always, you know, skip: there are like a million stories here. Different strokes for different folks... And Davis definitely paints in many different strokes. This is an "experiential review"--I can't recommend that you read the book or not, but if you are interested at all in fiction, you should definitely be exposed at some point to the stories of Lydia Davis. Whether you can get through 733 pages of them is another "story". Sometimes I didn't think I could--I read it off and on for more than half a year--but there was something completely compelling about the book (which felt great in my hands when I was reading it—it’s a handsome object). There are 4 collections of stories in the book: Break it Down (1986); Almost No Memory (1997); Samuel Johnson is Indignant (2001); Varieties of Disturbance (2007).Are these stories? Some of them appear to be. But some of them definitely seem like prose poems to me--and I liked that blend. Some of the stories are only a line long. Most are a few pages; some are 20 pages or longer. Overall, I found the stories fascinating--there is an intensity of detail (but often NOT the details that I was most curious about--these seemed deliberately withheld) which makes for a richness which is in strange contrast to the often minimal style of the prose. Sometimes I felt depressed when I was reading the book as the prose took me into depressing situations like petty fights between a quarrelsome couple--the tone of the thought brought through the prose was utterly familiar and took me back as if the words had been my own thoughts. Yet many of stories made me laugh out loud. There is something interesting about the way Lydia Davis uses repetition and avoids pronouns in certain expected places--it defines her style and after reading the book for a bit I would find that same voice talking in my head and narrating the minute events in my life or making observations. In many stories in the book, the narrator is "the stranger", the outsider observing a world and observing herself in that world. Many of the third person narrated stories are about these kinds of strangers too--the man who buys a house to renovate in the countryside who cannot act to change the house, the old traveller looking for his lost brother amongst Northern indigenous people who cannot understand his language, the nobleman making a tour through Russia and so on. Miscommunication and misunderstanding is definitely a recurring theme in the stories.Also, the way she treats emotion is unconventional--the sometimes analytical yet fiercely observant voice covers areas of human experience which are normally connected to strong emotions--sometimes their absence in the story mimics a deadness which I found heavy; in other places, as a reader, I supplied the emotions appropriate to the situation though the story did not SEEM to actively seek to draw them out of me. In the last collection, loss and grief are evoked poignantly and powerfully through understatement as a narrator tries to describe aspects of a situation factually or analytically--the emotion rustles up from the underbelly. The power of her original form in these instances (for example "How Shall I Mourn Them"?) deeply impressed me. In some places her descriptions of simple daily situations between people bring into awareness their innate strangeness as the description of what happens becomes a kind of prose mathematics. For example, in "How he is often right" the narrator says:"Often I think that his idea of what we should do is wrong, and my idea is right. Yet I know that he has often been right before, when I was wrong. And so I let him make his wrong decision, telling myself, though I can't believe it, that his wrong decision may actually be right."Sometimes after reading several stories I would feel starved for joy, passion, and lyrical virtuosity in prose--but that just isn't the type of treasure you can find in this book. There are stories with quiet or strong pleasure in them--and they stand out. I often finished a story and thought one of two things--and often both: 1. “Wow!”2. “What am I supposed to make of that?!?!?!”There is the mundane brought into precise awareness. There is fantastical absurdity (I loved “The Race of the Patient Motorcyclists”). There are puzzles, puzzles, and more puzzles. This book changed the way I look at fiction. Reading it was quite an experience.
What do You think about Contos Completos (2012)?
I read *some* of this. But I'm sure it's all great.
—Tammy
Read these stories as closely as you read poetry.
—bre
