lifesaverscandyofficial's review against another edition
impossible to judge on the whole but broadly speaking LD rules
literarianist's review against another edition
5.0
A Beloved Duck Gets Cooked – 4/5
Commentary on One Very Short Story – 3/5
From Raw Material to Finished Work – 4/5
A Note on the Word Gubernatorial – 5/5
Joan Mitchell and Les Bluets, 1973 – 5/5
John Ashbery’s Translation of Rimbaud’s Illuminations – 5/5
Young Pynchon – 5/5
The Story Is the Thing: Lucia Berlin’s A Manual for Cleaning Women – 4/5
A Close Look at Two Books by Rae Armantrout – 3/5
Small but Perfectly Formed: Five Favorite Short Stories – 5/5
The Impetus Was Delight: A Response by Analogy to the Work of Joseph Cornell – 3.5/5
Sources, Revisions, Order, and Endings – 5/5
Revising One Sentence – 5/5
Found Material, Syntax, Brevity, and the Beauty of Awkward Prose – 5/5
Fragmentary or Unfinished: Barthes, Joubert, Hölderlin, Mallarmé, Flaubert – 4/5
Thirty Recommendations for Good Writing Habits – 5/5
Energy in Color: Alan Cote’s Recent Paintings – 4/5
“Emmy Moore’s Journal” by Jane Bowles – 4/5
Osama Alomar’s Very Short Tales in Fullblood Arabian – 5/5
Haunting the Flea Market: Roger Lewinter’s The Attraction of Things – 3.5/5
Red Mittens: Anselm Hilo’s Translation from the Cheremiss – 5/5
In Search of Difficult Edward Dahlberg – 5/5
Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary – 5/5
Dutch Scenes: A Portfolio of Early Twentieth-Century Tourist Photographs – 3/5
The Problem of Plot Summary in Blanchot’s Fiction – 4/5
Stendhal’s Alter Ego: The Life of Henry Brulard – 5/5
Maurice Blanchot Absent – 5/5
A Farewell to Michel Butor – 4/5
Michael Leiris’s Fibrils, Volume 3 of The Rules of the Game – 3.5/5
As I Was Reading – 4/5
Meeting Abraham Lincoln –3.5/5
“Paring Off the Amphibologisms”: Jesus Recovered by the Jesus Seminar – 4/5
A Reading of the Shepherd’s Psalm – 5/5
Remember the Van Wagenens – 5/5
Commentary on One Very Short Story – 3/5
From Raw Material to Finished Work – 4/5
A Note on the Word Gubernatorial – 5/5
Joan Mitchell and Les Bluets, 1973 – 5/5
John Ashbery’s Translation of Rimbaud’s Illuminations – 5/5
Young Pynchon – 5/5
The Story Is the Thing: Lucia Berlin’s A Manual for Cleaning Women – 4/5
A Close Look at Two Books by Rae Armantrout – 3/5
Small but Perfectly Formed: Five Favorite Short Stories – 5/5
The Impetus Was Delight: A Response by Analogy to the Work of Joseph Cornell – 3.5/5
Sources, Revisions, Order, and Endings – 5/5
Revising One Sentence – 5/5
Found Material, Syntax, Brevity, and the Beauty of Awkward Prose – 5/5
Fragmentary or Unfinished: Barthes, Joubert, Hölderlin, Mallarmé, Flaubert – 4/5
Thirty Recommendations for Good Writing Habits – 5/5
Energy in Color: Alan Cote’s Recent Paintings – 4/5
“Emmy Moore’s Journal” by Jane Bowles – 4/5
Osama Alomar’s Very Short Tales in Fullblood Arabian – 5/5
Haunting the Flea Market: Roger Lewinter’s The Attraction of Things – 3.5/5
Red Mittens: Anselm Hilo’s Translation from the Cheremiss – 5/5
In Search of Difficult Edward Dahlberg – 5/5
Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary – 5/5
Dutch Scenes: A Portfolio of Early Twentieth-Century Tourist Photographs – 3/5
The Problem of Plot Summary in Blanchot’s Fiction – 4/5
Stendhal’s Alter Ego: The Life of Henry Brulard – 5/5
Maurice Blanchot Absent – 5/5
A Farewell to Michel Butor – 4/5
Michael Leiris’s Fibrils, Volume 3 of The Rules of the Game – 3.5/5
As I Was Reading – 4/5
Meeting Abraham Lincoln –3.5/5
“Paring Off the Amphibologisms”: Jesus Recovered by the Jesus Seminar – 4/5
A Reading of the Shepherd’s Psalm – 5/5
Remember the Van Wagenens – 5/5
gjpeace's review against another edition
4.0
4.5
Trying to wrap up some reading I stalled out on earlier in the year so I can start 2022 with a clean slate. Now that I’ve finished this, all I have left is ~200 pages of Suttree.
Anyways, this is great—as to be expected when you’re reading something written by Lydia Davis. Best parts are when she gets into the granular aspects of a single sentence/line/phrase/stanza, which she does often. Feels like you’re taking a class with the most gifted close reader you’ve ever met. Sometimes the material she’s analyzing is her own, and these sections—in which we get several drafts of a (very) short story and explanations for her changes from draft to draft—are incredibly enlightening. I feel like I’m a better reader and writer for having read them, and I plan to incorporate some of her musings into my own classes when the opportunity presents itself. Having read at least a collection or two of Davis’s short fiction, several years ago, I was happy to discover just how much thought goes into a single placement of punctuation—or a single word; that focus feels obvious when you read her, but it’s helpful to have her walk you through all those small choices.
