Break It Down

Lydia Davis has been called "an American virtuoso of the short story form" (Salon) and an innovator who attempts to "remake the model of the modern short story" (The New York Times Book Review). As Time magazine observed, her stories are “moving [and] inevitable, as if she has written down what we were all on the verge of thinking ourselves.”

 

The thirty-four stories in Break it Down powerfully display what have become Lydia Davis's trademarks—dexterity, brevity, understatement, and surprise. Although the certainty of her prose suggests a world of almost clinical reason and clarity, her characters show us that life, thought, and language are full of disorder. Break It Down is Davis at her best—"an extraordinary technician of language, capable of revealing elusive human tendencies through the most unusual means" (Bookforum).

Praise

"Davis is a magician of self-consciousness. Few writers now working make the words on the page matter more."—Jonathan Franzen

 

"The best prose stylist in America."—Rick Moody

 

"Davis is one of the most precise and economical writers we have."—Dave Eggers, McSweeney’s

 

"One of the quiet giants of Amerian fiction."—Benjamin Weissman, Los Angeles Times Book Review

About the Author(s)

Lydia Davis

Lydia Davis's story collections include Samuel Johnson Is Indignant, Almost No Memory, and Varieties of Disturbance. She is the author of the novel The End of the Story and the acclaimed translator of a new edition of Swann's Way. She has received a MacArthur genius grant and was made a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government. Varieties of Disturbance is a finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction.

photo: David Ignaszewski

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