by Lydia Davis
1998
Acknowledgments and Notes
A BELOVED DUCK GETS COOKED: FORMS AND INFLUENCES I
This essay was written as a talk for NYU’s Master Class series given in 2012–2013. An adapted version appeared in The Virginia Quarterly Review 95, no. 2 (Summer 2019).
COMMENTARY ON ONE VERY SHORT STORY (“IN A HOUSE BESIEGED”)
Previously published in The Atlantic, July/August 2014.
FROM RAW MATERIAL TO FINISHED WORK: FORMS AND INFLUENCES II
This was the second Master Class for NYU.
A NOTE ON THE WORD GUBERNATORIAL
Previously published in the Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus (Oxford University Press, 2012).
JOAN MITCHELL AND LES BLUETS, 1973
This essay combines a memoir written for Artforum International 34, no. 5 (January 1996), and reprinted in Poetry Magazine 201, no. 5 (February 2013), with extracts from a review of Klaus Kertess’s Joan Mitchell published in Bookforum, Summer 1997.
JOHN ASHBERY’S TRANSLATION OF RIMBAUD’S ILLUMINATIONS
This review was first published in The New York Times Book Review, June 9, 2011.
YOUNG PYNCHON
This essay was a contribution to a Thomas Pynchon issue of Bookforum published Summer 2005.
THE STORY IS THE THING: LUCIA BERLIN’S A MANUAL FOR CLEANING WOMEN
This essay was written as a foreword for Berlin’s story collection published in 2015 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
A CLOSE LOOK AT TWO BOOKS BY RAE ARMANTROUT
These two reviews were first published as, respectively, “Some Notes on Armantrout’s Precedence,” Poetics Journal 6 (Spring 1986), and “Why Stop with a Barnacle?” in A Wild Salience: The Writing of Rae Armantrout, ed. Tom Beckett (Burning Press, 1999).
SMALL BUT PERFECTLY FORMED: FIVE FAVORITE SHORT STORIES
This piece was written to accompany a review of my Collected Stories in Metro (UK), August 4, 2010.
THE IMPETUS WAS DELIGHT: A RESPONSE BY ANALOGY TO THE WORK OF JOSEPH CORNELL
First published in A Convergence of Birds: On Joseph Cornell, ed. Jonathan Safran Foer (D.A.P., 2001).
SOURCES, REVISION, ORDER, AND ENDINGS: FORMS AND INFLUENCES III
The third of the five Master Classes at NYU in 2012–2013. One section was previously published in Because You Asked: A Book of Answers on the Art & Craft of the Writing Life, ed. Katrina Roberts (Lost Horse Press, 2015). An adapted version was published in The Yale Review, Fall 2019.
REVISING ONE SENTENCE
First published in The Paris Review 229 (Summer 2019).
FOUND MATERIAL, SYNTAX, BREVITY, AND THE BEAUTY OF AWKWARD PROSE: FORMS AND INFLUENCES IV
The fourth of the NYU Master Classes in 2012–2013. Originally published in The Columbia Review, Spring 2019.
FRAGMENTARY OR UNFINISHED: BARTHES, JOUBERT, HÖLDERLIN, MALLARMÉ, FLAUBERT
An earlier version of this piece was originally composed as a talk given at the New Langton Arts Center in San Francisco in 1986. Part of it was subsequently published in HOW(ever) 4, no. 2 (October 1987), under the title “Form as a Response to Doubt.”
THIRTY RECOMMENDATIONS FOR GOOD WRITING HABITS
The fifth of the NYU Master Classes in 2012–2013. An adapted version was published on the Literary Hub website.
ENERGY IN COLOR: ALAN COTE’S RECENT PAINTINGS
Previously published in Tweed’s 2 (2014).
“EMMY MOORE’S JOURNAL” BY JANE BOWLES
Previously published in Object Lessons: The Paris Review Presents the Art of the Short Story, ed. Lorin Stein and Sadie Stein (Picador, 2012).
OSAMA ALOMAR’S VERY SHORT TALES IN FULLBLOOD ARABIAN
Previously published as a preface to this collection of Alomar’s stories in New Directions’ poetry pamphlet series, 2013; also published in The New Yorker online, December 16, 2013, as “Osama Alomar’s Very Short Tales.”
HAUNTING THE FLEA MARKET: ROGER LEWINTER’S THE ATTRACTION OF THINGS
This was a talk given at the Albertine Bookshop on December 2, 2016, to celebrate the New Directions publication of two books by Lewinter translated by Rachel Careau.
RED MITTENS: ANSELM HOLLO’S TRANSLATION FROM THE CHEREMISS
Originally published in Poems That Make Grown Women Cry, eds. Anthony Holden and Ben Holden (Simon & Schuster, 2016).
IN SEARCH OF DIFFICULT EDWARD DAHLBERG
Originally published in Conjunctions 29 (Fall 1997).
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT’S MADAME BOVARY
Previously published, in slightly different form, as the introduction to my translation of Madame Bovary (Viking Penguin, 2010).
DUTCH SCENES: A PORTFOLIO OF EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY TOURIST PHOTOGRAPHS
First published in The Paris Review 206 (Fall 2013).
