Woodcutters

By the time her talk was over, she had traced her lineage of influence and admiration to some fifteen writers from Russell Edson to Proust. What had begun as a shop-talk about one writer’s beginnings had become a pageant, an exemplum of literary activity —a profession. The writer who had started with translations of Leiris and Blanchot and with some idiosyncratic short short stories had turned into the translator of Swann’s Way and the author of a novel and four volumes of stories—148 stories—republished in a collected edition of 730 pages. She’d gone from bonsai to forest management. —Richard Locke on Lydia Davis, Threepenny Review

(via Quilty)

New Believer! October!

Ah yes...another first of the month, another issue of The Believer! That's how it is every month, except when it's the second month of a two-month extravaganza...but I'm getting ahead of myself! This month there's a great piece by Zach Baron on the late Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series of fantasy novels, whose work continues without him...(read the whole thing here and see what I mean)...Wells Tower has an interview with the late great Barry Hannah...David K. O'Hara with a seasonal offering on "autumnal folk," focusing on a U.K. band from the ’70s called Heron that I'd never heard of before...David Fincher interviewed...Ashley Butler on the gas mask...Susan Straight journeys into Inland Empire, CA...Interesting reviews, including Rozalia Jovanovic on Lydia Davis's Madame Bovary translation and Stephen Burt on poet Aaron Kunin...the usual Pendarvis/Hornby/Marcus columnal goodness...wow...a poem by Alan Gilbert!...an interview with legal scholar Marianne Constable (full text here)...and—believe(r) it or not, much, much more!

Literary discovery of two minutes ago

From the back cover of the most recent Lydia Davis book: "Fifty-seven rule-breaking short stories..."

The book is Varieties of Disturbance.

Is this intentional? 57 Varieties?!

Catalan call

Dzyd Jason has a smart interview with Lydia Davis up at the Poetry Foundation site...they're rapping* about translation, specifically LD's translation of a Catalan carol in the current issue of Poetry.

Randomly picked quote-as-appetizer:

"There is hardly any way to supply that lack."

More Lydia madness: Catch LD and Dzyd Sarah locking brain-horns in this Believer interview.


*I just mean "talking."

The Believer hits the big five-oh!

Yes! After nearly half a decade...the 50th issue of The Believer is on the stands! The stunning Charles Burns cover depicts...Charles Burns! Read Hillary Chute's epic interview with C.B., then we'll discuss...also check out (Psychic Envelopes chanteuse) Sarah Manguso's interview with Lydia Davis (which leads Dizzyhead Scott to this reverie)...Leland de la Durantaye on the strange career of art historian Aby Warburg...Eileen Myles on a lost notebook...excellent interview with Linda Thompson...Avi Davis on the Archimedes Palimpsest...Ginger Strand on Niagara Falls...and much more!

First paragraph as short story

The first paragraph of the fourth chapter of Annie Dillard's latest novel is like a Lydia Davis–y storyette unto itself (via Erasing.org):

After they married she learned to feel their skin as double-sided. They felt a pause. Theirs was too much feeling to push through the crack that led down to the dim world of time and stuff. That world was gone. They held themselves alert only in those few million cells where they touched. She learned from those cells his awareness and his courtesy. Love so sprang at her, she honestly thought no one had ever looked into it. Where was it in literature? Someone would have written something. She must not have recognized it. Time to read everything again.