Essays One

A selection of essays on writing and reading by the master short-fiction writer Lydia Davis Lydia Davis is a writer whose originality, influence, and wit are beyond compare. Jonathan Franzen has called her "a magician of self-consciousness," while Rick Moody hails her as "the best prose stylist in America." And for Claire Messud, "Davis's signal gift is to make us feel alive." Best known for her masterful short stories and translations, Davis's gifts extend equally to her nonfiction. In Essays One, Davis has, for the first time, gathered a selection of essays, commentaries, and lectures composed over the past five decades. In this first of two volumes, her subjects range from her earliest influences to her favorite short stories, from John Ashbery's translation of Rimbaud to Alan Cote's painting, and from the Shepherd's Psalm to early tourist photographs. On display is the development and range of one of the sharpest, most capacious minds writing today.

Lydia Davis is the author of Essays One, a collection of essays on writing, reading, art, memory, and the Bible. She is also the author of The End of the Story: A Novel and many story collections, including Varieties of Disturbance, a finalist for the 2007 National Book Award for Fiction; Can't and Won't (2014); and The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, described by James Wood in The New Yorker as "a grand cumulative achievement." Davis is also the acclaimed translator of Swann's Way and Madame Bovary, both awarded the French-American Foundation Translation Prize, and of many other works of literature. She has been named both a Chevalier and an Officier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government, and in 2020 she received the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story.

Preface THE PRACTICE OF WRITING A Beloved Duck Gets Cooked: Forms and Influences I Commentary on One Very Short Story ("In a House Besieged") From Raw Material to Finished Work: Forms and Influences II A Note on the Word Gubernatorial VISUAL ARTISTS: JOAN MITCHELL Joan Mitchell and Les Bluets, 1973 WRITERS John Ashbery's Translation of Rimbaud's Illuminations Young Pynchon The Story Is the Thing: Lucia Berlin's A Manual for Cleaning Women A Close Look at Two Books by Rae Armantrout Small but Perfectly Formed: Five Favorite Short Stories VISUAL ARTISTS: JOSEPH CORNELL The Impetus Was Delight: A Response by Analogy to the Work of Joseph Cornell THE PRACTICE OF WRITING (2) Sources, Revision, Order, and Endings: Forms and Influences III Revising One Sentence Found Material, Syntax, Brevity, and the Beauty of Awkward Prose: Forms and Influences IV Fragmentary or Unfinished: Barthes, Joubert, Hölderlin, Mallarmé, Flaubert Thirty Recommendations for Good Writing Habits VISUAL ARTISTS: ALAN COTE Energy in Color: Alan Cote's Recent Paintings WRITERS (2) "Emmy Moore's Journal" by Jane Bowles Osama Alomar's Very Short Tales in Fullblood Arabian Haunting the Flea Market: Roger Lewinter's The Attraction of Things Red Mittens: Anselm Hollo's Translation from the Cheremiss In Search of Difficult Edward Dahlberg Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary VISUAL ARTISTS: EARLY TOURIST PHOTOGRAPHS Dutch Scenes: A Portfolio of Early Twentieth-Century Tourist Photographs WRITERS (3) The Problem of Plot Summary in Blanchot's Fiction Stendhal's Alter Ego: The Life of Henry Brulard Maurice Blanchot Absent A Farewell to Michel Butor Michel Leiris's Fibrils, Volume 3 of The Rules of the Game THE BIBLE, MEMORY, AND THE PASSAGE OF TIME As I Was Reading Meeting Abraham Lincoln "Paring Off the Amphibologisms": Jesus Recovered by the Jesus Seminar A Reading of the Shepherd's Psalm Remember the Van Wagenens Acknowledgments and Notes