Essays One

· Macmillan + ORM
Ebook
529
Pages
Eligible

About this ebook

This selection of essays on writing and reading showcases the acclaimed author’s “wise and brilliant . . . precise and playful” command of language (The New York Times).

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—as she amply demonstrates in this selection of essays, commentaries, and lectures.

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.

About the author

Lydia Davis is the author of The End of the Story: A Novel and several story collections, including Varieties of Disturbance, a finalist for the 2007 National Book Award and most recently, Can’t and Won’t. She is also the acclaimed translator of Swann’s Way and Madame Bovary, both of which were awarded the French-American Foundation Translation Prize. The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis was described by James Wood in The New Yorker as a “grand cumulative achievement.” She is the winner of the 2013 Man Booker International Prize.

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