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Almost No Memory: Stories
Philosophical inquiry, examinations of language, and involuted domestic disputes are the focus of Lydia Davis’s inventive collection of short fiction, Almost No Memory. In each of these stories, Davis reveals an empathic, sometimes shattering understanding of human relationships.
220 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1997
53 people are currently reading
1637 people want to read
About the author
Lydia Davis
348 books1,442 followersLydia Davis, acclaimed fiction writer and translator, is famous in literary circles for her extremely brief and brilliantly inventive short stories. In fall 2003 she received one of 25 MacArthur Foundation “Genius” awards. In granting the award the MacArthur Foundation praised Davis’s work for showing “how language itself can entertain, how all that what one word says, and leaves unsaid, can hold a reader’s interest. . . . Davis grants readers a glimpse of life’s previously invisible details, revealing new sources of philosophical insights and beauty.” In 2013 She was the winner of the Man Booker International prize.
Davis’s recent collection, “Varieties of Disturbance” (May 2007), was featured on the front cover of the “Los Angeles Times Book Review” and garnered a starred review from “Publishers Weekly.” Her “Samuel Johnson Is Indignant” (2001) was praised by “Elle” magazine for its “Highly intelligent, wildly entertaining stories, bound by visionary, philosophical, comic prose—part Gertrude Stein, part Simone Weil, and pure Lydia Davis.”
Davis is also a celebrated translator of French literature into English. The French government named her a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters for her fiction and her distinguished translations of works by Maurice Blanchot, Pierre Jean Jouve, Michel Butor and others.
Davis recently published a new translation (the first in more than 80 years) of Marcel Proust’s masterpiece, “Swann’s Way” (2003), the first volume of Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time.” A story of childhood and sexual jealousy set in fin de siecle France, “Swann’s Way” is widely regarded as one of the most important literary works of the 20th century.
The “Sunday Telegraph” (London) called the new translation “A triumph [that] will bring this inexhaustible artwork to new audiences throughout the English-speaking world.” Writing for the “Irish Times,” Frank Wynne said, “What soars in this new version is the simplicity of language and fidelity to the cambers of Proust’s prose… Davis’ translation is magnificent, precise.”
Davis’s previous works include “Almost No Memory” (stories, 1997), “The End of the Story” (novel, 1995), “Break It Down” (stories, 1986), “Story and Other Stories” (1983), and “The Thirteenth Woman” (stories, 1976).
Grace Paley wrote of “Almost No Memory” that Lydia Davis is the kind of writer who “makes you say, ‘Oh, at last!’—brains, language, energy, a playfulness with form, and what appears to be a generous nature.” The collection was chosen as one of the “25 Favorite Books of 1997” by the “Voice Literary Supplement” and one of the “100 Best Books of 1997” by the “Los Angeles Times.”
Davis first received serious critical attention for her collection of stories, “Break It Down,” which was selected as a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. The book’s positive critical reception helped Davis win a prestigious Whiting Writer’s Award in 1988.
She is the daughter of Robert Gorham Davis and Hope Hale Davis. From 1974 to 1978 Davis was married to Paul Auster, with whom she has a son, Daniel Auster. Davis is currently married to painter Alan Cote, with whom she has a son, Theo Cote. She is a professor of creative writing at University at Albany, SUNY.
Davis is considered hugely influential by a generation of writers including Jonathan Franzen, David Foster Wallace and Dave Eggers, who once wrote that she "blows the roof off of so many of our assumptions about what constitutes short fiction."
Davis’s recent collection, “Varieties of Disturbance” (May 2007), was featured on the front cover of the “Los Angeles Times Book Review” and garnered a starred review from “Publishers Weekly.” Her “Samuel Johnson Is Indignant” (2001) was praised by “Elle” magazine for its “Highly intelligent, wildly entertaining stories, bound by visionary, philosophical, comic prose—part Gertrude Stein, part Simone Weil, and pure Lydia Davis.”
Davis is also a celebrated translator of French literature into English. The French government named her a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters for her fiction and her distinguished translations of works by Maurice Blanchot, Pierre Jean Jouve, Michel Butor and others.
Davis recently published a new translation (the first in more than 80 years) of Marcel Proust’s masterpiece, “Swann’s Way” (2003), the first volume of Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time.” A story of childhood and sexual jealousy set in fin de siecle France, “Swann’s Way” is widely regarded as one of the most important literary works of the 20th century.
The “Sunday Telegraph” (London) called the new translation “A triumph [that] will bring this inexhaustible artwork to new audiences throughout the English-speaking world.” Writing for the “Irish Times,” Frank Wynne said, “What soars in this new version is the simplicity of language and fidelity to the cambers of Proust’s prose… Davis’ translation is magnificent, precise.”
Davis’s previous works include “Almost No Memory” (stories, 1997), “The End of the Story” (novel, 1995), “Break It Down” (stories, 1986), “Story and Other Stories” (1983), and “The Thirteenth Woman” (stories, 1976).
Grace Paley wrote of “Almost No Memory” that Lydia Davis is the kind of writer who “makes you say, ‘Oh, at last!’—brains, language, energy, a playfulness with form, and what appears to be a generous nature.” The collection was chosen as one of the “25 Favorite Books of 1997” by the “Voice Literary Supplement” and one of the “100 Best Books of 1997” by the “Los Angeles Times.”
Davis first received serious critical attention for her collection of stories, “Break It Down,” which was selected as a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. The book’s positive critical reception helped Davis win a prestigious Whiting Writer’s Award in 1988.
She is the daughter of Robert Gorham Davis and Hope Hale Davis. From 1974 to 1978 Davis was married to Paul Auster, with whom she has a son, Daniel Auster. Davis is currently married to painter Alan Cote, with whom she has a son, Theo Cote. She is a professor of creative writing at University at Albany, SUNY.
Davis is considered hugely influential by a generation of writers including Jonathan Franzen, David Foster Wallace and Dave Eggers, who once wrote that she "blows the roof off of so many of our assumptions about what constitutes short fiction."
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 132 reviews
March 3, 2018
Losing Sleep
A woman wanted the Cubs to win, and thought surely everyone was rooting for them, because they had not won since 1908. But her husband, a White Sox fan, assured her this was not so. This had come up before, but now it distressed her more. Both of them had grown up on the South Side, White Sox territory. She wondered whether she should not root for the Cubs because of this. Maybe they would just lose and she could forget about it.
All right, that’s all the Davis-style fiction you’ll see in this review (except for her own).
Almost No Memory (AMN, 1997) is the second of the four books of short fiction in The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis – following Break It Down (BID, 1986).
How does AMN compare to BID? AMN is longer by 25 pages, and contains almost twenty more stories – so, more of an emphasis on the very short pieces: 20 of the 51 stories fit on a page, and another 16 fit on two pages.
Longer stories
Of the nine longest stories (six or more pages) the most curious is the twenty-five page behemoth Lord Royston’s Tour. In the Acknowledgements on the reverse of the title page of Collected Stories we find, “Lord Royston’s Tour was adapted from The Remains of Viscount Royston: A Memoir of His Life by the Rev. Henry Pepys, London, 1838.” And, indeed, Davis has discussed this several times in different interviews. The “Lord Royston” of the story is Philip Yorke, Viscount Royston (1784-1808). The book Davis’ story is “adapted from” contains correspondence that the young Viscount sent back to his father on a great journey he undertook in 1806, at the age of twenty-two.
Of this story, Davis has said, “Nothing in the story was invented, but I did a lot of rearranging and combining or condensing of his material.” The format is almost that of a tiny novel, since there are about as many set-off headings to material (like chapter titles?) as there are pages. Most of the narrative describes Royston’s journey through Russia: the trials and tribulations (and sometimes pleasant interludes) he experienced. A brief excerpt:
In what sense of the word is this “story” fictional? I would say that recounting the actual experiences described by Royston by condensing, rearranging, and introducing her own words, would probably qualify as post-modern “fiction”. It is a very interesting, and somewhat ominous, story. And of course, by telling it in the third person, Davis has divorced it from presumably the first person of Royston’s letters.
