Excitability (American Literature (Dalkey Archive)) [Paperback]

Diane Williams (Author)

Book Description

Series: American Literature (Dalkey Archive) | Publication Date: October 1998

"Excitability" collects the best of Diane Williams' bold, often hilarious stories of love, sex, death, and the family.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Culled from earlier works like Some Sexual Success Stories and The Stupefaction, these brief stories use simple syntax to wrangle with complicated subjectsAinsecurity, marital instability and human irrationalityAwithout becoming incomprehensible in the process. Events and characters arise without context to accrue hypersymbolic resonance. Valery Plum's personal monologue on child-rearing in "I Am a Learned Person" presents children as a way out of loneliness. Serrated poetry springs from the friction between characters' desire for visceral pleasure and the difficulty of attaining it amid the quotidian blandness of middle-class life. When a woman in "An Opening Chat" tells her doctor, "I want to feel strong again," her sentiment echoes similar cries throughout the book. Sex is the most common outlet for the frustration of these alienated and ultimately numb characters, but Williams's objective prose blunts any eroticism. Williams wishes to expose and examine our preconceived notions of sexual pleasure: Is it the sum of its components plus a little extra oomph, or even less? Over the years her stories have become increasingly wry and laconic; the most recent works are semi-symphonic representations of the clashing impulses that keep life in motionAcharacters all but absent. And yet, at her best, Williams makes a reader believe that neither story nor exposition is essential, as in "The Answer to the Question," a seemingly random sampling of items one could leave as mementos that manages to expound on both absence and materiality in less than one page.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Diane Williams conjures up an edgy, jagged state of mind, a lurching consciousness in a culture of speed and amnesia. -- Matthew Stadler, New York Times Book Review

Diane Williams reminds me a little of Jane Bowles, a little of Laura Riding. She is one of the very few contemporary prose writers who seem to be doing something independent, energetic, heartfelt. -- Lydia Davis

Like Donald Barthelme and Franz Kafka, Williams at times is able to boil down the obtuse complexities of the body, the mind, the soul, etc., and fashion them into a compact cudgel with the power to flatten the receptive reader. -- Dallas News

Williams is a practitioner of the new prose genre dubbed "sudden fiction." . . . She is a master of sorts, who when she wants to, rises to a poetry of great, if telegraphic intensity. -- Eli Gottlieb, Elle

Williams's stories are as short as they could be, but their latitude of implication is remarkable. In them manifold pleasures of recognition, surmise, divination, accrue to us. -- Denis Donoghue

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 329 pages
• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press; 1st edition (October 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1564781976
• ISBN-13: 978-1564781970
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #122,474 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A marvel, July 19, 2010

By 

Crag Talent (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Excitability (American Literature (Dalkey Archive)) (Paperback)

Diane Williams is a master of the short fiction. Her stories strangle you by the throat then breathe life back into you. One of my favorites!

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Odd, very odd., July 15, 2000

By 

Kharmic Tide Pool (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Excitability (American Literature (Dalkey Archive)) (Paperback)

Diane Williams has collected a lot of ultra-short stories in this book (most of which are under three pages in length.) Her characters are intriguing, especially given we only read about them for one or so pages. We can learn, in such a short space, much about one aspect of each of her characters. What we learn more of, however, is about Ms. Williams's views on society and how women are treated. Many of her characters are very similar, so much so some could even be the same woman. Is this one of the great works of literature the world will ever see, no, but is it worth reading, yes.