Name: Samuel Johnson Is Indignant
ISBN: 9780312420567

Lydia Davis

The author of Almost No Memory presents an inventive collection of short fiction that explores the various ways in which human beings perceive each other and themselves, from a couple that suspects their friends think them boring to a funeral home that receives a letter rebuking it for linguistic errors. Reprint. 10,000 first printing.

Stories

Samuel Johnson Is Indignant

Gavin

We feel an affinity with a certain thinker because we agree with him; or because he shows us what we were already thinking; or because he shows us in a more articulate form what we were already thinking; or because he shows us what we were on the point of thinking; or what we would have thought much later if we hadn't read it now; or what we would have been likely to think but never would have thought if we hadn't read it now; or what we would have liked to think but never would have thought if we hadn't read it now.


Went on my guard when I heard that the title story was one sentence long – speaking, as such conceits do, of holy-urinal superstitious art – but this is actually a standout, a series of droll, exacting capsules and nutshells. 

A typical piece is one page long and part gag, part compulsive meditation, part confession of petty vice. Once you get over her diffident, terse non-being, it is fun stuff. The long piece on jury duty is best, its length and repetitious babble a symmetry of the trial.

Presents a collection of short fiction that explores the various ways in which human beings perceive each other and themselves, from a couple that suspects their friends think them boring to a funeral home that receives a letter rebuking it for linguistic errors.

Samuel Johnson is Indignant

Trever

A return to form for Davis after the disappointing (to me, at least)  Almost No Memory. I always end up skipping the longest story in Davis's collections because they're almost never as good as any of the other ones; in this case I skipped "In A Northern Country". I'll probably buy her Collected Stories anyway, so I can always go back and reread it. This is probably a good place to start if you've never read Davis before, also.

Samuel Johnson Is Indignant Stories