And at the same time, the narrative doesn't sound like a biographical recounting gleaned from Royston's letters; rather, it has the sound and feel of fiction.
A few comments on some of the other longer stories.
St. Martin. A stark story of a couple caretaking a country house for the better part of a year. They are both trying to write, but must get by on so little money that one wonders how they persevere. (And where is this St. Martin? I got the impression somehow that it was in France, but there are nine or ten different towns/areas in France with this name.)
What Was Interesting. Loved it. Opening line, “It is hard for her to write this story, too, or rather she should say it is hard for her to write it well.”
Glenn Gould. The writer loves watching reruns of the Mary Tyler Moore Show, and comes to have a fixation on Glenn Gould when she learns that he also was a fan.
The story seems to make unstated connections between the odd mental states of Gould and the narrator.
Mr. Knockly. Very dark.
Examples of Confusion. The funniest of the longer ones, arranged in 15 numbered sections of a paragraph or two. Example:
The shorter pieces
The only way to really convey what Davis’ very short fiction is like is to quote it, but before I do some of that I’ll try to convey some general information.
First, about half these stories have a first person narrator. In her previous book it was about a third.
Many of the stories are definitely downers. These range from some which are mildly disturbing to a couple which are downright horrifying. There are over a dozen of these stories. Here are some of them, with my brief characterizations.
The Thirteenth Woman disturbing
A Natural Disaster horrifying
The Rape of the Tanuk Women the title says it, though there’s a bit of magical realism
Love almost repulsive
The Fish Tank predatory
The Cedar Trees grim – like a fairy tale
Smoke dystopian
There’s also a set of pieces which could strike some readers as “soft downers”. Realistic pieces on the day-to-day trials and tribulations of two people living together, perhaps wife and husband. This type of story is one of Davis’ favorites it would seem.
A few (or all) of Davis’ words from some of the stories I enjoyed most.
The Other is:
Foucault and Pencil. Hilarious. Begins, “Sat down to read Foucault with pencil in hand. Knocked over glass of water onto waiting-room floor. Put down Foucault and pencil, mopped up water, refilled glass. Sat down to read Foucault with pencil in hand.” Story continues with counselling session about “situation fraught with conflict”; narrator leaves session, goes to subway; instead of reading Foucault thinks about situation, recent argument concerning travel; “argument itself became form of travel, each sentence taking arguers on to next sentence, next sentence on to next, and in the end, arguers were not where they had started, were also tired from traveling and spending so long face-to-face in each other’s company”; after several subway stations narrator stops thinking about argument, takes up Foucault; Foucault in French hard to understand; narrator discovers why some sentences harder to understand than others; many reasons, for example, some long sentences understandable part by part, “but so long, forgot beginning before reaching end; … … … story continues onto a third page, and concludes “Put down Foucault and pencil, took out notebook and made note of what was now at least understood about lack of understanding reading Foucault, looked up at other passengers, thought again about argument, made note of same question about argument as before though with stress on different word.”
On domestic tranquility - Disagreement
And one of those disturbing, ominous ones - The Outing
Verdict
I love Davis’ short fictions, or whatever you want to call them. You never put one down in the middle, because by the time you’re at the middle you’re almost at the end. There is always time to read one, and then time to read one more. They’re like small pieces of candy, too small to feel guilty about eating.
But unlike candy, you can consume them over and over; if you do, you find that some that didn’t impress at first reading (probably because you were distracted by a fly or a noise) do come into focus when a couple minutes are available for a re-read.
No, these aren’t stories by Joyce, or Chekhov, Borges or Henry James. But they’re remarkably pleasing, anyway.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Previous review: The Periodic Table
Random review: Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract well, another review gone ... another book completely deleted from my library
Next review: The Hundred Days
Previous library review: Break It Down
Next library review: Samuel Johnson Is Indignant
A woman wanted the Cubs to win, and thought surely everyone was rooting for them, because they had not won since 1908. But her husband, a White Sox fan, assured her this was not so. This had come up before, but now it distressed her more. Both of them had grown up on the South Side, White Sox territory. She wondered whether she should not root for the Cubs because of this. Maybe they would just lose and she could forget about it.
All right, that’s all the Davis-style fiction you’ll see in this review (except for her own).
Almost No Memory (AMN, 1997) is the second of the four books of short fiction in The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis – following Break It Down (BID, 1986).
How does AMN compare to BID? AMN is longer by 25 pages, and contains almost twenty more stories – so, more of an emphasis on the very short pieces: 20 of the 51 stories fit on a page, and another 16 fit on two pages.
Longer stories
Of the nine longest stories (six or more pages) the most curious is the twenty-five page behemoth Lord Royston’s Tour. In the Acknowledgements on the reverse of the title page of Collected Stories we find, “Lord Royston’s Tour was adapted from The Remains of Viscount Royston: A Memoir of His Life by the Rev. Henry Pepys, London, 1838.” And, indeed, Davis has discussed this several times in different interviews. The “Lord Royston” of the story is Philip Yorke, Viscount Royston (1784-1808). The book Davis’ story is “adapted from” contains correspondence that the young Viscount sent back to his father on a great journey he undertook in 1806, at the age of twenty-two.
Of this story, Davis has said, “Nothing in the story was invented, but I did a lot of rearranging and combining or condensing of his material.” The format is almost that of a tiny novel, since there are about as many set-off headings to material (like chapter titles?) as there are pages. Most of the narrative describes Royston’s journey through Russia: the trials and tribulations (and sometimes pleasant interludes) he experienced. A brief excerpt:
To WesterasOn the “tour” Royston must deal with suffocating heat and almost unbearable cold, with sickness, hunger (being at times barely able to eat some of the victuals he can procure), and on occasion the perfidy of people he meets. The longest “chapter” is the last one, a three page recounting of the end: The End of the Tour: Shipwreck.
In Upsala he visited the Cathedral and found there a man who could speak Latin very fluently. The Rector Magnificus was not at home. He was detained some time in a forest of fir and birch by the axletree breaking. In general, he is annoyed by having to find separate lodgings for himself and his horses in each town.
His Swedish has made the most terrible havoc with the little German he knows.
In Abo
He understands there is a gloom over the Russian court.
St. Petersburg: Rubbers of Whist
The immense forests of fir strike the imagination at first but then become tedious from their excessive uniformity. He has eaten partridges and a cock of the woods. As he advances in Russian Finland he finds everything getting more and more Russian: the churches begin to be ornamented with gilt domes and the number of persons wearing beards continues to increase. A postmaster addresses him in Latin but in spite of that is not very civil …
He is bored by the society of the people of St. Petersburg, where he plays rubbers of whist without any amusing conversation …
In what sense of the word is this “story” fictional? I would say that recounting the actual experiences described by Royston by condensing, rearranging, and introducing her own words, would probably qualify as post-modern “fiction”. It is a very interesting, and somewhat ominous, story. And of course, by telling it in the third person, Davis has divorced it from presumably the first person of Royston’s letters.
And at the same time, the narrative doesn't sound like a biographical recounting gleaned from Royston's letters; rather, it has the sound and feel of fiction.
A few comments on some of the other longer stories.
St. Martin. A stark story of a couple caretaking a country house for the better part of a year. They are both trying to write, but must get by on so little money that one wonders how they persevere. (And where is this St. Martin? I got the impression somehow that it was in France, but there are nine or ten different towns/areas in France with this name.)
What Was Interesting. Loved it. Opening line, “It is hard for her to write this story, too, or rather she should say it is hard for her to write it well.”
Glenn Gould. The writer loves watching reruns of the Mary Tyler Moore Show, and comes to have a fixation on Glenn Gould when she learns that he also was a fan.
The story seems to make unstated connections between the odd mental states of Gould and the narrator.
Mr. Knockly. Very dark.
Examples of Confusion. The funniest of the longer ones, arranged in 15 numbered sections of a paragraph or two. Example:
14
I was an unlikely person to invite to this party, and no one is talking to me. I believe the invitation was for someone else.
All day the clock answers my questions about the time very well, and so, wondering what the title of that book was, I look at the face of the clock for an answer.
Because it is almost the end of the day, I think it is almost the end of the week.
