Can’t and Won’t Stories
Can’t and Won’t Stories by Lydia Davis is a reprint edition published by Picador on March 31, 2015. This collection features a range of stories that explore the nuances of everyday life through Davis’s distinctive prose. The narratives vary in length and style, from brief one-liners to more elaborate examinations of how mundane disruptions can impact routine.
Readers will find a diverse array of storytelling techniques in this collection, including letters of complaint and dream-inspired tales. Lydia Davis’s sharp observations and wry humor illuminate the complexities of the ordinary, revealing both the alienating and pleasurable aspects of daily experiences. With 304 pages, this English-language edition invites readers to engage with the literary and fictional elements that define contemporary American literature.
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Her stories may be literal one-liners: the entirety of “Bloomington” reads, “Now that I have been here for a little while, I can say with confidence that I have never been here before.” Or they may be lengthier investigations of the havoc wreaked by the most mundane disruptions to routine: in “A Small Story About a Small Box of Chocolates,” a professor receives a gift of thirty-two small chocolates and is paralyzed by the multitude of options she imagines for their consumption. The stories may appear in the form of letters of complaint; they may be extracted from Flaubert’s correspondence; or they may be inspired by the author’s own dreams, or the dreams of friends.
What does not vary throughout Can’t and Won’t, Lydia Davis’s fifth collection of stories, is the power of her finely honed prose. Davis is sharply observant; she is wry or witty or poignant. Above all, she is refreshing. Davis writes with bracing candor and sly humor about the quotidian, revealing the mysterious, the foreign, the alienating, and the pleasurable within the predictable patterns of daily life.
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