Customer Reviews

Samuel Johnson Is Indignant: Stories

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I've been quoting her story "Spring Spleen" to people (in its two-sentence entirety) because it's so delightfully short and it conveys its meaning perfectly. I appreciate quirky and inventive writers very much and found SJII to be an enjoyable read. She's up there with Russell Edson and Padgett Powell as a master of the short form.

I love this book and also felt the need to counter the 2 star reviewer who quoted a one line story from the book without including the story title or the italics. Both are essential to taking in the story because Lydia Davis does not waste a word, even on the title. Most of the stories leave the reader with something universal, even when the "univeral thing" goes unsaid. Some of the stories were so close to the bone that I feel I could've written them if I could pare off words as well as she does. I found the book thought provoking and highly entertaining.

Half the pieces (most can't really be called "stories") will make you think or laugh. The other half will make you go "meh."

Half the stories are brimming with wit and intelligence. The other half sound like pseudo-literary versions of rejected MadTV jokes.

Oh well. There should be enough good stuff to please anyone. Plus, McSweeneys deserves all the support you can give, as they are putting out the best work and in the best format.

Begin with the not completely irrelevant observation that I plunked down $17 to buy my copy of this book, having been seduced at least in part by McSweeney's hype. Seventeen dollars.

Next, observe that here are some of the book's contents: (Note that each page is quoted in its entirety.)*

Page 14: CERTAIN KNOWLEDGE FROM HERODOTUS
These are the facts about the fish in the Nile:

page 44: SAMUEL JOHNSON IS INDIGNANT:
that Scotland has so few trees.

page 71: HONORING THE SUBJUNCTIVE
It invariably precedes, even if it does not altogether supercede, the determination of what is absolutely desirable and just.

page 73: LOSING MEMORY
You ask me about Edith Wharton.
Well, the name is very familiar.

page 167: AWAY FROM HOME
It has been so long since she used a metaphor!

Well, har-de-har-har, Ms Davis. Words are indeed the precious coins of our linguistic currency, and not to be squandered foolishly. But, given the allegedly beleaguered state of literary fiction these days, with readers scampering away in droves, is it really a wise strategy to adopt such a 'pearls before swine' approach in your writing? God forbid that one should apply as coarse a metric as 'words per dollar' to anyone's literary output, but the Swiss cheese nature of this particular collection left me - how shall I put it? - more than a little peckish at the end.

* These are not the only instances: pages 28, 66, 92, 98, 137, 141, 193, 199, and 200 are characterized by a similar paucity of text.

BUT , I cannot remain upset with you, dearest Lydia. How could I be vexed when, upon turning the almost contentless page 73, I find the completely disarming essay "Letter to a Funeral Parlor" with its devastatingly on-point opening sentence -

I am writing to you to object to the word 'cremains', which was used by your representative when he met with my mother and me two days after my father's death.

Oh, Lydia! Why do you tease us so? Next time, give us more of the good stuff, of which you are so obviously capable. More cheese. Fewer holes.

"Samuel Johnson is indignant" - and he is not alone. Any reader should be, at least, indignant with Lydia Davis's third short story collection. She writes like nobody else - and nobody else can write like her. It is indignant how capable she is to convey so much meaning with so short stories - some of them are one-line only, and they represent, add, bring so much more than some novels.

When she goes for shortest stories, she is brilliant. They are funny and meaningful. But when Davis deals with longer ones she reaches another level. "Marie Curie, so honorable woman" unfolds the scientist's life in less than 20 pages and covers everything. Told in present tense, the story has an urgency of a life so replete of events that a second can't be wasted.

Most of the narratives are told in the first person - as happens in Davis's previous collections, "Break it down" and "Almost no memory". They sound like slices of her life, her family and friends - maybe an alternative of them. One of the most beautiful stories in this collection is "Letter to a funeral Parlor", in which, a language question reflects the pain of grieving.

With wit and delicacy, Davis investigates mysteries of love, life, death and relationships. Her strength comes from not being afraid of dive deep in the human soul - and she does so with good humor and sensibility.

A wide ranging collection of Davis's short (and very short) stories. Wide ranging in length, style, and subject matter. Many appear to be biographical; some are quite introspective; others are clearly fiction. Overall, I'd say this collection rates 3 stars, simply because a healthy number of the pieces are good but not great and a few fall flat. But this is the difficulty in rating a collection like this - there are some wonderful pieces in here as well, and you should read them. In addition, I know some pieces worked for me ("Certain Knowledge...", mentioned below, for example) partly because I read them at the right time. If I read this collection again in a year or two, I expect others may hit home. On the other hand, I'm not sure I've read a more poignent, touching, respectful, purely enjoyable and thorough biography (of any length) than "Marie Curie, So Honorable Woman", and I expect I'd feel the same way 10 years from now.

