Much of Lydia Davis ‘ short fiction could fit on a postage stamp. Maybe a more modern comparison would be that her short stories fit nicely into a Facebook status update. When discussing her work, most of the discussion is spent trying to figure out how to catagorize what she has written–short story? parable? anecdote? prose poem?
Her short story, Insomnia, reads: “My body aches so–it must be this heavy bed pressing up against me.”
That’s all there is to it.
Lydia Davis has mastered her own invented genre with such success that she won the 2013 Man Booker International Prize (worth roughly $90,000) in acknowledgement of her collected works.
Lydia Davis’ Collected Short Stories are a beautiful exploration in the power of editing. The stories are like model ships in glass-bottles–the larger world captured in minute detail, yet so concisely organized in the form. Davis is at her best when illustrating what is most familiar:
Disagreement
He said she was disagreeing with him. She said no, that was not true, he was disagreeing with her. This was about the screen door. That it should not be left open was her idea, because of the flies; his was that it could be left open first thing in the morning, when there were no flies on the deck. Anyway, he said, most of the flies came from other parts of the building: in fact, he was probably letting more of them out than in.
Not all of Davis’ stories are this brief. But they are all tightly-cropped. Although her stories are not expansive, when read they together, depict a multi-faceted portrait of life.
Comments are closed.