That was such a peculiar thing to say to me, I do not believe it was said to me.
I had such trouble finding this place, I believe I did not find it. I am talking to the person I came here to meet, but I believe he is still alone, waiting for me.
The shorter pieces
The only way to really convey what Davis’ very short fiction is like is to quote it, but before I do some of that I’ll try to convey some general information.
First, about half these stories have a first person narrator. In her previous book it was about a third.
Many of the stories are definitely downers. These range from some which are mildly disturbing to a couple which are downright horrifying. There are over a dozen of these stories. Here are some of them, with my brief characterizations.
The Thirteenth Woman disturbing
A Natural Disaster horrifying
The Rape of the Tanuk Women the title says it, though there’s a bit of magical realism
Love almost repulsive
The Fish Tank predatory
The Cedar Trees grim – like a fairy tale
Smoke dystopian
There’s also a set of pieces which could strike some readers as “soft downers”. Realistic pieces on the day-to-day trials and tribulations of two people living together, perhaps wife and husband. This type of story is one of Davis’ favorites it would seem.
A few (or all) of Davis’ words from some of the stories I enjoyed most.
The Other is:
She changes this thing in the house to annoy the other, and the other is annoyed and changes it back, and she changes this other thing in the house to annoy the other, and the other is annoyed and changes it back, and then she tells all this the way it happens to some others and they think it is funny, but the other hears it and does not think it is funny, but can’t change it back.
Foucault and Pencil. Hilarious. Begins, “Sat down to read Foucault with pencil in hand. Knocked over glass of water onto waiting-room floor. Put down Foucault and pencil, mopped up water, refilled glass. Sat down to read Foucault with pencil in hand.” Story continues with counselling session about “situation fraught with conflict”; narrator leaves session, goes to subway; instead of reading Foucault thinks about situation, recent argument concerning travel; “argument itself became form of travel, each sentence taking arguers on to next sentence, next sentence on to next, and in the end, arguers were not where they had started, were also tired from traveling and spending so long face-to-face in each other’s company”; after several subway stations narrator stops thinking about argument, takes up Foucault; Foucault in French hard to understand; narrator discovers why some sentences harder to understand than others; many reasons, for example, some long sentences understandable part by part, “but so long, forgot beginning before reaching end; … … … story continues onto a third page, and concludes “Put down Foucault and pencil, took out notebook and made note of what was now at least understood about lack of understanding reading Foucault, looked up at other passengers, thought again about argument, made note of same question about argument as before though with stress on different word.”
On domestic tranquility - 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.
And one of those disturbing, ominous ones - The Outing
An outburst of anger near the road, a refusal to speak on the path, a silence in the pine woods, a silence across the old railroad bridge, an attempt to be friendly in the water, a refusal to end the argument on the flat stones, a cry of anger on the steep bank of dirt, a weeping among the bushes.
Verdict
I love Davis’ short fictions, or whatever you want to call them. You never put one down in the middle, because by the time you’re at the middle you’re almost at the end. There is always time to read one, and then time to read one more. They’re like small pieces of candy, too small to feel guilty about eating.
But unlike candy, you can consume them over and over; if you do, you find that some that didn’t impress at first reading (probably because you were distracted by a fly or a noise) do come into focus when a couple minutes are available for a re-read.
No, these aren’t stories by Joyce, or Chekhov, Borges or Henry James. But they’re remarkably pleasing, anyway.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Previous review: The Periodic Table
Random review: Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract well, another review gone ... another book completely deleted from my library
Next review: The Hundred Days
Previous library review: Break It Down
Next library review: Samuel Johnson Is Indignant
January 25, 2021
Comportamento Bizarro
Bem vês, a culpa é das circunstâncias. A verdade é que não sou uma pessoa bizarra por enfiar bocados de Kleenex amarrotados nos ouvidos e atar um cachecol à volta da cabeça: quando vivia só, tinha todo o silêncio de que precisava.
“Quase sem Memória”, de 1997, é um dos livros que constituem a antologia “Contos Completos” de Lydia Davis. São muitas as histórias de grande qualidade que aqui estão presentes, mas é na arte da concisão que Davis brilha, com alguma da melhor “flash fiction” que já li. Além de vários contos contundentes e inesperados, contados em tom jocoso ou melancólico, como “Comportamento Bizarro”, “A Décima Terceira Mulher”, “Amor”, “Vai-te Embora”, “Uma Segunda Oportunidade”, “Quase sem Memória”, “Medo”, destaco “St. Martin” por motivos autobiográficos, que me remeteu para uma leitura de há muitos, muitos anos. Tal como Paul Auster tinha contado no seu “Caderno Vermelho”, houve uma altura, nos anos 70, em que ele e a namorada tomaram conta de uma casa no Sul de França para ganhar algum dinheiro enquanto escreviam e traduziam, numa pobreza tão grande que houve uma altura em que só tinham uma tarte de cebola para comer. Em “St. Martin”, é Lydia Davis, agora sua ex-mulher, que discorre sobre essa temporada difícil, terminando curiosamente no incidente da tarte de cebola.
Medo
Quase todas as manhãs, uma certa mulher da nossa comunidade sai a correr de sua casa, com o rosto branco e o casaco ferozmente desfraldado. A mulher grita: “Acudam, acudam”, e um de nós precipita-se e segura-a até que os seus medos acalmem. Sabemos que está a fingi; na realidade, nada lhe aconteceu. Mas compreendemo-la, porque dificilmente haverá um de nós que não tenha sido levado alguma vez a fazer precisamente o que ela faz, e, em todos os casos, foram necessárias todas as nossas forças, e também as forças dos nossos amigos e das nossas famílias, para nos sossegar.
Bem vês, a culpa é das circunstâncias. A verdade é que não sou uma pessoa bizarra por enfiar bocados de Kleenex amarrotados nos ouvidos e atar um cachecol à volta da cabeça: quando vivia só, tinha todo o silêncio de que precisava.
“Quase sem Memória”, de 1997, é um dos livros que constituem a antologia “Contos Completos” de Lydia Davis. São muitas as histórias de grande qualidade que aqui estão presentes, mas é na arte da concisão que Davis brilha, com alguma da melhor “flash fiction” que já li. Além de vários contos contundentes e inesperados, contados em tom jocoso ou melancólico, como “Comportamento Bizarro”, “A Décima Terceira Mulher”, “Amor”, “Vai-te Embora”, “Uma Segunda Oportunidade”, “Quase sem Memória”, “Medo”, destaco “St. Martin” por motivos autobiográficos, que me remeteu para uma leitura de há muitos, muitos anos. Tal como Paul Auster tinha contado no seu “Caderno Vermelho”, houve uma altura, nos anos 70, em que ele e a namorada tomaram conta de uma casa no Sul de França para ganhar algum dinheiro enquanto escreviam e traduziam, numa pobreza tão grande que houve uma altura em que só tinham uma tarte de cebola para comer. Em “St. Martin”, é Lydia Davis, agora sua ex-mulher, que discorre sobre essa temporada difícil, terminando curiosamente no incidente da tarte de cebola.
Medo
Quase todas as manhãs, uma certa mulher da nossa comunidade sai a correr de sua casa, com o rosto branco e o casaco ferozmente desfraldado. A mulher grita: “Acudam, acudam”, e um de nós precipita-se e segura-a até que os seus medos acalmem. Sabemos que está a fingi; na realidade, nada lhe aconteceu. Mas compreendemo-la, porque dificilmente haverá um de nós que não tenha sido levado alguma vez a fazer precisamente o que ela faz, e, em todos os casos, foram necessárias todas as nossas forças, e também as forças dos nossos amigos e das nossas famílias, para nos sossegar.
February 25, 2019
Derlemedeki diğer öyküler arasındaki çirkin ördek yavrusu Lord Royston'un Gezisi'ne bakıyorum da, o pek garip güzelliğiyle 'kendine yabancılaşma düğmesine' basıp gördüğü şeyleri yazmaya çalışan bir Lydia Davis gibi aynı. Öykülerinin dışında, daha doğal, daha doğrusal, daha dolu. 'Kendine yabancılaşma düğmesi' bir armağan mı acaba?
