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3.74 AVERAGE
3.74 AVERAGE
Love Davis, these stories were more about format and structure than I'm used to with her work, but I still enjoyed them. The last story sticks out... other than that her stories are like an aperol spritz - refreshing, tidy, and leaves in a mode to experience.
57 short stories ranging in length from a couple of words to 41 pages. 219 pages total. This is the breakdown:
Loved
"Kafka Cooks Dinner"
"The Caterpillar"
"We Miss You: A Study of Get-Well Letters from a Class of Fourth-Graders"
"Helen and Vi: A Study in Health and Vitality"
Stories: 4/57 (~7%)
Pages: 77/ 219 (~35%)
Unreadable*
"Southward Bound, Reads Westward Ho"
Stories: 1/57 (~2%)
Pages: 4/219 (~2%)
Meh, or eye roll*
The rest of the stories not specifically mentioned.
Stories: 52/57 (~91%)
Pages: 138/219 (~63%)
And somehow this all feels like 4 stars in the irrational blender of my heart.
*Unreadable/eye roll explanation: When artists of any kind employ experimental style without also delivering on content it annoys me. Different + good = culturally enriching; different - good = pretentious hot air.
Loved
"Kafka Cooks Dinner"
"The Caterpillar"
"We Miss You: A Study of Get-Well Letters from a Class of Fourth-Graders"
"Helen and Vi: A Study in Health and Vitality"
Stories: 4/57 (~7%)
Pages: 77/ 219 (~35%)
Unreadable*
"Southward Bound, Reads Westward Ho"
Stories: 1/57 (~2%)
Pages: 4/219 (~2%)
Meh, or eye roll*
The rest of the stories not specifically mentioned.
Stories: 52/57 (~91%)
Pages: 138/219 (~63%)
And somehow this all feels like 4 stars in the irrational blender of my heart.
*Unreadable/eye roll explanation: When artists of any kind employ experimental style without also delivering on content it annoys me. Different + good = culturally enriching; different - good = pretentious hot air.
Fascinating departure from
the conventional approach to the short story. Lydia Davis is clearly in a league of her own. Some of the stories were delightful, while others were hard for me to connect with. Either way,
I enjoyed how they made me rethink the way stories are written.
the conventional approach to the short story. Lydia Davis is clearly in a league of her own. Some of the stories were delightful, while others were hard for me to connect with. Either way,
I enjoyed how they made me rethink the way stories are written.
‰ЫПIt is not what you want to be doing. It is that you are passing the time. You are waiting until it is a certain hour and you are in a certain condition so that you can go to sleep.‰Ыќ
Mostly short-shorts with some longer pieces thrown in. Most of this was good--funny, entertaining, thought-provoking--and a couple of pieces dragged a bit.
I took a break from this in the middle, but I'm glad I went back and finished it up, if only for the "What We Learn From the Baby" piece.
I took a break from this in the middle, but I'm glad I went back and finished it up, if only for the "What We Learn From the Baby" piece.
I could see the objective value of many of these stories, but they just left me cold emotionally and I remembered very little about each one as I turned the page to the next. I felt at best passively bored and at worst actively annoyed by most of them. This was somewhat disappointing to me, as I remember mostly liking the things I've read of Davis's in the past. Maybe I just wasn't in the right mood for appreciating her particular approach this time around.
Lydia Davis’ short stories are brief and strange - all the more strange because they’re about extremely mundane subjects, like parenthood, aging, communication between romantic partners. She approaches all of these subjects like an alien naturalist explaining them as though they’re profound and haunting. I didn’t love this book as much as her others but it’s still compelling.
I had a good feeling about this book. I liked what I read in the bookstore. Some of the "stories" are indeed clever and insightful and wonderfully observed, but at least half is laborious and even deadly boring and feels like a misplaced diary entry or sketch. It works now and then, but on balance I feel like she's getting away with something...