Ion Trewin, Literary Director of the
Booker Prize Foundation, explains the idea behind the Booker Prizes on the
official website. He wrote, "From
the very beginning of what was originally called the Booker Prize there was
just one criterion - the prize would be for 'the best novel in the opinion of
the judges'. The aim was to increase the reading of quality fiction and ... The
real success will be a significant increase in the sales of the winning book.” As my listeners have heard several times, the
Booker prize represents the best fiction written in English today since 1969. The International prize began in 2004 and is
awarded every other year – not for an individual title, but for a body of work. The winners include Nigerian novelist Chinua
Achebe, Canadian short story writer Alice Munro, and American novelist, Philip
Roth. The winner for 2013 is another
American, short story writer Lydia Davis.
The Collected Stories
of Lydia Davis
total 298 on well over 700 pages. Some
of the stories are as short as a few lines, which evidences her creativity and
desire to break new ground in the venerable genre stretching back well over 100
years. Not a book to be read in a
sitting, but rather wandered through like a museum, stopping here and there to
take in a particularly artful piece.
I hardly read any of the stories I did not
like, but rather I sipped and enjoyed even the shortest pieces like a glass of
fine Bordeaux. Here is an example of one
of these short-short stories, titled “The Fish Tank,” “I star at four fish in a
tank in the supermarket. They are
swimming in parallel formation against a small current created by a jet of
water, and they are opening their mouths and staring off into the distance with
the one eye, each, that I can see. As I
watch them through the class, thinking how fresh they would be to eat, still
alive now, and calculating whether I might buy one to cook for dinner, I also
see, as though behind or through them, a larger, shadowy form darkening their
tank, what there is of me on the glass, their predator” (172).
Most of the stories deal with ordinary people
facing life’s difficulties and joys, getting by day to day. Others seem to be sketches prepared while
outlining a story. Here is the beginning
of “The Center of the Story”: A woman has written a story that has a hurricane
in it, and a hurricane usually promises to be interesting. But in this story the hurricane threatens the
city without actually striking it. The
story is flat and eben, just as the earth seems flat and even when a hurricane
is advancing over it, and if she were to show it to a friend, the friend would
probably say that, unlike a hurricane, this story has no center” (173).
I have always loved short stories, and The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis has
shot to the top of my favorites list.
Take a sip of Lydia Davis’ work, and you will have many hours of
enjoyment. 5 stars
--Chiron10/13/13