Kitaba üç yıldız verecekken duraksıyorum - peh, sanki bir lokantaya Michelin Yıldızı veriyorum ya da eski zamanlarda bir ekol içindeki tüm yazarların ağzının içine baktığı, etki sahibi ketum bir eleştirmenim - Lydia Davis'in sahip olduğu müthiş bütünsellik durduruyor beni. Çok şeyin denenmiş ve başarılmış olduğu zamanımızda kendi sesini şekillendirmenin - bu neredeyse bir küre kadar tastamam olan şeyi şekillendirmenin bir düğmesi olmadığı kesin - ve korumanın ne kadar zor, ortaya çıkan şeyin ne kadar değerli olduğunu düşünüyorum. Düşünüyorum ve diyorum ki hayır, 'Yapamam ve Yapmayacağım'
Kitaba üç yıldız verecekken duraksıyorum - peh, sanki bir lokantaya Michelin Yıldızı veriyorum ya da eski zamanlarda bir ekol içindeki tüm yazarların ağzının içine baktığı, etki sahibi ketum bir eleştirmenim - Lydia Davis'in sahip olduğu müthiş bütünsellik durduruyor beni. Çok şeyin denenmiş ve başarılmış olduğu zamanımızda kendi sesini şekillendirmenin - bu neredeyse bir küre kadar tastamam olan şeyi şekillendirmenin bir düğmesi olmadığı kesin - ve korumanın ne kadar zor, ortaya çıkan şeyin ne kadar değerli olduğunu düşünüyorum. Düşünüyorum ve diyorum ki hayır, 'Yapamam ve Yapmayacağım'
March 25, 2020
There just aren't that many authors I can read at a time like this. I've found myself going back to favourites--and even there the news is hard to leave alone for longer than a few minutes at a time. Still, my appreciation for the likes of Lydia Davis has never been stronger. The following is a complete story which strikes me as perfect. Or maybe I think that because the world now feels more like it's been written by Lydia Davis than it ever has before.
LOVE
A woman fell in love with a man who had been dead a number of years. It was not enough for her to brush his coats, wipe his inkwell, finger his ivory comb: she had to build her house over his grave and sit with him night after night in the damp cellar.
LOVE
A woman fell in love with a man who had been dead a number of years. It was not enough for her to brush his coats, wipe his inkwell, finger his ivory comb: she had to build her house over his grave and sit with him night after night in the damp cellar.
February 27, 2019
A very good collection of stories so short and rich it begs to be consumed like a pack of Maltesers. Still, better to savour each one individually, because, like Maltesers, tempting as it is to wolf down one after the other, in excess they’ll leave you crumpled on the floor, groaning in self-pity.
Aside from the barrage of tightly coiled one-page punches and a handful of longer more descriptive pieces, this collection also contains a smattering of unsettling, seemingly inconsequential but eerily surreal tableaux (The Cats in the Prison Recreation Hall, A Natural Disaster, The Cedar Trees...) that if pondered upon for too long will also leave you crumpled on the floor, groaning in self-pity.
A couple of stories seem to be set in France, which gave the collection a bit of a universal touch, and - despite barely hinting at the location - were somehow easy to identify as not being set in the US by virtue of the descriptions of architecture and/or flora alone, which I find commendable. And yes, they leave you crumpled on the floor, groaning in self-pity in French.
And speaking of commendable, many push the boundaries of form and/or style, falling anywhere between the floppy boundaries of the experimental and the post-modern. The extraordinary Lord Royston's Tour is essentially a reproduction of The Remains of Viscount Royston: A Memoir of His Life only edited and compressed to the point that it reads pretty much like an independent mini-novel in its own right. Mind-blowing, body-crumpling, pity-groaning stuff.
I haven’t read them all, as my edition of The Collected Stories has some pages missing. Not torn out, just missing. Which is strange, because the stories those pages correspond to appear listed in the index. Is this normal? It somehow feels like the kind of irregularity Davis would use as a springboard to write a dry 250-word diatribe that would end with me crumpled on the floor, groaning in self-pity.
Anyway.
Meat, My Husband is fantastic and did not make me groan in self-pity even once.
Aside from the barrage of tightly coiled one-page punches and a handful of longer more descriptive pieces, this collection also contains a smattering of unsettling, seemingly inconsequential but eerily surreal tableaux (The Cats in the Prison Recreation Hall, A Natural Disaster, The Cedar Trees...) that if pondered upon for too long will also leave you crumpled on the floor, groaning in self-pity.
A couple of stories seem to be set in France, which gave the collection a bit of a universal touch, and - despite barely hinting at the location - were somehow easy to identify as not being set in the US by virtue of the descriptions of architecture and/or flora alone, which I find commendable. And yes, they leave you crumpled on the floor, groaning in self-pity in French.
And speaking of commendable, many push the boundaries of form and/or style, falling anywhere between the floppy boundaries of the experimental and the post-modern. The extraordinary Lord Royston's Tour is essentially a reproduction of The Remains of Viscount Royston: A Memoir of His Life only edited and compressed to the point that it reads pretty much like an independent mini-novel in its own right. Mind-blowing, body-crumpling, pity-groaning stuff.
I haven’t read them all, as my edition of The Collected Stories has some pages missing. Not torn out, just missing. Which is strange, because the stories those pages correspond to appear listed in the index. Is this normal? It somehow feels like the kind of irregularity Davis would use as a springboard to write a dry 250-word diatribe that would end with me crumpled on the floor, groaning in self-pity.
Anyway.
Meat, My Husband is fantastic and did not make me groan in self-pity even once.
April 27, 2011
Davis needs no introduction, nor pithy summary. These stories are mathematical riddles, little sentences twining and twirling around their own meaning. At the end of the collection, I felt as though trapped at the centre of a maze, as though reading them backwards would free me from the spiral of captivity.
Her style is homely-cum-brainy, the self-awareness of a part-time egghead, part-time wife-and-mother. The shorter stories tickled me the most, the longer ones felt like forced digressions. How the collection is structured has something to do with this conflict. Short sharp shocks versus long periods of concentration and tightrope-walking. I became addicted to the ultra-concise form and wasn’t as willing to go the distance.
New readers should pick up these little collections and leave The Collected Stories to the hardcore Davisites, whose brains resemble orange peels.
Her style is homely-cum-brainy, the self-awareness of a part-time egghead, part-time wife-and-mother. The shorter stories tickled me the most, the longer ones felt like forced digressions. How the collection is structured has something to do with this conflict. Short sharp shocks versus long periods of concentration and tightrope-walking. I became addicted to the ultra-concise form and wasn’t as willing to go the distance.
New readers should pick up these little collections and leave The Collected Stories to the hardcore Davisites, whose brains resemble orange peels.
November 5, 2021
That's Lydia "Mother Fucking' Davis to you man.
September 6, 2022
Of the 51 pieces in this collection, there were some extremely short ones I liked. Almost none of those over 3 pages worked for me.
Read
August 27, 2021Thought a few of these were brilliant, but I’m not sure I *get*/am smart enough to understand or fully appreciate Davis’s work…
January 3, 2019
Lydia Davis’i okumaya başladım ve çok sevdim. Arka kapakta yazanların kitapla hiç ilgisi yok. Çünkü bu kitap hiçbir şey anlatmıyor. Dil denen boktan şeyin edebiyat denen boktan şeyi oluşturduğunun farkında olan bir yazar arka kapaktaki klişelerden bahsetmez. Bu, nefis bir kibir.
December 16, 2019
2019 yılı, öykü açısından benim için ne yazık ki verimsiz geçti. Bunda bende uyanan "Türk yazarların gittikçe birbirine benzer öyküler yazmaya başladığı hissiyatı" çok etkili oldu. Bu sebeple yılın sonuna yaklaştığımız bu zamanlarda Stefan Zweig ile yeniden öykü okumaya başlamak istedim. Zweig'ın ardından modern edebiyattan daha önce okumadığım bir öykü yazarını okumak isteyerek Lydia Davis'in Neredeyse Hiç Hatırlamıyor kitabını okudum.
