I.

In 1988, I was employed by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in an editorial capacity, from which their most brilliant editor, Pat Strachan, had lately departed, leaving behind a trail of really luminous writers, Padgett Powell, Jamaica Kincaid, et al. There were some Pat Strachan books, though, that people didn't really know well, that had not quite gotten all the attention they deserved. One day I picked up a paperback with a really excellent title (and a good jacket design), BREAK IT DOWN, and gave it a test drive, despite not knowing much about it. The first story in it, entitled "Story," just completely arrested me. What I liked first of all was how unsentimental it was, what I liked secondly was its world view, which was skeptical, but what I liked best of all was its rhythmical energy. The sentences in "Story" get more complicated as the psychology of the story itself gets more complicated, until the story rises to the condition of a high-wire deconstructionist detective narrative, as in this passage which I have often read aloud to myself and others: "The fact that he does not tell me the truth all the time makes me not sure of his truth at certain times, and then I work to figure out for myself if what he is telling me is the truth or not, and sometimes I can figure out that it's not the truth and sometimes I don't know and never know, and sometimes just because he says it to me over and over again I am convinced it is the truth because I don't believe he would repeat a lie so often." I have taught this story just about every time I have ever taught, because I think it is not only faultlessly written and incredibly moving (in the most austere kind of way), but also because it is about what a story is in a way that is not pyrotechnical or self-satisfied.

Since I read "Story," I have read everything else Lydia ever wrote, loving particularly her novel THE END OF THE STORY, and I have read some of her translations and I have commissioned work from her (for a book I edited with a friend, JOYFUL NOISE), to the point where I have often repeated elsewhere and will say again here that I think Lydia Davis is the best prose stylist in America, and I'm not at all exaggerating for the sake of testimonial, which always seems to have exaggeration built into it. For me there are only four writers who have ever really instructed me in how to write, and they are Samuel Beckett, Thomas Bernhard, Stanley Elkin, and Lydia Davis. Her stories will be read down the centuries, etc etc., and we will all be really lucky to have strode around in these dark days that were also Lydia's times.

 — Rick Moody

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II.

Lydia Davis is the only fiction writer I know of whose prose has received an award for poetry.

Lydia Davis knows what you're thinking.

Lydia Davis uses language to articulate the sensations of the place where consciousness precedes language, or perhaps begins to meld with it. And she does so in such a way that it seems foreign yet completely accessible, almost as if translated from a language of intent, the place of gestation for what becomes our thoughts, not quite an utterance but an uneasy state of mind.

Lydia Davis could say what I just said in ten or fewer words and to greater effect.

Lydia Davis translated Proust while you were watching CNN.

Lydia Davis grinds down relationships to a fine dust and sifts them until all that's left is their basic elements. Then she takes the finest dust and sprinkles it in your eyes. Now you can see.

Lydia Davis makes the past seem like a dream you had in childhood. The setting is often European and disconcertingly familiar. So why do you want to live there?

Lydia Davis suggests it's very strange to be alone. Stranger to be with someone else.

Lydia Davis makes it look easy, which is very hard.

Lydia Davis knows how it feels.

Lydia Davis feels how it knows.

Lydia Davis reads her stories as if she were always there behind the podium, an oracle you can visit whenever it's desirous to learn about yourself.

Lydia Davis speculates about the lives of those who live above and beneath. Such odd sounds and explanations.

Lydia Davis intuits the threat of the inanimate.

Lydia Davis was somehow raised within your family and was also married to you, even if you were never married.

Lydia Davis has information about the origins of annoyance.

Lydia Davis makes being uncomfortable comfortable.

Lydia Davis realizes things are never exactly where they should be.

Lydia Davis understands these things to be among the most ominous: mothers, fathers, siblings, televisions, telephones, fish, gas stoves, and socks.

Lydia Davis reinvented the wheel. It's irregular now.

 — Christopher Kennedy