- 244 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
A National Book Award finalist, this collection of "whimsical, seemingly eventless fictions... gain momentum as tiny epics of paranoia and ennui" ( The New Yorker )
Lydia Davis has been called "one of the quiet giants in the world of American fiction" ( Los Angeles Times), "an American virtuoso of the short story form" ( Salon ), an innovator who attempts "to remake the model of the modern short story" ( The New York Times Book Review ). Her admirers include Grace Paley, Jonathan Franzen, and Zadie Smith; as Time magazine observed, her stories are "moving... and somehow inevitable, as if she has written what we were all on the verge of thinking."
In Varieties of Disturbance, her fourth collection, Davis extends her reach as never before in stories that take every form from sociological studies to concise poems. Her subjects include the five senses, fourth-graders, good taste, and tropical storms. She offers a reinterpretation of insomnia and re-creates the ordeals of Kafka in the kitchen. She questions the lengths to which one should go to save the life of a caterpillar, proposes a clear account of the sexual act, rides the bus, probes the limits of marital fidelity, and unlocks the secret to a long and happy life.
No two of these fictions are alike. And yet in each, Davis rearranges our view of the world by looking beyond our preconceptions to a bizarre truth, a source of delight and surprise.
"[Davis's] belief that language is both the subject and the medium of fiction has... led her... into new worlds." — New York Times
"Piquant and elegant." —Booklist
"Davis's work defies categorization and possesses a moving, austere elegance." — Publishers Weekly, starred review
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Praise
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- A Man from Her Past
- Dog and Me
- Enlightened
- The Good Taste Contest
- Collaboration with Fly
- Kafka Cooks Dinner
- Tropical Storm
- Good Times
- Idea for a Short Documentary Film
- Forbidden Subjects
- Two Types
- The Senses
- Grammar Questions
- Hand
- The Caterpillar
- Childcare
- We Miss You: A Study of Get-Well Letters from a Class of Fourth-Graders
- Passing Wind
- Television
- Jane and the Cane
- Getting to Know Your Body
- Absentminded
- Southward Bound, Reads Worstward Ho
- The Walk
- Varieties of Disturbance
- Lonely
- Mrs. D and Her Maids
- 20 Sculptures in One Hour
- Nietszche
- What You Learn About the Baby
- Her Mother’s Mother
- How It Is Done
- Insomnia
- Burning Family Members
- The Way to Perfection
- The Fellowship
- Helen and Vi: A Study in Health and Vitality
- Reducing Expenses
- Mother’s Reaction to My Travel Plans
- For Sixty Cents
- How Shall I Mourn Them?
- A Strange Impulse
- How She Could Not Drive
- Suddenly Afraid
- Getting Better
- Head, Heart
- The Strangers
- The Busy Road
- Order
- The Fly
- Traveling with Mother
- Index Entry
- My Son
- Example of the Continuing Past Tense in a Hotel Room
- Cape Cod Diary
- Almost Over: What’s the Word?
- A Different Man
- Also by Lydia Davis
- About the Author
- Acknowledgments
- Copyright