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.
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Lydia Davis was born in Northampton, Massachusetts and educated at Barnard College. Her novels and short stories have received numerous awards, including the Whiting Foundation Writers’ Award for Fiction, the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, and the Man Booker International Prize. Her collection, Varieties of Disturbance: Stories was a National Book Award finalist. She has also produced several new translations of French literary classics, including Proust’s Swann’s Way and Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. Davis is one of only three authors to have their work featured in the Best American Short Stories and the Best American Poetry series.
Janet Metzger, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, has performed as a stage, television, voice, and film actor and as a jazz vocalist in hotels and supper clubs. For five years she was the voice of Headline News, now HLN, during which time she also promoted features and news stories for CNN and CNN International. She is a graduate of Florida State University.