THE PROBLEM OF PLOT SUMMARY IN BLANCHOT’S FICTION
First published as a section of Proust, Blanchot and a Woman in Red (Cahier #5, Sylph Editions/AUP, 2007).
STENDHAL’S ALTER EGO: THE LIFE OF HENRY BRULARD
Preface to Stendhal’s The Life of Henry Brulard, tr. John Sturrock (New York Review Books, 2002); reprinted in Brick 69, Spring 2002, and in Unknown Masterpieces, ed. Edwin Frank (New York Review Books, 2003).
MAURICE BLANCHOT ABSENT
Previously published in Nowhere Without No: In Memory of Maurice Blanchot, ed. Kevin Hart (Vagabond Press, 2003).
A FAREWELL TO MICHEL BUTOR
Previously published in The New York Times Magazine, December 25, 2016.
MICHEL LEIRIS’S FIBRILS, VOLUME 3 OF THE RULES OF THE GAME
Originally published, in slightly different form, as the introduction to my translation of Fibrils (Yale University Press, 2017).
AS I WAS READING
Previously published in 2000andWhat?: Stories About the Turn of the Millennium, ed. Karl Roeseler and David Gilbert (Trip Street Press, 1996).
MEETING ABRAHAM LINCOLN
First published in The Harvard Review 31 (Fall 2006); also posted on the Harvard Review online archive feature, 2015.
“PARING OFF THE AMPHIBOLOGISMS”: JESUS RECOVERED BY THE JESUS SEMINAR
First published in Joyful Noise: The New Testament Revisited, eds. Rick Moody and Darcey Steinke (Little, Brown & Co., 1997).
A READING OF THE SHEPHERD’S PSALM
First published in The Good Book: Writers Reflect on Favorite Passages from the Bible, ed. Andrew Blauner (Simon & Schuster, 2015).
REMEMBER THE VAN WAGENENS
Previously published in The Business of Memory: The Art of Remembering in an Age of Forgetting, Graywolf Forum Three, ed. Charles Baxter (Graywolf Press, 1999); first published in Southern Humanities Review 33, no. 1 (Winter 1999).
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
Here: Les Bluets, from the collection of the Centre Pompidou © Estate of Joan Mitchell.
Here: Aviary (Parrot Music Box) copyright © 2019 The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation. Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. From the collection of Robert and Marguerite Hoffmann.
Here, Here, Here, Here, Here: Alan Cote paintings courtesy of the artist. Photographs by Theo Cote.
Here, Here, Here–Here: Dutch tourist photographs by Theodore Shaw. From the collection of Francie Shaw.
PERMISSIONS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Excerpts from Fullblood Arabian copyright © 2014 by Osama Alomar. Translation copyright © 2014 by C. J. Collins and Osama Alomar. Reprinted with permission.
Excerpts from Made to Seem and Extremities, from Veil: New and Selected Poems copyright © 2011 by Rae Armantrout. Published by Wesleyan University Press and reprinted by permission.
Excerpts from The Voice Imitator by Thomas Bernhard, translated by Kenneth J. Northcott. Copyright © 1997 by the University of Chicago. Reproduced by permission.
Excerpt from “Safe Methods of Business” by Charles Bernstein, originally published in The Sophist, Sun and Moon Press, 1987. Reprinted by permission of Charles Bernstein.
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sp; “Living Instead” from Living Instead: Poems by William Bronk. Copyright © 1991 by William Bronk. Reprinted by permission of North Point Press, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
“Foreword” by Lydia Davis from A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin. “Foreword” copyright © 2015 by Lydia Davis. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Picador UK.
“Waiting for the Signal Man” from The Tunnel: Selected Poems of Russell Edson. Copyright © 1964 by Russell Edson. Reprinted with the permission of Oberlin College Press.
“Dead Daughter” and “When Things Go Wrong” from The Very Thing That Happens, a New Directions Paperback Original. Copyright © 1960, ’61, ’62, ’63, ’64 by Russell Edson, Norfolk, CT. Reprinted by permission of Lawrence Sikora, Literary Executor for the Estate of Russell Edson.
Excerpts from Novels in Three Lines by Félix Fénéon, trans. Luc Sante, published by New York Review Books, New York. Translation and introduction copyright © 2007 by Luc Sante. Reprinted by permission of New York Review Books.
[“i shouldn’t have started these red wool mittens.”] from “Ten Cheremiss (Mari) Songs” from Notes on the Possibilities and Attractions of Existence: Selected Poems 1965–2000. Copyright © 1983, 2001 by Anselm Hollo. Reprinted with the permission of the Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Coffee House Press, www.coffeehousepress.com.
“Anna K.” from When a Woman Loves a Man, published by Scribner, New York, 2005. Copyright © 2005 by David Lehman. Reprinted by permission.
Excerpt from Samuel Menashe: New and Selected Poems, edited by Christopher Ricks. Copyright © 2005 by Samuel Menashe. Reprinted by permission of the Library of America, New York, www.loa.org. All rights reserved.