İtiraf edeyim, bu kitabı kapağını görüp almıştım. Normalde kapağından kitap seçen biri değilimdir; ama nedense bu kitabın kapağı hoşuma gitmişti ve onun etkisiyle almıştım. Böyle bir şey yapmamam gerektiğini bir kere daha gördüm.
Kitap -yanlış saymadıysam- elli bir öyküden oluşuyor. Öykülerin çoğu kısa öyküler. Ben normalde kısa öykü okumayı seven bir insanımdır; fakat bu kitaptaki kısa öykülerden hoşlanmadım. Zira ne öykülerin konusuna ne de öykülerdeki karakterlere tam manasıyla vakıf olmadım, sindiremedim. Uzun öyküleri nispeten daha çok sevsem de benzer sorunu bu öyküler için de yaşadım. Bununla birlikte, en büyük problemim kitabın üslubuna dairdi. Okurken bana sürekli "bu kitap, orijinal dilinden okumalı" hissini yaşattı. Çevirmen Betül Kadıoğlu, başarısız bir iş ortaya koymuş demiyorum, aksine ben başarılı buldum; ama kitap çevrilince ortaya tatsız tuzsuz bir metin ortaya çıkmış. Ayrıca kitapta çok uzun cümleler var. Cümlenin sonuna geldiğinizde başını unutuyorsunuz. Bir de bu cümlelere yazar, söz oyunları ekleyince ve bunlar Türkçe'ye çevrildiğinde hiç tat vermediğinde can sıkıcı bir durum ortaya çıkmış. Örneğin bazı cümleler bana bir yerden sonra "Hakkı, Hakkı'dan hakkını istemiş. Hakkı, Hakkı'nın hakkını vermeyince Hakkı, Hakkı'nın hakkından gelmiş" minvalinde hissettirdi. :)
Neredeyse Hiç Hatırlamıyor, maalesef bana keyifsiz bir okuma süreci yaşattı.
İtiraf edeyim, bu kitabı kapağını görüp almıştım. Normalde kapağından kitap seçen biri değilimdir; ama nedense bu kitabın kapağı hoşuma gitmişti ve onun etkisiyle almıştım. Böyle bir şey yapmamam gerektiğini bir kere daha gördüm.
Kitap -yanlış saymadıysam- elli bir öyküden oluşuyor. Öykülerin çoğu kısa öyküler. Ben normalde kısa öykü okumayı seven bir insanımdır; fakat bu kitaptaki kısa öykülerden hoşlanmadım. Zira ne öykülerin konusuna ne de öykülerdeki karakterlere tam manasıyla vakıf olmadım, sindiremedim. Uzun öyküleri nispeten daha çok sevsem de benzer sorunu bu öyküler için de yaşadım. Bununla birlikte, en büyük problemim kitabın üslubuna dairdi. Okurken bana sürekli "bu kitap, orijinal dilinden okumalı" hissini yaşattı. Çevirmen Betül Kadıoğlu, başarısız bir iş ortaya koymuş demiyorum, aksine ben başarılı buldum; ama kitap çevrilince ortaya tatsız tuzsuz bir metin ortaya çıkmış. Ayrıca kitapta çok uzun cümleler var. Cümlenin sonuna geldiğinizde başını unutuyorsunuz. Bir de bu cümlelere yazar, söz oyunları ekleyince ve bunlar Türkçe'ye çevrildiğinde hiç tat vermediğinde can sıkıcı bir durum ortaya çıkmış. Örneğin bazı cümleler bana bir yerden sonra "Hakkı, Hakkı'dan hakkını istemiş. Hakkı, Hakkı'nın hakkını vermeyince Hakkı, Hakkı'nın hakkından gelmiş" minvalinde hissettirdi. :)
Neredeyse Hiç Hatırlamıyor, maalesef bana keyifsiz bir okuma süreci yaşattı.
April 11, 2014
A book teaches you how to read it as you go along. Almost No Memory at first taught me enthusiasm with its freshness and perspicacity about some of the more off-center concerns of the everyday. Later, however, it began to teach me dis-attention and distraction. Often it reminded me of wading in shallow water--actually harder than swimming, and much less gratifying. It taught me to marvel occasionally at its beauty--but, annoyingly, I found there to be more beauty in the tales that were a bit longer than the others, the ones with more resemblance to the short story form as it has been practiced in the modernist era, and I had to wonder if I liked these texts better than the others because of their intrinsic worth as prose pieces or if I was merely responding to the familiarity of the forms and tropes of the genre that have become the guidelines of creative writing courses and the like. Ironically, perhaps, given the collection's title, even though I have only just finished reading the collection, I already have little memory of what exactly I have read. I feel rather more prevalently the miasma of my mixed feelings regarding the mixed bag of experimental prose, meditations, and slightly more alluring narratives, however non-traditional. Like the pieces themselves and their experiments in form, this is both a good and a bad thing.
June 20, 2013
This review appeared in The Nervous Breakdown back in 2007:
There is high genius here. Of the fifty or so stories, I will return over and over to perhaps ten of them. And even as regards the ones I won’t return to, it is most often a question not of fictional failure but of personal taste, the way someone else might not understand my enthusiasm for Hopkins, and I might not understand their enthusiasm for Swinburne, but we can still play buzkashi together, for example, and eat some bacon, if both of us happened to like buzkashi and bacon.
There is no buzkashi in this book, and no bacon that I remember, but there are a fair number of inebriated and confused persons, and a vast number of untidy houses. This is one way Davis gives the book a sense of structure; another, more interesting way that she does so is by establishing a given number of formal options and alternating them regularly. I could make a list of those options (1st-person Relationship Pensées, Longer 1st-person Stories With Things That Almost Happen, 3rd-person Relationship Pensées, Stories About Writing, Intellectual Machines, Surreal Villages, Other [Realist], and Other [Not]) but then if I made another list ten minutes later there would be entirely different categories (Mirror Stories, He Said/She Said, Language as Paring Knife…) not because the stories had changed in that ten-minute interval but because I had, and this is perhaps an example of the book at its most structurally successful. However there were also moments when, before turning the page, I could correctly guess the Next Type of Story to Appear, and that is perhaps an example of the book at its least structurally successful, but even then there are workings of language and/or insight sufficiently extraordinary to make me forget that I had unhappily guessed right.
It is in the surreal villages that my favorite stories take place--the women of “The Thirteenth Woman” and “The Cedar Trees,” the fog and teeth and cynical trees of “Smoke.” I say that, and then I change my mind and prefer the careful thought and deep intuition of “Pastor Elaine’s Newsletter”; then the sharp metamusings of “What Was Interesting”; then the smartly fragmented history of “Lord Royston’s Tour”; then realize that not even a robot could be left unstirred by “This Condition” or (in a totally, totally, totally different way) “Odd Behavior.” And I am not sure there is any greater sort of success.
There is high genius here. Of the fifty or so stories, I will return over and over to perhaps ten of them. And even as regards the ones I won’t return to, it is most often a question not of fictional failure but of personal taste, the way someone else might not understand my enthusiasm for Hopkins, and I might not understand their enthusiasm for Swinburne, but we can still play buzkashi together, for example, and eat some bacon, if both of us happened to like buzkashi and bacon.
There is no buzkashi in this book, and no bacon that I remember, but there are a fair number of inebriated and confused persons, and a vast number of untidy houses. This is one way Davis gives the book a sense of structure; another, more interesting way that she does so is by establishing a given number of formal options and alternating them regularly. I could make a list of those options (1st-person Relationship Pensées, Longer 1st-person Stories With Things That Almost Happen, 3rd-person Relationship Pensées, Stories About Writing, Intellectual Machines, Surreal Villages, Other [Realist], and Other [Not]) but then if I made another list ten minutes later there would be entirely different categories (Mirror Stories, He Said/She Said, Language as Paring Knife…) not because the stories had changed in that ten-minute interval but because I had, and this is perhaps an example of the book at its most structurally successful. However there were also moments when, before turning the page, I could correctly guess the Next Type of Story to Appear, and that is perhaps an example of the book at its least structurally successful, but even then there are workings of language and/or insight sufficiently extraordinary to make me forget that I had unhappily guessed right.
