Essays One
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ISBN10: 1250758157
ISBN13: 9781250758156
Trade Paperback
528 Pages
$25.00
CA$33.00
Nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism
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.
Reviews
Praise for Essays One
“[Davis] is our Vermeer, patiently observing and chronicling daily life but from angles odd and askew . . . These pieces exalt clear language and the complicated work of looking and seeing . . . Davis takes pure pleasure in the muscular act of looking, and invites us to look alongside her. ‘Read the best writers from all different periods,’ she says. She’s right. Begin here.”—Parul Sehgal, The New York Times
"One gets the impression that even the most fleeting of pieces in Essays One, such as a few paragraphs about her favorite short stories, written for a British tabloid, has been given the precise and playful Lydia Davis treatment: 'Subtly, or less subtly, you always want to surprise a reader.'"—Brian Dillon, The New York Times Book Review
"She’s so deeply cerebral it’s perhaps counterintuitive that Davis is a companionable presence. She’s erudite, with catholic interests, and earnest but not humorless. This is the kind of book you could read alone in a restaurant and feel you’re lost in a stimulating conversation."—Rumaan Alam, The New Republic
“Davis, an innovative fiction writer, is also an erudite essayist, critic and translator, with an ever-questing mind evident in these 33 essays . . . An essential literary companion.”—Jane Ciabattari, BBC
"Davis is putting her more than 30 years of experience into a selection of essays on the craft of reading and writing; the first of the two-volume set comes out this fall. Don't expect run-of-the-mill advice like 'show don't tell' here, though; Davis has made a career out of breaking the established rules."—The Week
"Lively essays bound to stimulate debate among readers of global literature."—Kirkus Reviews
“The first in a planned two-volume collection of the nonfiction of short story author Davis ("Samuel Johnson Is Indignant") proves a cornucopia of illuminating and timeless observations on literature, art, and the craft of writing . . . Fans of Davis’s unfailingly clever work should add this volume to their collection, and creative writers of every genre should take the opportunity to learn from a legend.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
BOOK EXCERPTS
Read an Excerpt
A Beloved Duck Gets Cooked: Forms and Influences I
The traditional literary forms—the novel, the short story, the poem—although they evolve, do not disappear. But there is a wealth of less traditional forms that writers have adopted...
About the author
Lydia Davis
