One of these is by Lydia Davis, acclaimed American writer. One is not. They are whole pieces, by the way, not extracts.
This morning I went into the park I often pass on my journeys to somewhere else. I can now say that I have been into this park and not always passed it by.
Now that I have been here for a little while, I can say with confidence that I have never been here before.
One of these accounts of a dream is by Lydia Davis. One is not.
I am a college girl. I tell a younger college girl, a dancer, that the sun is very low in the sky now. Its light must be filling the caves by the sea.
I am watching a man lift up the sails of a windmill in his bare hands. The sails catch the light and appear to be spinning.
One of these observations is by Lydia Davis. One is not.
I used to be quite certain that many people made a puzzling mistake when they wrote ‘New York, New York.’ Now I know the place may be correctly called ‘New York, New York.’
She thinks, for a moment, that Alabama
is a city in Georgia: it is called Alabama, Georgia.
No, I’m not giving you the answers. You decide.
Short stories are having something of a resurgence, which I suspect means they are popular with more writers but not with more readers, so perhaps whoever called Lydia Davis ‘a writer’s writer’s writer’ had a point, and although I am not generally in favour of banning books I would ban all students on creative writing courses from ever reading her books, or parts, or even single pages of her books. Davis breaks all the rules and then makes up a few of her own and breaks those as well.
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