It is in the surreal villages that my favorite stories take place--the women of “The Thirteenth Woman” and “The Cedar Trees,” the fog and teeth and cynical trees of “Smoke.” I say that, and then I change my mind and prefer the careful thought and deep intuition of “Pastor Elaine’s Newsletter”; then the sharp metamusings of “What Was Interesting”; then the smartly fragmented history of “Lord Royston’s Tour”; then realize that not even a robot could be left unstirred by “This Condition” or (in a totally, totally, totally different way) “Odd Behavior.” And I am not sure there is any greater sort of success.
November 3, 2020
yaaani ne desem... lydia davis tarzı öykü pek benim tarzım değil, bunu iyice anladım.
saçma insanlık durumlarını, özellikle ikili ilişkilerdeki saçma anları anlattığı bazı kısa kısa öyküler tam lydia davis’ti mesela.
ama işte asıl olarak uzun öykülerini beğendiğimden bu kitabı okumak bana bir dirhem bal için bir çeki keçiboynuzu çiğnemişim gibi hissettirdi :))
St Martin’i çok beğendim mesela ve davis’in tarzına en uzak olan da o sanırım.
lord royston’un gezisi öyküsü hakkında aydınlatılmaya ihtiyacım var.
galiba başka kitabını okumam.
bu arada betül kadıoğlu çevirisi ve çok iyi.
saçma insanlık durumlarını, özellikle ikili ilişkilerdeki saçma anları anlattığı bazı kısa kısa öyküler tam lydia davis’ti mesela.
ama işte asıl olarak uzun öykülerini beğendiğimden bu kitabı okumak bana bir dirhem bal için bir çeki keçiboynuzu çiğnemişim gibi hissettirdi :))
St Martin’i çok beğendim mesela ve davis’in tarzına en uzak olan da o sanırım.
lord royston’un gezisi öyküsü hakkında aydınlatılmaya ihtiyacım var.
galiba başka kitabını okumam.
bu arada betül kadıoğlu çevirisi ve çok iyi.
January 10, 2012
Lydia Fucking Davis. Making me feel lonelier and less insane with every story. These are perfect to read while stuck in traffic or when you don't want to fall asleep too quickly.
November 20, 2018
Belki kendi dilinde okumak daha güzel olabilir , çeviri de güzel ama öyküleri sevemedim. fazla ekonomik, ayrıntı yok, kurgu yok.
Read
April 21, 2010Between the considerable avoirdupois of Zola's Germinal and Perec's Life A User's Manual I needed to insert some verbal economy into my reading life. Lydia Davis's Almost No Memory was the perfect choice: subtly unlike anything else I have ever read, Davis takes the short story to new heights of concision, and does so in such a distinctive narrative voice that I walked around for days with a Davis-esque internal narrator commenting on my every move. Then I read a selection of these stories over again, out loud to David, and we had entire conversations in which both sides mimicked her tone. Her stories—she calls them stories; I might have been tempted to use the word "pieces" instead—are sometimes as short as half a page; they are crystal-like in their precision; yet they have a movement and a logic which are intensely compelling. I found myself re-reading many of the pieces in Almost No Memory, each time more slowly, to try to elicit their secrets, to figure out exactly how she was doing that—indeed, to discern what it was she was doing. Here, for example, is the entirety of her story "How He is Often Right":
I love how the last sentence here, like the third line of a haiku, nudges the reader into a different, slightly unsettling perspective on what has gone before. The "reality" of the situation here is so contingent, so shifting, and the speaker's insistence that "his" decision was still wrong, just for circumstances different than the ones that turned out to be true, gives me a bit of vertigo when I think of making any decisions at all—territory intimately familiar to many speakers in this collection.
Davis's stories often have to do with perceptual differences and difficulties, and the distance between people who are attempting to communicate. She also seems preoccupied with movement and stagnation, and how attempts at communication affect that movement—or fail to affect it. Here, for example, is one of my favorite stories, "In the Garment District":
I think this may be one of the most perfect stories I have ever read, although I still don't totally understand why I feel that way. Despite its brevity, it has such flow and texture; the way the long, bustling sentence about the complex shop/warehouse dynamic is followed by the stillness of "To the man all this is nothing," for example. It's as if the ludicrous tension building between the shop and the warehouse, the speaker's (or reader's) incredulity, even anger, at this bizarre situation in which a man is getting paid to transport the same clothes back and forth day after day, suddenly just...breaks. The building frustration of the first sentences is suddenly dispelled: nothing need change about this daily routine, because of the still waters of the man's indifference. The last portion of the final sentence, that the man "intends to leave the company soon, though the right moment has not yet come," deposits the reader softly into a state of stasis which, though indefinite, may nonetheless break at any time.
There are longer stories in Almost No Memory, including one I particularly loved involving a speaker who was once taken with the idea of marrying a cowboy. In some cases these longer pieces feel more like traditional "stories" to me, although in other cases, like the sad and excellent "Glen Gould," they maintain Davis's unique quality of laconically considering a situation while refusing to reach resolution. Several stories, in particular "The Center of the Story" and "What was Interesting" are metafictions (unsurprising considering that Davis was once married to Paul Auster), but, I thought, very successful in managing to carry emotional weight as well as being clever bits of writing-about-writing-about-writing.
Although I began to form an idea of a "typical" Davis narrator by the end of the collection—a female college professor, prone to drink and quietly unhappy in her marriage—her range of subjects is actually much wider. From the grand tour of an eighteenth-century English lord, to more grotesque, fantastical events like those in "The Cedar Trees" ("When our women had all turned into cedar trees they would group together in a corner of the graveyard..."), Davis spreads her net wide. And yet, I think there's a reason I feel surprised at this realization: her odd magic works independently of her subject matter. Even at her most mundane, all her stories seemed a bit unnerving— and likewise, even at her most fantastical, her tone remains wry and analytical, observing well and following each thought through to its logical conclusion, which often turns out not to seem logical at all. One of my favorite examples of this happens in the longer story "St. Martin," in which Davis's speaker describes going for (and returning from) a walk.
I mean, how quotidian is that, and how eerie? What a gorgeous scene. What a gorgeous collection.
How He Is Often Right
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. And then later it turns out, as it often has before, that his decision was the right one, after all. Or rather, his decision was still wrong, but wrong for circumstances different from the circumstances as they actually were, while it was right for circumstances I clearly did not understand.
I love how the last sentence here, like the third line of a haiku, nudges the reader into a different, slightly unsettling perspective on what has gone before. The "reality" of the situation here is so contingent, so shifting, and the speaker's insistence that "his" decision was still wrong, just for circumstances different than the ones that turned out to be true, gives me a bit of vertigo when I think of making any decisions at all—territory intimately familiar to many speakers in this collection.
Davis's stories often have to do with perceptual differences and difficulties, and the distance between people who are attempting to communicate. She also seems preoccupied with movement and stagnation, and how attempts at communication affect that movement—or fail to affect it. Here, for example, is one of my favorite stories, "In the Garment District":
In the Garment District
A man has been making deliveries in the garment district for years now: every morning he takes the same garments on a moving rack through the streets to a shop and every evening takes them back again to the warehouse. This happens because there is a dispute between the shop and the warehouse which cannot be settled: the shop denies it ever ordered the clothes, which are badly made and of cheap material and by now years out of style; while the warehouse will not take responsibility because the clothes cannot be returned to the wholesalers, who have no use for them. To the man all this is nothing. They are not his clothes, he is paid for this work, and he intends to leave the company soon, though the right moment has not yet come.
I think this may be one of the most perfect stories I have ever read, although I still don't totally understand why I feel that way. Despite its brevity, it has such flow and texture; the way the long, bustling sentence about the complex shop/warehouse dynamic is followed by the stillness of "To the man all this is nothing," for example. It's as if the ludicrous tension building between the shop and the warehouse, the speaker's (or reader's) incredulity, even anger, at this bizarre situation in which a man is getting paid to transport the same clothes back and forth day after day, suddenly just...breaks. The building frustration of the first sentences is suddenly dispelled: nothing need change about this daily routine, because of the still waters of the man's indifference. The last portion of the final sentence, that the man "intends to leave the company soon, though the right moment has not yet come," deposits the reader softly into a state of stasis which, though indefinite, may nonetheless break at any time.