There are a few dud essays though. Or maybe not duds but just pieces that were uninteresting to me, despite how skilled a writer Davis is. There are several essays here that I assume were written as intros to reissues or something, mostly having to do with French writers like Blanchot (whose work Davis has translated), Leiris, Stendhal, et al. When she turns to issues of translation, it’s fascinating, for similar reasons as those outlined above, but other times it just felt like I was reading about some authors I most likely will never read (but whom I did add to my TBR list, just in case).
May ultimately be underestimating this with the rating, given just how long it’s been since I read the first half, but ratings are fake anyways. Perhaps the biggest compliment? Reading about her process made me buy a notebook, which I hope to fill up over the coming year.
Trying to wrap up some reading I stalled out on earlier in the year so I can start 2022 with a clean slate. Now that I’ve finished this, all I have left is ~200 pages of Suttree.
Anyways, this is great—as to be expected when you’re reading something written by Lydia Davis. Best parts are when she gets into the granular aspects of a single sentence/line/phrase/stanza, which she does often. Feels like you’re taking a class with the most gifted close reader you’ve ever met. Sometimes the material she’s analyzing is her own, and these sections—in which we get several drafts of a (very) short story and explanations for her changes from draft to draft—are incredibly enlightening. I feel like I’m a better reader and writer for having read them, and I plan to incorporate some of her musings into my own classes when the opportunity presents itself. Having read at least a collection or two of Davis’s short fiction, several years ago, I was happy to discover just how much thought goes into a single placement of punctuation—or a single word; that focus feels obvious when you read her, but it’s helpful to have her walk you through all those small choices.
There are a few dud essays though. Or maybe not duds but just pieces that were uninteresting to me, despite how skilled a writer Davis is. There are several essays here that I assume were written as intros to reissues or something, mostly having to do with French writers like Blanchot (whose work Davis has translated), Leiris, Stendhal, et al. When she turns to issues of translation, it’s fascinating, for similar reasons as those outlined above, but other times it just felt like I was reading about some authors I most likely will never read (but whom I did add to my TBR list, just in case).
May ultimately be underestimating this with the rating, given just how long it’s been since I read the first half, but ratings are fake anyways. Perhaps the biggest compliment? Reading about her process made me buy a notebook, which I hope to fill up over the coming year.
schellenbergk's review against another edition
Iѓ??ve been on a Lydia Davis binge this month... started the essays, then switched over to a volume of short stories (emphasis on short), then a translation by her, then back to the essays. Her thoughts on the writing process are very interesting especially having recently read her fiction.
devinayo's review against another edition
5.0
Reading Lydia Davis has always made me wonder how she could do so much with so little words. The writings in Essays: One show the hard work and long process behind her tight and concise stories. Through the essays, Davis provides an insight into how she sees, reads, thinks, writes, and revises her works. A huge chunk of the book is dedicated to the writers which influence her writing, and why these writers matter a great deal to her.
The most interesting parts in the book are perhaps when Lydia scrutinizes writings, either her own or others, and pick them apart through a somewhat surgical level of precision in order to understand why and how the words work. This preciseness, along with her delicate approach, is the main ingredient to the seemingly effortless magic in Lydia Davis' stories.
While brevity is the end, the process is sometimes grueling and never-ending. Lydia speaks openly about her habit of revising sentences, not stopping until she gets every word right, down to the last one. In one essay, she deconstructs the process of revising one sentence. Later, in an interview with The Book Show podcast, she said that she revised the piece on revising one sentence.
Consider, for instance, one of her tips for writers: "Analyzing will help you solve problems: if you have trouble with endings, read and analyze endings; if you have trouble with lush descriptions, see how descriptions function for different writers. For any problem you have, there will be an answer in the close analysis of one or more good writers."
Many people liken writing to arts, and while there might be some truth in that, Lydia Davis treats writing as a puzzle: one you have to observe carefully, before you even begin to think and start, which will present you challenges along the way, but is solvable nonetheless if you put your mind and time and energy to tinker with the words.
The most interesting parts in the book are perhaps when Lydia scrutinizes writings, either her own or others, and pick them apart through a somewhat surgical level of precision in order to understand why and how the words work. This preciseness, along with her delicate approach, is the main ingredient to the seemingly effortless magic in Lydia Davis' stories.
While brevity is the end, the process is sometimes grueling and never-ending. Lydia speaks openly about her habit of revising sentences, not stopping until she gets every word right, down to the last one. In one essay, she deconstructs the process of revising one sentence. Later, in an interview with The Book Show podcast, she said that she revised the piece on revising one sentence.
Consider, for instance, one of her tips for writers: "Analyzing will help you solve problems: if you have trouble with endings, read and analyze endings; if you have trouble with lush descriptions, see how descriptions function for different writers. For any problem you have, there will be an answer in the close analysis of one or more good writers."
Many people liken writing to arts, and while there might be some truth in that, Lydia Davis treats writing as a puzzle: one you have to observe carefully, before you even begin to think and start, which will present you challenges along the way, but is solvable nonetheless if you put your mind and time and energy to tinker with the words.
lilactea123's review against another edition
challenging
funny
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
4.25
drreese's review against another edition
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
Some inspiring passages, some fascinating and angular observations, some tedium (which is only to be expected of a writer so perceptive and involved with tiny details and minutiae of the written word). Lydia Davis is such a good and interesting companion!