Excerpt from The Granite Pail: The Selected Poems of Lorine Niedecker, published by North Point Press, San Francisco, 1985, second printing. Copyright © 1985 by the Estate of Lorine Niedecker. By permission of Bob Arnold, Literary Executor for the Estate of Lorine Niedecker.
Excerpt from “Garter Snake” from Coastlines by Eric Ormsby, published by ECW Press Ltd., 1992, 9781550221763.
“Haiku” from Collected Poems. Copyright © 1979, 2013 by Ron Padgett. Reprinted with the permission of the Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Coffee House Press, www.coffeehousepress.com.
Excerpt from “Seduced by Analogy” from Ten to One. Copyright © 1999 by Bob Perelman. Published by Wesleyan University Press and reprinted by permission.
“Poem,” “Perfection Wasted,” and “Garter Snake” from America: A Prophecy: A Sparrow Reader; Soft Skull Press; copyright © 2005 Sparrow. Reprinted by permission of Sparrow.
ALSO BY LYDIA DAVIS
NOVEL
The End of the Story
STORIES
The Thirteenth Woman and Other Stories
Story and Other Stories
Break It Down
Almost No Memory
Samuel Johnson Is Indignant
Varieties of Disturbance
The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis
Can’t and Won’t
POETRY
Two American Scenes (with Eliot Weinberger)
SELECTED TRANSLATIONS
Madame Bovary: Provincial Ways by Gustave Flaubert
Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust
Death Sentence by Maurice Blanchot
The Madness of the Day by Maurice Blanchot
The Spirit of Mediterranean Places by Michel Butor
Rules of the Game, I: Scratches by Michel Leiris
Rules of the Game, II: Scraps by Michel Leiris
Rules of the Game, III: Fibrils by Michel Leiris
Hélène by Pierre Jean Jouve
Grasses and Trees by A. L. Snijders
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lydia Davis is the author of one novel and seven story collections, most recently Can’t and Won’t. Her collection Varieties of Disturbance was a finalist for the 2007 National Book Award, and her Collected Stories was described by James Wood in The New Yorker as “a grand cumulative achievement.” She is also the acclaimed translator of Swann’s Way and Madame Bovary, both of which were awarded the French-American Foundation Translation Prize. Among many other honors, she received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2003 and the Man Booker International Prize in 2013, and was named both Chevalier and Officier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government for her fiction and translation. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Preface
THE PRACTICE OF WRITING
A Beloved Duck Gets Cooked: Forms and Influences I
Commentary on One Very Short Story (“In a House Besieged”)
From Raw Material to Finished Work: Forms and Influences II
A Note on the Word Gubernatorial
VISUAL ARTISTS: JOAN MITCHELL
Joan Mitchell and Les Bluets, 1973
WRITERS
John Ashbery’s Translation of Rimbaud’s Illuminations
Young Pynchon
The Story Is the Thing: Lucia Berlin’s A Manual for Cleaning Women
A Close Look at Two Books by Rae Armantrout
Small but Perfectly Formed: Five Favorite Short Stories
VISUAL ARTISTS: JOSEPH CORNELL
The Impetus Was Delight: A Response by Analogy to the Work of Joseph Cornell
THE PRACTICE OF WRITING (2)
Sources, Revision, Order, and Endings: Forms and Influences III
Revising One Sentence
Found Material, Syntax, Brevity, and the Beauty of Awkward Prose: Forms and Influences IV
Fragmentary or Unfinished: Barthes, Joubert, Hölderlin, Mallarmé, Flaubert
Thirty Recommendations for Good Writing Habits
VISUAL ARTISTS: ALAN COTE
Energy in Color: Alan Cote’s Recent Paintings
WRITERS (2)
“Emmy Moore’s Journal” by Jane Bowles
Osama Alomar’s Very Short Tales in Fullblood Arabian
Haunting the Flea Market: Roger Lewinter’s The Attraction of Things
Red Mittens: Anselm Hollo’s Translation from the Cheremiss
In Search of Difficult Edward Dahlberg
Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary
VISUAL ARTISTS: EARLY TOURIST PHOTOGRAPHS
Dutch Scenes: A Portfolio of Early Twentieth-Century Tourist Photographs
WRITERS (3)
The Problem of Plot Summary in Blanchot’s Fiction
Stendhal’s Alter Ego: The Life of Henry Brulard
Maurice Blanchot Absent
A Farewell to Michel Butor
Michel Leiris’s Fibrils, Volume 3 of The Rules of the Game
THE BIBLE, MEMORY, AND THE PASSAGE OF TIME
As I Was Reading
Meeting Abraham Lincoln
“Paring Off the Amphibologisms”: Jesus Recovered by the Jesus Seminar
A Reading of the Shepherd’s Psalm
Remember the Van Wagenens
Acknowledgments and Notes
Illustration Credits
Permissions Acknowledgments
Also by Lydia Davis
A Note About the Author
Copyright
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
120 Broadway, New York 10271
Copyright © 2019 by Lydia Davis
All rights reserved
First edition, 2019
Owing to limitations of space, all acknowledgments for permission to reprint previously published material can be found at the back of the book.
Illustration credits can be found at
the back of the book.
E-book ISBN: 978-0-374-71924-1
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