There are longer stories in Almost No Memory, including one I particularly loved involving a speaker who was once taken with the idea of marrying a cowboy. In some cases these longer pieces feel more like traditional "stories" to me, although in other cases, like the sad and excellent "Glen Gould," they maintain Davis's unique quality of laconically considering a situation while refusing to reach resolution. Several stories, in particular "The Center of the Story" and "What was Interesting" are metafictions (unsurprising considering that Davis was once married to Paul Auster), but, I thought, very successful in managing to carry emotional weight as well as being clever bits of writing-about-writing-about-writing.
Although I began to form an idea of a "typical" Davis narrator by the end of the collection—a female college professor, prone to drink and quietly unhappy in her marriage—her range of subjects is actually much wider. From the grand tour of an eighteenth-century English lord, to more grotesque, fantastical events like those in "The Cedar Trees" ("When our women had all turned into cedar trees they would group together in a corner of the graveyard..."), Davis spreads her net wide. And yet, I think there's a reason I feel surprised at this realization: her odd magic works independently of her subject matter. Even at her most mundane, all her stories seemed a bit unnerving— and likewise, even at her most fantastical, her tone remains wry and analytical, observing well and following each thought through to its logical conclusion, which often turns out not to seem logical at all. One of my favorite examples of this happens in the longer story "St. Martin," in which Davis's speaker describes going for (and returning from) a walk.
We would walk, and return with burrs in our socks and scratches on our legs and arms where we had pushed through the brambles to get up into the forest, and go out again the next day and walk, and the dogs always trusted that we were setting out in a certain direction for a reason, and then returning home for a reason, but in the forest, which seemed so endless, there was hardly a distinguishing feature that could be taken as a destination for a walk, and we were simply walking, watching the sameness pass on both sides, the thorny, scrubby oaks growing densely together along the dusty track that ran quite straight until it came to a gentle bend and perhaps a slight rise and then ran straight again.
If we came home by an unfamiliar route, skirting the forest, avoiding a deeply furrowed, overgrown field and then stepping into the edge of a reedy marsh, veering close to a farmyard, where a farmer in blue and his wife in red were doing chores trailed by their dog, we felt so changed ourselves that we were surprised nothing about home had changed: for a moment the placidity of the house and yard nearly persuaded us we had not even left.
I mean, how quotidian is that, and how eerie? What a gorgeous scene. What a gorgeous collection.
November 1, 2024
“Bir düşünürü kendimize yakın hissediyoruz çünkü onunla hemfikiriz; ya da bize zaten düşündüğümüz şeyleri gösteriyor ya da bize zaten düşündüğümüz şeyleri daha açık bir şekilde gösteriyor; ya da bize düşünmek üzere olduğumuz şeyleri gösteriyor; ya da er ya da geç düşüneceğimiz şeyleri; ya da eğer şimdi okumasaydık çok daha geç düşüneceğimiz şeyleri, ya da düşünme ihtimalimiz olan ama şimdi okumasaydık hiçbir zaman düşünemeyeceğimiz şeyleri; ya da düşünmüş olmak isteyeceğimiz ama şimdi okumasaydık hiçbir zaman düşünemeyeceğimiz şeyleri.”
May 25, 2019
Kitabı rafa koydu. Şarkıyı dinlemişti yeteri kadar. Mesela mikro öyküler o kadar iyiydi ki, diğerleri manzarayı bozuyordu. Bir buçuk sayfa, dedi kendine. Daha fazlasında akıl dengesini kaybediyor, yaz sıcağında, kaldırımda, metroda, markette, camide, seçim gününde, doğum günü partisinde tökezlemeye başlıyordunuz. Müzik erken bitsin, dedi kendi kendine. Ben böylesini seviyorum. Şarkının öğrememediğim nakaratı takılsın aklıma. Hım hımlayarak bulmaya çalışayım sözleri. Bulamayayım.
August 30, 2019
ilk öyküleri beni heyecanlandırdı ancak ortadaki o iç kapayıcı gezi sırasında kitaptan iyice koptum, o öykünün bitiminde tekrar ilginçleşti
"On Üçüncü Kadın", "Üniversite Hocası", "Sedir Ağaçları", "Hapishanenin Dinlenme Salonundaki Kediler", "Hikayenin Merkezi", "St. Martin", "Neredeyse Hiç Hatırlamıyor" ve "Gezinti" güzeldi...
"On Üçüncü Kadın", "Üniversite Hocası", "Sedir Ağaçları", "Hapishanenin Dinlenme Salonundaki Kediler", "Hikayenin Merkezi", "St. Martin", "Neredeyse Hiç Hatırlamıyor" ve "Gezinti" güzeldi...
July 16, 2015
I was disappointed by 'Samuel Johnson is Indignant,' which had a great title. I was even more disappointed by ANM, which did not have a great title, and had most of the bad qualities of the following volume (dull, generic short stories; fascination with a very narrow strip of human experience; over-use of the contemporary "talky but also intelligent because I went to a good school" style) with less of SJiI's best qualities (formal inventiveness; humor; Satie-esque irreverence). Not to say that ANM has none of that good stuff, just less.
Now, please note that readers of Davis are guaranteed to divide over what is good about her. Some prefer the long, traditional short stories; some (me) prefer the inventive, who-gives-a-shit-if-this-isn't-comme-il-faut snippets, fables, parables and quotations. I suspect that I should focus on later Davis, rather than try to read her first collection, but if anyone reading this can tell me otherwise, please do. I'm willing to read one more, and I want it to be the one I'll like most.
Now, please note that readers of Davis are guaranteed to divide over what is good about her. Some prefer the long, traditional short stories; some (me) prefer the inventive, who-gives-a-shit-if-this-isn't-comme-il-faut snippets, fables, parables and quotations. I suspect that I should focus on later Davis, rather than try to read her first collection, but if anyone reading this can tell me otherwise, please do. I'm willing to read one more, and I want it to be the one I'll like most.
November 8, 2024
4 stars, another great series of short stories
Davis continues to impress with short stories that are often more parable than narrative. Here she finds herself introducing more complexity and miscommunication while experimenting with longer stories. The longer ones are seldom as good as the shorter ones and don’t quite fit right with her style yet but they show a lot of promise. As with the previous collection, Davis has a knack for identifying the best story in her collection and naming the whole book after it.
Davis continues to impress with short stories that are often more parable than narrative. Here she finds herself introducing more complexity and miscommunication while experimenting with longer stories. The longer ones are seldom as good as the shorter ones and don’t quite fit right with her style yet but they show a lot of promise. As with the previous collection, Davis has a knack for identifying the best story in her collection and naming the whole book after it.
Read
June 7, 2020i was pretty underwhelmed by this one, especially compared to Break It Down, which i liked a lot. still some really fantastic stories in here though. my favs: “the professor,” “the center of the story,” “love,” “in the garment district,” “trying to learn,” “a friend of mine,” “this condition,” “go away,” “pastor elaine’s newsletter,” “a second chance” (whew), “fear,” “what i feel,” “glenn gould,” and “from below, as a neighbor.”
looking back on it, i guess i liked a lot of the stories, but the ones i didn’t like i *really* didn’t like. this is the second collection i’ve read from Davis, and i think i have decided that i’m not a huge fan of her longer, more historical stories - such as “lord royston’s tour.” some of the meta stuff is good (like “the center of the story”) but i feel like some others (like “what was interesting”) would be a lot better without the meta-aspect (all of the writing a story about writing a story stuff)
one of my favorite things about Davis is her flash fiction. the majority of the stories in here are 2 pages or less, and for the most part i think that is where her best work is. the longer stuff (“lord royston’s tour” & “st martin,” for example) seems boring in contrast. i think if i read those stories in a collection from an author not known for flash fiction, i may have appreciated them more. when i got on a roll, reading like 5 of the shorter stories in a row, running into the 10+ page stories sort of bogged me down.