A few of the 'stories' are basically a title and a one-liner. Some of these are great, some just so-so. One that really hit home for me is "Certain Knowledge from Herodotus" because I just recently read the part of Herodotus's Histories that is referenced in this short-short piece, and it made me laugh out loud. Another is "Happiest Moment" with it's wonderful surprise in the last sentence.

The middle-length stories seemed to have struck the right chord for me. There's "Mown Lawn", a wonderful excercise in word play - just plain fun to read. "Happy Memories", which struck more than a few chords for me, as did "Selfish", though for very different reasons. And "My Husband and I" has one the best opening lines I've read in a long time.

All in all, there's plenty here to recommend this book. I expect any reader will find gems and duds, but, again, that's often the nature of collections, especially from such an unpredictable writer as Davis. And thanks to McSweeneys for making sure things like this get published.

Lydia Davis writes short fiction...sometimes really short fiction. In this very good to great collection of short work, Davis has delivered a book both interesting in content and interesting in composition of the collection.

The bulk of the stories in this collection are short stories that feed the mind and fulfill the need for a quick literary fix; and these are intermixed with short short fiction - usually a paragraph in length - that work as a brief interlude between the longer pieces. There are a few stories in this collection that really fall short though as they are more gimmick than good fiction; a perfect example is "Oral History (with Hiccups)". This story has been weirdly spaced so that words are broken as if by a hiccup...cute, but so what; really nothing more distracting than a gimmick that doesn't further the story.

Of the notable pieces, you will find great pleasure with stories such as "In a Northern Country" where an elderly gentleman travels to a (seemingly) foreign land in search of a brother recently gone missing and finds an interesting collection of introverted villagers not too concerned with the disappearance of the brother or the villager gone missing with him. An interesting story with a sort-of gimmick that works is "Jury Duty" with its one-sided question and answer session monologue.

Overall, this book is a satisfying collection that leaves me wanting more of Lydia Davis' short fiction.

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A Guide to my Book Rating System:

1 star = The wood pulp would have been better utilized as toilet paper.
2 stars = Don't bother, clean your bathroom instead.
3 stars = Wasn't a waste of time, but it was time wasted.
4 stars = Good book, but not life altering.
5 stars = This book changed my world in at least some small way.

I bought his book based on written reviews, not word of mouth. I found some of the short stories excellent, and some not. I'm an avid reader of modern fiction. I do feel Lydia Davis is an excellent writer, but it's the CONTENT that did not entertain me. I don't want to pay [a certain price] for a book and read a short story such as the following: "Remember that thou art but dust. I shall try to bear it in mind." I'm not kidding, that is the whole story. As I said, some of the stories are good, but many are written so as to alienate the reader, in the sense that you are not given any clues as to how these events or opinions have come to be formed. Here's another one entitled Certain Knowledge from Herodotus, "These are the facts about the fish in the Nile:" That's it! Is this literary snobbism, or the Emporer's New Clothes? Either way, I'm not buying any more of her books. My advice, check it out from the library, so at least someone else pays for the parts of the book that make no sense to anyone but the author, and the parts you may not understand or like. We live in an age of such incredible fiction, that I would not waste any more time on this type of thing. Although, I will say I did enjoy a FEW of the stories (The Furnace). But even then, those stories (such as the one entitled In A Northern Country) would have made better fodder for discussion than reading alone, which is the most common way I read. This book may be just for the elite acadmemic reader, but in my opinion, not very meaningful or enjoyable to the average well-read person.

I believe Lydia Davis to be one of the great wordsmiths of our time. Her latest collection, Samuel Johnson is Indignant, is nothing less than excellent. Davis's writing is so consise and precise that it completely blows my mind.
I was first turned on to her writing through McSweeney's (Issue 4, to be exact). While many now clump her in that group along with David Eggers, Rick Moody and others, Lydia Davis seems to outshine them with her quick wit and amazing use of words.
Davis's work, however, is not for everyone. If you're looking for traditional short stories then you'll be dissapointed because Lydia Davis's style is really groundbreaking. The title piece, for example, is one sentence long. Some of the stuff is short, some a bit longer, but none feel fluffy.
I would recommend this to anyone looking for something new. Davis's voice is strong and ripe with honesty. I truly love this collection.

i read this book a few months ago so it's not totally fresh in my mind, but i feel the need to counter the two-star reviewer. i LOVE literature in which "you are not given any clues as to how [...] events or opinions have come to be formed." it's that kind of thing that makes you think. i like spare, incisive language. i like brevity and dry humor. if you like some of these things then you might like this collection as well.