Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Lydia Davis, can’t and won’t (stories)




Housekeeping Observation

Under all this dirt
the floor is really very clean.

I think it would be impossible not to marvel at the precision of the prose in Lydia Davis’ newest collection, can’t and won’t (stories) (New York NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014). Following on the heels of The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis (2009), a book I can’t recommend highly enough, the stories in can’t and won’t continue in her short, sharp way of exploring the absolutely smallest of moments, thoughts and excursions, managing to pack more in a handful of sentences than most writers are able over the space of entire books.

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