that said, my absolute favorites from this collection were “glenn gould,” “pastor elaine’s newsletter,” and “the center of the story,” which were are on the longer side. those were different from royston and st martin, though, because they focused more acutely on the character rather than the surroundings. i think the protagonist from glenn gould and pastor elaine may even be the same person. all three focus on religion, relationships, and existential questions - three things that Davis almost always knocks out of the park.
i enjoyed this collection, even though i was expecting more. i still think davis is one of my favorite contemporary writers.
looking back on it, i guess i liked a lot of the stories, but the ones i didn’t like i *really* didn’t like. this is the second collection i’ve read from Davis, and i think i have decided that i’m not a huge fan of her longer, more historical stories - such as “lord royston’s tour.” some of the meta stuff is good (like “the center of the story”) but i feel like some others (like “what was interesting”) would be a lot better without the meta-aspect (all of the writing a story about writing a story stuff)
one of my favorite things about Davis is her flash fiction. the majority of the stories in here are 2 pages or less, and for the most part i think that is where her best work is. the longer stuff (“lord royston’s tour” & “st martin,” for example) seems boring in contrast. i think if i read those stories in a collection from an author not known for flash fiction, i may have appreciated them more. when i got on a roll, reading like 5 of the shorter stories in a row, running into the 10+ page stories sort of bogged me down.
that said, my absolute favorites from this collection were “glenn gould,” “pastor elaine’s newsletter,” and “the center of the story,” which were are on the longer side. those were different from royston and st martin, though, because they focused more acutely on the character rather than the surroundings. i think the protagonist from glenn gould and pastor elaine may even be the same person. all three focus on religion, relationships, and existential questions - three things that Davis almost always knocks out of the park.
i enjoyed this collection, even though i was expecting more. i still think davis is one of my favorite contemporary writers.
December 30, 2021
I resonated with a few of the stories in this book, but mostly it felt too personal for me to relate to.
March 2, 2012
At her best, Lydia Davis creates strange little worlds that revolve around their own logic, a logic both strange and beautiful. A town with 12 woman, and a 13th who doesn't fully exist; a town where the woman become trees; an analysis of what a man means when he tells his lover to "go away" - these all make sense in the context of Davis' structuring, even though you'd sound crazy trying to describe them as stories. Her amazing use of language is displayed in stories like "The Outing," where 8 brief, successive images make for an almost haunting display of a single fight.
My issue with Davis is that her longer pieces are pretty boring, with more characters talking about things than anything actually happening. Then there are her circular philosophical short-short pieces, which take a single phrase and add clause after clause of modifications with words and phrasings being used over and over - they're interesting, but that's about it.
Basically, when she's good, she's damn good, and for when she's not, well, I guess it's beneficial that most of her stories are so short, so you don't really waste any time reading them. "The Mice," The Cedar Trees," "Go Away," "Fear," "Examples of Confusion" - I'll be reading these all multiple times, just to appreciate the writing, and possibly to do the writerly job of stealing things. The rest I'll let the dust cover over.
My issue with Davis is that her longer pieces are pretty boring, with more characters talking about things than anything actually happening. Then there are her circular philosophical short-short pieces, which take a single phrase and add clause after clause of modifications with words and phrasings being used over and over - they're interesting, but that's about it.
Basically, when she's good, she's damn good, and for when she's not, well, I guess it's beneficial that most of her stories are so short, so you don't really waste any time reading them. "The Mice," The Cedar Trees," "Go Away," "Fear," "Examples of Confusion" - I'll be reading these all multiple times, just to appreciate the writing, and possibly to do the writerly job of stealing things. The rest I'll let the dust cover over.
March 16, 2014
Fiction is one of those arts that makes something out of nothing, and Lydia Davis’s Almost No Memory makes more something out of a balder nothing than any book I can remember ever having read. The blank piece of paper they started as is always within sight throughout every line of these fifty-plus stories. In execution, Almost No Memory is a collection of unconventional achievements, some only a few dozen words long, others stretching out to ten or so pages. Dialogue is nonexistent. Davis’s men, women and children receive very little commonly recognized characterization. Physical description and the assignment of telltale gesture are reserved for the handsome delineation of a pair of dogs in ‘St. Martin,’ a superb and melancholy evocation of nostalgia, an irresistible invitation to reflection, a connection to the shared experience of the human spirit placed directly within the reader’s grasp, a victory of the universal order for consumer and author alike, a deep-thinking effect that wins through again and again in Almost No Memory, even in the stories where the words seem to be fitted together with the logic of crossword puzzle clues and answers.
August 9, 2007
Favorites
"The Professor" — "A few years ago, I used to tell myself I wanted to marry a cowboy."
"The Cedar Trees" — "When our women had all turned into cedar trees they would group together in a corner of the graveyard and moan in the high wind."
"St. Martin" — "We were caretakers for most of that year, from early fall until summer."
"Smoke" — "Hummingbirds make explosions in the dying white flowers——not only the white flowers are dying but old women are falling from branches everywhere——in smoking pits outside the city, other dead things, too, are burning——and what can be done?"
"The Great-Grandmothers" — "At the family gathering, the great-grandmothers were put out on the sun porch."
"The Race of the Patient Motorcyclists" — "In this race, it is not the swiftest who wins, but the slowest."
"The Professor" — "A few years ago, I used to tell myself I wanted to marry a cowboy."
"The Cedar Trees" — "When our women had all turned into cedar trees they would group together in a corner of the graveyard and moan in the high wind."
"St. Martin" — "We were caretakers for most of that year, from early fall until summer."
"Smoke" — "Hummingbirds make explosions in the dying white flowers——not only the white flowers are dying but old women are falling from branches everywhere——in smoking pits outside the city, other dead things, too, are burning——and what can be done?"
"The Great-Grandmothers" — "At the family gathering, the great-grandmothers were put out on the sun porch."
"The Race of the Patient Motorcyclists" — "In this race, it is not the swiftest who wins, but the slowest."
May 9, 2014
This collection of stories simply did not work for me. It was as if Davis' first collection were a representational oil painting and this one is a cubist version of it. Th ese are really non-stories rather than slices of life.
To me, the book is a very internal journey centered around questioning the nature of reality and the meaning of one's feelings. This abstract quality made it pretty tedious reading. I did like a few of the stories; "In the Garment District" and one or two others reminded me of the poetry of Stephen Crane, which I have always liked. One of the most linear stories (albeit in a surrealist way), "Lord Royston's Tour," utterly mystified me. I just did not get the point, if there was one.
This is a very short book and it took me longer than I expected to get through it.
To me, the book is a very internal journey centered around questioning the nature of reality and the meaning of one's feelings. This abstract quality made it pretty tedious reading. I did like a few of the stories; "In the Garment District" and one or two others reminded me of the poetry of Stephen Crane, which I have always liked. One of the most linear stories (albeit in a surrealist way), "Lord Royston's Tour," utterly mystified me. I just did not get the point, if there was one.
This is a very short book and it took me longer than I expected to get through it.
November 19, 2008
The short stories are like windows. How's she's seeing something, how you're seeing something all in the context of the story that becomes a fabulous overlay.
I guess I'm just fascinated by the writing. I have never read anything written in a similar style. It feels so... genuine. At first, it felt a little childish, but as I read through more of the stories be became a language that turned simple observations into meaningful occurances.
"Affinity" sums everything up perfectly.
I guess I'm just fascinated by the writing. I have never read anything written in a similar style. It feels so... genuine. At first, it felt a little childish, but as I read through more of the stories be became a language that turned simple observations into meaningful occurances.
"Affinity" sums everything up perfectly.
August 16, 2023
I almost never re-read books, but this is my second time reading this and love it every bit as much as the first.
2023 update. I had forgotten rereading this book, so I re-read it again. Possibly the only book I have read three times and I enjoyed it at least as much as my previous reads, or so I must suspect, since I would be still inclined to rate it th 5 star read I did before.
2023 update. I had forgotten rereading this book, so I re-read it again. Possibly the only book I have read three times and I enjoyed it at least as much as my previous reads, or so I must suspect, since I would be still inclined to rate it th 5 star read I did before.
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