From one of our most imaginative and inventive writers, a crystalline collection of perfectly modulated, sometimes harrowing and often hilarious investigations into the multifaceted ways in which human beings perceive each other and themselves.
A couple suspects their friends think them boring; a woman resolves to see herself as nothing but then concludes she's set too high a goal; and a funeral home receives a letter rebuking it for linguistic errors. Lydia Davis once again proves in the words of the Los Angeles Times "one of the quiet giants in the world of American fiction."
"Highly intelligent, wildly entertaining stories, bound by visionary, philosophical, comic prose―part Gertrude Stein, part Simone Weil, and pure Lydia Davis."―Elle
"Davis should be counted among the true originals of contemporary American short fiction."―San Francisco Chronicle
"Davis deploys her gift for verbal bemusement, annoyance, and high anxiety...[and] converts her characters' complex ruminations into narratives full of insight and pleasure."―The Village Voice
"Her stories are intellectual and playful, and rigorous as brainteasers."―Bookforum
"If you're smart, chances are good you'll read the stories in Lydia Davis's Samuel Johnson is Indignant."―Vanity Fair
"Lydia Davis is the kind of writer that makes you say, 'Oh, at last.' "―Grace Paley
"Precise and quietly unsettling...There is a precision of language and of feeling that is uniquely moving and uniquely her own."―Detroit Free Press
"Introspective and subversive, ironic and playful, obsessive and funny, Davis's stories reveal the ratcheting of the imagination and the ineffable movement of the mind over the varied textures of daily life."―Salon
"Superb...One celebrates a writer like Davis for her intelligent interpreting of the world and her risky bid to reveal the brilliant machinations of her own uniquely gifted mind."―Elle
