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Yapamam Ve Yapmayacağım (2014)

by Lydia Davis(Favorite Author)

3.69 of 5 Votes: 1

languge

English

genre

Poetry

publisher

Encore Yayınları

review 1: I like the conceit of disrupting the structure of the short story - Davis is heavy on details and description (to sometimes a pathological degree), low on action and plot. Some of the most interesting pieces contain just three lines or two paragraphs, which because of the brevity and economy of language become puzzles, to be returned to and re-interpreted, unsolvable. Perhaps as a consequence of the level of detail at this extreme micro level, the narrator is obscured - detached and distant, unknowable. What is the meaning of the letter about the peas? Those short riddle stories, what (or who?) hides behind them? They are always cocooned in the narrator's perspective yet give little away. They feel lonely, transient - glimpses of inner moments, lists, preferences. Perhaps ... morethey are the best possible description of isolation and the impossibility of true connection.
review 2: This collection is, if nothing else, interesting. There are pithy pieces consisting of no more than a line, to at its longest, a confessional and touching bit of autobiographical fiction about the narrator and her relationship with her half-sister, entitled "The Seals", which is all of 27 pages, and possibly the most 'complete' story in terms of a conventional narrative. That Davis is anything but conventional is immediately apparent in the form and content of most her stories. They range from letters to hotel managers and board directors, which reveal the characters of the letter writer, often disorganised, meandering and unfocused, to lists, one of which "Local Obits", literally contain the paras of obituaries. There is something touching and resonant about this random compiling, and pushes the envelope for what is deemed acceptable as narrative fiction, though the intent and effect is ambiguous. There are also pieces which look like work-in-progress story ideas and surrealistic dream sequences, the latter of which I must admit, capture in words rather well the often illogical yet vivid sequences that one encounters in dreamscapes. Elsewhere, Flaubert's correspondence is cited as the source for some of the pieces.On the whole, this makes a really curious work, for a living author. The stories seem more like posthumous pieces collected to give a glimpse of the genius and working process of a departed writer, and one can't help but think that a more finished product should precede this collection. However, judging from a peek at Davis's earlier works, that is clearly not the case. less

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