Lydia Davis is a master of precise prose writing and the ability to magnify everyday life so one can see every nuance and vibration from one of her pages. I read her short fiction and essays, taking on the role of a reader but also a writer. I imagine myself writing on the same subject, but how would mine differ? There would be a significant difference. Davis’s character and sensibility, which is her own, make these short stories in Our Strangers a unique reading experience. Recurring themes run through the book, but you can miss them unless you are keeping notes while reading this collection. But then I feel that this collection, like her other short story volumes, one can reread these works many times.
Ironically, she translates Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way, which has the longest sentences imaginable, and yet, in her fiction, her sentences are as short as her stories. Still, each word she uses is never wasted; just like Proust, you need all to build a sensibility. Her observation abilities are similar to Proust in that nothing goes unnoticed in a room or a situation. The literature I’m aware of, such as Proust, Michel Leiris, and Maurice Blanchot, all writers detailed to the maximum in their writings, are brilliantly translated by Lydia Davis. When one says that they read Lydia Davis, they must also read her translations, as well as her essays and fiction. It comes from the same pot, and she is a masterful chef, using the ingredients that she knows work well in the creative mix.
Our Strangers: Stories seem to occur in small towns or the countryside. One feels that Davis mentally records conversations in shop lines and at restaurant tables beside her. Fragmented in style but with her focus, they become absurd, profound, and, at times, incredibly moving observations. When someone wants to write or read and ask for suggestions, I always suggest Richard Stark, PG Wodehouse, and Lydia Davis. I think among those three, one can learn a lot about the English language and how to use it in a very profound manner.