Can't and Won't

by Lydia Davis

Overview

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

The New York Times • Los Angeles Times • The Boston Globe

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250062437
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	03/31/2015
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

LYDIA DAVIS is the author of one novel and five story collections, including Varieties of Disturbance, a finalist for the 2007 National Book Award. She is also the acclaimed translator of Swann’s Way and Madame Bovary, both of which were awarded the French-American Foundation Translation Prize. The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis was described by James Wood in The New Yorker as a “grand cumulative achievement.” She is the winner of the 2013 Man Booker International Prize.

Read an Excerpt

A Story of Stolen Salamis
 
 
My son’s Italian landlord in Brooklyn kept a shed out back in which he cured and smoked salamis. One night, in the midst of a wave of petty vandalism and theft, the shed was broken into and the salamis were taken. My son talked to his landlord about it the next day, commiserating over the vanished sausages. The landlord was resigned and philosophical, but corrected him: “They were not sausages. They were salamis.” Then the incident was written up in one of the city’s more prominent magazines as an amusing and colorful urban incident. In the article, the reporter called the stolen goods “sausages.” My son showed the article to his landlord, who hadn’t known about it. The landlord was interested and pleased that the magazine had seen fit to report the incident, but he added: “They weren’t sausages. They were salamis.”
The Dog Hair
The dog is gone. We miss him. When the doorbell rings, no one barks. When we come home late, there is no one waiting for us. We still find his white hairs here and there around the house and on our clothes. We pick them up. We should throw them away. But they are all we have left of him. We don’t throw them away. We have a wild hope—if only we collect enough of them, we will be able to put the dog back together again.
Circular Story
On Wednesday mornings early there is always a racket out there on the road. It wakes me up and I always wonder what it is. It is always the trash collection truck picking up the trash. The truck comes every Wednesday morning early. It always wakes me up. I always wonder what it is.
Idea for a Sign
At the start of a train trip, people search for a good seat, and some of them take a careful look at the people nearby who have already chosen their seats, to see if they will make good neighbors.
It might help if we each wore a little sign saying in what ways we will and will not be likely to disturb other passengers, such as: Will not talk on cell phone; will not eat smelly food.
Included in mine would be: Will not talk on cell phone at all, aside from perhaps a short communication to my husband at the beginning of the trip home, summarizing my visit in the city, or, more rarely, a quick warning to a friend on the way down that I will be late; but will recline my seat back as far as it will go, for most of the trip, except when I am eating my lunch or snack; may in fact be adjusting it slightly, back and up, from time to time throughout the trip; will sooner or later eat something, usually a sandwich, sometimes a salad or a container of rice pudding, actually two containers of rice pudding, though small ones; sandwich, almost always Swiss cheese, with in fact very little cheese, just a single slice, and lettuce and tomato, will not be noticeably smelly, at least as far as I can tell; am as tidy as I can be with the salad, but eating salad with a plastic fork is awkward and difficult; am tidy with the rice pudding, taking small bites, though when I remove the sealed top of the container it can make a loud ripping noise for just a moment; may keep unscrewing the top of my water bottle and taking a drink of water, especially while eating my sandwich and about one hour afterwards; may be more restless than some other passengers, and may clean my hands several times during the trip with a small bottle of hand sanitizer, sometimes using hand lotion afterwards, which involves reaching into my purse, taking out a small toiletries bag, unzipping it, and, when finished, zipping it up again and returning it to my purse; but may also sit perfectly quietly for a few minutes or longer staring out the window; may do nothing but read a book through most of the trip, except for one walk down the aisle to the restroom and back to my seat; but, on another day, may put the book down every few minutes, take a small notebook out of my purse, remove the rubber band from around it, and make a note in the notebook; or, when reading through a back issue of a literary magazine, may rip pages out in order to save them, though I will try to do this only when train is stopped at a station; lastly, after a day in the city, may untie my shoelaces and slip my shoes off for part of the trip, especially if the shoes are not very comfortable, then resting my bare feet on top of my shoes rather than directly on the floor, or, very rarely, may remove shoes and put on slippers, if I have a pair with me, keeping them on until I have nearly reached my destination; but feet are quite clean and toenails have a nice dark red polish on them.
 
