I relish short stories, but some of the world’s most famous stories tend to be major bummers. Think about it. In Nikolai Gogol’s “The Overcoat,” a government clerk saves up money to replace the threadbare coat that his colleagues mock, only to have his snazzy new coat stolen from him. In Poe’s “A Cask of […]
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Overview
Lydia Davis has been called "one of the quiet giants in the world of American fiction" (Los Angeles Times), "an American virtuoso of the short story form" (Salon), an innovator who attempts "to remake the model of the modern short story" (The New York Times Book Review). Her admirers include Grace Paley, Jonathan Franzen, and Zadie Smith; as Time magazine observed, her stories are "moving . . . and somehow inevitable, as if she has written what we were all on the verge of thinking."
In Varieties of Disturbance, her fourth collection, Davis extends her reach as never before in stories that take every form from sociological studies to concise poems. Her subjects include the five senses, fourth-graders, good taste, and tropical storms. She offers a reinterpretation of insomnia and re-creates the ordeals of Kafka in the kitchen. She questions the lengths to which one should go to save the life of a caterpillar, proposes a clear account of the sexual act, rides the bus, probes the limits of marital fidelity, and unlocks the secret to a long and happy life.
No two of these fictions are alike. And yet in each, Davis rearranges our view of the world by looking beyond our preconceptions to a bizarre truth, a source of delight and surprise.
Varieties of Disturbance is a 2007 National Book Award Finalist for Fiction.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781466806276 |
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Publisher: | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
Publication date: | 05/15/2007 |
Sold by: | Macmillan |
Format: | eBook |
Pages: | 240 |
Sales rank: | 911,851 |
File size: | 333 KB |
About the Author
Lydia Davis's story collections include the Village Voice favorite Samuel Johnson Is Indignant and Almost No Memory, a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year. She is the acclaimed translator of the new Swann's Way. She received a 2003 MacArthur fellowship.
Lydia Davis is the author of Essays One, a collection of essays on writing, reading, art, memory, and the Bible. She is also the author of The End of the Story: A Novel and many story collections, including Varieties of Disturbance, a finalist for the 2007 National Book Award for Fiction; Can’t and Won’t (2014); and The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, described by James Wood in The New Yorker as “a grand cumulative achievement.” Davis is also the acclaimed translator of Swann’s Way and Madame Bovary, both awarded the French-American Foundation Translation Prize, and of many other works of literature. She has been named both a Chevalier and an Officier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government, and in 2020 she received the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story.
Read an Excerpt
Varieties of Disturbance
StoriesBy Lydia Davis
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC
Copyright © 2007 Lydia DavisAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-374-28173-1
Chapter One
A Man from Her PastI think Mother is flirting with a man from her past who is not Father. I say to myself: Mother ought not to have improper relations with this man "Franz"! "Franz" is a European. I say she should not see this man improperly while Father is away! But I am confusing an old reality with a new reality: Father will not be returning home. He will be staying on at Vernon Hall. As for Mother, she is ninety-four years old. How can there be improper relations with a woman of ninety-four? Yet my confusion must be this: though her body is old, her capacity for betrayal is still young and fresh.
Dog and Me
An ant can look up at you, too, and even threaten you with its arms. Of course, my dog does not know I am human, he sees me as dog, though I do not leap up at a fence. I am a strong dog. But I do not leave my mouth hanging open when I walk along. Even on a hot day, I do not leave my tongue hanging out. But I bark at him: "No! No!"
Enlightened
I don't know if I can remain friends with her. I've thought and thought about it-she'll never know how much. I gave it one last try. I called her, after a year. But I didn't like the way the conversation went. The problem is that she is not very enlightened. Or I should say, she is not enlightened enough for me. She is nearly fifty years old and no more enlightened, as far as I can see, than when I first knew her twenty years ago, when we talked mainly about men. I did not mind how unenlightened she was then, maybe because I was not so enlightened myself. I believe I am more enlightened now, and certainly more enlightened than she is, although I know it's not very enlightened to say that. But I want to say it, so I am willing to postpone being more enlightened myself so that I can still say a thing like that about a friend.
The Good Taste Contest
The husband and wife were competing in a Good Taste Contest judged by a jury of their peers, men and women of good taste, including a fabric designer, a rare-book dealer, a pastry cook, and a librarian. The wife was judged to have better taste in furniture, especially antique furniture. The husband was judged to have overall poor taste in lighting fixtures, tableware, and glassware. The wife was judged to have indifferent taste in window treatments, but the husband and wife both were judged to have good taste in floor coverings, bed linen, bath linen, large appliances, and small appliances. The husband was felt to have good taste in carpets, but only fair taste in upholstery fabrics. The husband was felt to have very good taste in both food and alcoholic beverages, while the wife had inconsistently good to poor taste in food. The husband had better taste in clothes than the wife though inconsistent taste in perfumes and colognes. While both husband and wife were judged to have no more than fair taste in garden design, they were judged to have good taste in number and variety of evergreens. The husband was felt to have excellent taste in roses but poor taste in bulbs. The wife was felt to have better taste in bulbs and generally good taste in shade plantings with the exception of hostas. The husband's taste was felt to be good in garden furniture but only fair in ornamental planters. The wife's taste was judged consistently poor in garden statuary. After a brief discussion, the judges gave the decision to the husband for his higher overall points score.
Collaboration with Fly
I put that word on the page, but he added the apostrophe.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Varieties of Disturbance by Lydia Davis Copyright © 2007 by Lydia Davis. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
A Man from Her Past 3
Dog and Me 4
Enlightened 5
The Good Taste Contest 6
Collaboration with Fly 8
Kafka Cooks Dinner 9
Tropical Storm 19
Good Times 20
Idea for a Short Documentary Film 22
Forbidden Subjects 23
Two Types 25
The Senses 26
Grammar Questions 27
Hand 30
The Caterpillar 31
Childcare 33
We Miss You: A Study of Get-Well Letters from a Class of Fourth-Graders 34
Passing Wind 58
Television 60
Jane and the Cane 65
Getting to Know Your Body 66
Absentminded 67
Southward Bound, Reads Worstward Ho 68
The Walk 72
Varieties of Disturbance 83
Lonely 86
Mrs. D and Her Maids 87
20 Sculptures in One Hour 112
Nietszche 114
What You Learn About the Baby 115
Her Mother's Mother 125
How It Is Done 127
Insomnia 128
Burning Family Members 129
The Way to Perfection 135
The Fellowship 136
Helen and Vi: A Study in Health and Vitality 137
Reducing Expenses 178
Mother's Reaction to My Travel Plans 181
For Sixty Cents 182
How Shall I Mourn Them? 183
A Strange Impulse 186
How She Could Not Drive 187
Suddenly Afraid 189
Getting Better 190
Head, Heart 191
The Strangers 192
The Busy Road 194
Order 195
The Fly 196
Traveling with Mother 197
Index Entry 199
My Son 200
Example of the Continuing Past Tense in a Hotel Room 201
Cape Cod Diary 202
Almost Over: What's the Word? 218
A Different Man 219