Finding freedom
If the name Lydia Davis means little to you, don't panic. Until recently it meant little to anyone anywhere for the simple reason that Lydia Davis has been America's best-kept literary secret.
The author of strange, brief and intriguing stories, she slips easily through the net of existing categories. Is her work prose poetry, essayistic verse, minimalism or even the pleasingly pedantic short shorts? Some of her writing is so fleeting that one is tempted to coin an entirely new genre: Christmas Cracker Joke Lit. Here is the entirety of Example of the Continuing Past Tense in a Hotel Room: 'Your housekeeper has been Shelly.' And that's all she wrote.
Davis may be the most avant of avant garde authors, but in conversation she is enjoyably down to earth. This shouldn't really be a surprise given that she spins ludic tales from such mundane occupations as looking at a fish, knocking over a glass of water or watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show. One recent story, Passing Wind, elevates that old conundrum - who farted? - to epistemological heights.
Davis even admits to that most 21st-century temptation for writers: reading her reviews on Amazon. 'I don't do it very often,' she confesses from her home in upstate New York. 'It's sort of ridiculous. One person said, 'This is the worst writer I have ever read.' I loved his confidence. But it doesn't bother me at all - that some people can't get into it.'
A failure to 'get into' Davis has characterised the majority of her career. Her first book, The Thirteenth Woman and Other Stories, was hardly noticed on publication - not exactly a surprise given that only 500 copies were printed. A novel (The End of the Story) followed, along with seven further collections of Davis' odd but intriguing short fiction.
While her sales remained modest, her critical reputation gradually grew. In recent years, it has become de rigueur to mention the phrase 'writer's writer' when reviewing a new Davis piece: her fans include the cream of contemporary American fiction such as Rick Moody, Jonathan Franzen, Dave Eggers, Francine Prose and the late David Foster Wallace.