 
Copyright © 2014 by Lydia Davis

Table of Contents

I

A Story of Stolen Salamis 3

The Dog Hair 4

Circular Story 5

Idea for a Sign 6

Bloomington 8

The Cook's Lesson 9

At the Bank 10

Awake in the Night 11

At the Bank: 2 12

The Two Davises and the Rug 13

Contingency (vs. Necessity) 18

Brief Incident in Short a, Long a, and Schwa 19

Contingency (vs. Necessity) 2: On Vacation 20

A Story Told to Me by a Friend 21

The Bad Novel 23

After You Left 24

The Bodyguard 26

The Child 27

The Churchyard 28

My Sister and the Queen of En gland 29

The Visit to the Dentist 31

Letter to a Frozen Peas Manufacturer 32

The Cornmeal 33

II

Two Undertakers 37

I Ask Mary About Her Friend, the Depressive, and

His Vacation 38

The Magic of the Train 39

Eating Fish Alone 40

Can't and Won't 46

Pouchet's Wife 47

Dinner 48

The Dog 49

The Grandmother 50

The Dreadful Mucamas 51

Reversible Story 61

A Woman, Thirty 62

How I Know What I Like (Six Versions) 63

Handel 64

The Force of the Subliminal 65

Her Geography: Alabama 67

The Funeral 68

The Husband- Seekers 69

In the Gallery 70

The Low Sun 71

The Landing 72

The Language of the Telephone Company 77

The Coachman and the Worm 78

Letter to a Marketing Manager 80

III

The Last of the Mohicans 85

Grade Two Assignment 86

Master 87

An Awkward Situation 88

House keeping Observation 90

The Execution 91

A Note from the Paperboy 92

In the Train Station 93

The Moon 94

My Footsteps 95

How I Read as Quickly as Possible Through My Back Issues of the TLS 96

Notes During Long Phone Conversation with Mother 101

Men 102

Negative Emotions 103

I'm Pretty Comfortable, But I Could Be a Little

More Comfortable 105

Judgment 112

The Chairs 113

My Friend's Creation 114

The Piano 115

The Party 116

The Cows 118

The Exhibition 134

Letter to a Peppermint Candy Company 136

Her Geography: Illinois 139

IV

Ödön von Horváth Out Walking 143

On the Train 144

The Problem of the Vacuum Cleaner 145

The Seals 146

Learning Medieval History 171

My School Friend 172

The Piano Lesson 173

The Schoolchildren in the Large Building 174

The Sentence and the Young Man 175

Molly, Female Cat: History/Findings 176

The Letter to the Foundation 179

The Results of One Statistical Study 208

Revise: 1 209

Short Conversation (in Airport Departure Lounge) 210

Revise: 2 211

Left Luggage 212

Waiting for Takeoff 214

Industry 215

The Sky Above Los Angeles 216

Two Characters in a Paragraph 217

Swimming in Egypt 218

The Language of Things in the House 219

The Washerwomen 226

Letter to a Hotel Manager 227

Her Birthday 232

V

My Childhood Friend 235

Their Poor Dog 236

Hello Dear 238

Not Interested 239

Old Woman, Old Fish 242

Staying at the Pharmacist's 243

The Song 245

Two Former Students 246

A Small Story About a Small Box of Chocolates 247

The Woman Next to Me on the Airplane 251

Writing 252

Wrong Thank- You in Theater 253

The Rooster 254

Sitting with My Little Friend 256

The Old Soldier 257

Two Sligo Lads 259

The Woman in Red 260

If at the Wedding (at the Zoo) 261

The Gold Digger of Goldfi elds 264

The Old Vacuum Cleaner Keeps Dying on Her 266

Flaubert and Point of View 267

Family Shopping 269

Local Obits 270

Letter to the President of the American Biographical

Institute, Inc. 279

Nancy Brown Will Be in Town 282

Ph.D. 283

Notes and Acknowledgments 285

Editorial Reviews

Widely considered one of the most original minds in American fiction today.”—Dana Goodyear, The New Yorker

“This is what the best and most original literature can do: make us more acutely aware of life on and off the page.”—Peter Orner, The New York Times Book Review

“[Can't and Won't] is evidence of a writer who is in total control of her own peculiar original voice; its pleasures are unexpected and manifold.”—Kate Christensen, Elle

