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S A M U E L  J O H N S O N  IS  I N D I G N A N T L Y D I A  D A V I S - - - - 201-page hardcover book; cover photograph by David Byrne ISBN: 0-9703355-9-8  $16.95 Carton Quantity: 26 One of the Village Voice's 25 Favorite Books and the ALA's 2002 Notable Books, this collection of 56 stories is like nothing else. By which we mean: there is nothing else like this. Lydia Davis makes simple things complicated and complicated things simple, and it is all amazing to behold. Davis has received the Whiting Writer's Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the French Insigna of the Order of Arts and Letters. She is the author of a novel, The End of the Story, and two collections of short stories, Break It Down and Almost No Memory. Davis has also just finished a new translation of Marcel Proust's Swann's Way. "With her deadpan delivery and shaggy-dog profundities, Davis might be thought of as an erudite stand-up comedian, one who works philosophers' conferences instead of nightclubs." - The New York Times "Davis turns philosophical snippets into fiction, with moving results. It is rare for a writer to challenge the tradition of storytelling and still be a pleasure to read. Davis' stories are as clear as children's books and somehow inevitable, as if she has written down what we were all on the verge of thinking ourselves." - Time Magazine "Eclectic and astute, Davis continues to find new ways to tell us the things we need to know." - Publishers Weekly