“Ordering
is difficult. It's like arranging pieces of music in a concert: What do you put
first? What do you put after the intermission? I want the reader to be sort of
surprised, to come to each story freshly.” – Lydia Davis
Born in Massachusetts on this date in 1947, Davis is primarily a short story writer, although she’s also published novels and essays and served as a translator from French and other languages. She’s especially noted for her translations of French literary classics, including Proust's Swann’s Way and Flaubert’s Madame Bovary.
Winner of the 2013 International Man
Booker Prize for her lifetime body of work, Davis has been acclaimed for the
brevity and humor of many of her short stories. Davis has compared her shorter stories to
skyscrapers, because, "They are surrounded by an imposing blank
expanse." Some of her stories have
been labeled poetry, even though she insists they are not. Many of Davis' stories up to 2008 are
highlighted in The Collected Stories of
Lydia Davis.
While both her parents were writers
and teachers, Davis gravitated toward a career in music, initially studying
piano, then violin. But she said it
probably was inevitable that she would become a writer. "I was probably
always headed to being a writer, even though that wasn't my first love,” she
said. “I guess I must have always wanted
to write in some part of me or I wouldn't have done it.”
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