“A master of sequencing. Davis mixes long and short dispatches to intoxicating effect.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times

“The most revolutionary collection of stories by an American in twenty-five years.”—John Freeman, The Boston Globe

“Drop everything and pick up Lydia Davis's fifth collection of short stories...Observation, drama, and (yes) compression—it's all there, giving the most minor moments a kind of epic weight.”—David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times

“Davis's signal gift is to make us feel alive.”—Claire Messud, Financial Times

“Davis dances right up to and around that final mystery that can't, won't, and must be borne, that most inexplicable magic trick, life's vanishing act.”—Parul Sehgal, NPR

“Davis is official literary dynamite...Everything she writes looks effortless.”—San Francisco Chronicle

From the Publisher

[Davis's] stories have a way of affecting the senses so that indecision itself becomes drama and a mutual shrug between two strangers can take on more meaning. This is what the best and most original literature can do: make us more acutely aware of life on and off the page. To read Davis is to become a co-conspirator in her way of existing in the world, perplexity combined with vivid observation…this collection is as mercifully flawed and awkward as her characters themselves. Call Lydia Davis the patron saint of befuddled reality…What Davis is attempting to express is the wild divergence of human experience, how the ordinary and the profound not only coexist but depend on each other.

The New York Times Book Review - Peter Orner

★ 01/13/2014
With her fifth collection, Davis (Break It Down) continues to hone her subtle and distinctive brand of storytelling. These poems, vignettes, thoughts, observations, and stories defy clear categorization; each one is an independent whole, but read together they strike a fine rhythm. Davis circles the same central point in each entry: her characters examine the world with a detached, self-contained logic that seems to represent the process of writing itself. Some of the best pieces in the collection are the shortest, like “Brief Incident in Short a, Long a, and Schwa,” which ends: “Ant backtracks fast—straight at cat. Cat, alarmed, backs away. Man, standing, staring, laughs. Ant changes path again. Cat, calm again, watches again.” Others dwell longer on their subjects, such as “The Cows,” which depicts the movements and relationships of members of a herd, as seen from the window of a countryside home, or the memories of a woman whose older half-sister has recently died in “The Seals.” Several stories, set in 19th-century France, begin with “story from Flaubert,” and go on to tell of Provençal kitchens, fairs, and executions. There are also disgruntled letters addressed to a frozen pea manufacturer, an Alumni review, and a peppermint candy company. These repetitions give the collection a cadence, and Davis’s bulletproof prose sends each story shooting off the page. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 2014-02-13
Five years after a mammoth, comprehensive collection of stories secured her literary legacy, this unique author explores new directions and blurs boundaries in writing that is always fresh and often funny. For one of the country's most critically acclaimed writers (The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, 2009), a new collection is like a box of chocolates, one in which—as she writes in "A Small Story About a Small Box of Chocolates"—a single piece can be "very good, rich and bitter, sweet and strange at the same time" and can feed "a vague, indefinite hunger, not necessarily for food." As previously, her shortest stories—a single sentence or paragraph, well less than a page—could often pass as the prose equivalent of a haiku or Zen koan, and elements such as character development, or even characters, are often conspicuous in their absence. The narrative voice has a consistency of tone throughout much of the collection: conversational, intelligent, by no means opaque or impenetrable like much postmodern fiction. It flows easily from dreams to conscious reflection, often about words themselves or "Writing" (the title of one very short story) or reading, ruminations that may or may not be the author's own. As the relationship between writer and reader becomes more familiar, one gets a sense of a narrative character and of what's important to that character (grammar, concision, precision) and how she spends her time (in academe, on various modes of transportation, among animals in the country). Some stories are based on the letters of Flaubert (whom Davis has translated, along with Proust and others), while others are unsigned (and unsent?) letters to various companies and boards, comments and complaints that often themselves turn into stories. In "Not Interested," the narrator explains, "I'm not interested in reading this book. I was not interested in reading the last one I tried, either....The books I'm talking about are supposed to be reasonably good, but they simply don't interest me....These days, I prefer books that contain something real, or something the author at least believed to be real. I don't want to be bored by someone else's imagination." Whether fiction or non, Davis never bores.

Kirkus Reviews