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El final de la historia
La narradora de esta historia es una traductora y académica de mediana edad que intenta escribir una novela (que es esta novela) sobre una relación pasional y neurótica que tuvo años atrás con un hombre más joven que ella. Tomando el desamor como si fuera una autopsia por realizar, la narradora nos conduce por sus recuerdos y reflexiones, dispuestos de forma fragmentaria y desordenada y plagados de descripciones que rayan la obsesión clínica. Así, asistimos a una búsqueda de la protagonista por determinar qué es lo que sabe sobre sí misma y qué es lo que realmente ocurrió, pero no tardaremos en empezar a sospechar, junto a ella, que ningún recuerdo sale intacto de la equivocidad de la memoria, y que cualquier relato del pasado termina por convertirse en ficción.
224 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1994
240 people are currently reading
8410 people want to read
About the author
Lydia Davis
352 books1,466 followersLydia Davis, acclaimed fiction writer and translator, is famous in literary circles for her extremely brief and brilliantly inventive short stories. In fall 2003 she received one of 25 MacArthur Foundation “Genius” awards. In granting the award the MacArthur Foundation praised Davis’s work for showing “how language itself can entertain, how all that what one word says, and leaves unsaid, can hold a reader’s interest. . . . Davis grants readers a glimpse of life’s previously invisible details, revealing new sources of philosophical insights and beauty.” In 2013 She was the winner of the Man Booker International prize.
Davis’s recent collection, “Varieties of Disturbance” (May 2007), was featured on the front cover of the “Los Angeles Times Book Review” and garnered a starred review from “Publishers Weekly.” Her “Samuel Johnson Is Indignant” (2001) was praised by “Elle” magazine for its “Highly intelligent, wildly entertaining stories, bound by visionary, philosophical, comic prose—part Gertrude Stein, part Simone Weil, and pure Lydia Davis.”
Davis is also a celebrated translator of French literature into English. The French government named her a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters for her fiction and her distinguished translations of works by Maurice Blanchot, Pierre Jean Jouve, Michel Butor and others.
Davis recently published a new translation (the first in more than 80 years) of Marcel Proust’s masterpiece, “Swann’s Way” (2003), the first volume of Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time.” A story of childhood and sexual jealousy set in fin de siecle France, “Swann’s Way” is widely regarded as one of the most important literary works of the 20th century.
The “Sunday Telegraph” (London) called the new translation “A triumph [that] will bring this inexhaustible artwork to new audiences throughout the English-speaking world.” Writing for the “Irish Times,” Frank Wynne said, “What soars in this new version is the simplicity of language and fidelity to the cambers of Proust’s prose… Davis’ translation is magnificent, precise.”
Davis’s previous works include “Almost No Memory” (stories, 1997), “The End of the Story” (novel, 1995), “Break It Down” (stories, 1986), “Story and Other Stories” (1983), and “The Thirteenth Woman” (stories, 1976).
Grace Paley wrote of “Almost No Memory” that Lydia Davis is the kind of writer who “makes you say, ‘Oh, at last!’—brains, language, energy, a playfulness with form, and what appears to be a generous nature.” The collection was chosen as one of the “25 Favorite Books of 1997” by the “Voice Literary Supplement” and one of the “100 Best Books of 1997” by the “Los Angeles Times.”
Davis first received serious critical attention for her collection of stories, “Break It Down,” which was selected as a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. The book’s positive critical reception helped Davis win a prestigious Whiting Writer’s Award in 1988.
She is the daughter of Robert Gorham Davis and Hope Hale Davis. From 1974 to 1978 Davis was married to Paul Auster, with whom she has a son, Daniel Auster. Davis is currently married to painter Alan Cote, with whom she has a son, Theo Cote. She is a professor of creative writing at University at Albany, SUNY.
Davis is considered hugely influential by a generation of writers including Jonathan Franzen, David Foster Wallace and Dave Eggers, who once wrote that she "blows the roof off of so many of our assumptions about what constitutes short fiction."
Davis’s recent collection, “Varieties of Disturbance” (May 2007), was featured on the front cover of the “Los Angeles Times Book Review” and garnered a starred review from “Publishers Weekly.” Her “Samuel Johnson Is Indignant” (2001) was praised by “Elle” magazine for its “Highly intelligent, wildly entertaining stories, bound by visionary, philosophical, comic prose—part Gertrude Stein, part Simone Weil, and pure Lydia Davis.”
Davis is also a celebrated translator of French literature into English. The French government named her a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters for her fiction and her distinguished translations of works by Maurice Blanchot, Pierre Jean Jouve, Michel Butor and others.
Davis recently published a new translation (the first in more than 80 years) of Marcel Proust’s masterpiece, “Swann’s Way” (2003), the first volume of Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time.” A story of childhood and sexual jealousy set in fin de siecle France, “Swann’s Way” is widely regarded as one of the most important literary works of the 20th century.
The “Sunday Telegraph” (London) called the new translation “A triumph [that] will bring this inexhaustible artwork to new audiences throughout the English-speaking world.” Writing for the “Irish Times,” Frank Wynne said, “What soars in this new version is the simplicity of language and fidelity to the cambers of Proust’s prose… Davis’ translation is magnificent, precise.”
Davis’s previous works include “Almost No Memory” (stories, 1997), “The End of the Story” (novel, 1995), “Break It Down” (stories, 1986), “Story and Other Stories” (1983), and “The Thirteenth Woman” (stories, 1976).
Grace Paley wrote of “Almost No Memory” that Lydia Davis is the kind of writer who “makes you say, ‘Oh, at last!’—brains, language, energy, a playfulness with form, and what appears to be a generous nature.” The collection was chosen as one of the “25 Favorite Books of 1997” by the “Voice Literary Supplement” and one of the “100 Best Books of 1997” by the “Los Angeles Times.”
Davis first received serious critical attention for her collection of stories, “Break It Down,” which was selected as a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. The book’s positive critical reception helped Davis win a prestigious Whiting Writer’s Award in 1988.
She is the daughter of Robert Gorham Davis and Hope Hale Davis. From 1974 to 1978 Davis was married to Paul Auster, with whom she has a son, Daniel Auster. Davis is currently married to painter Alan Cote, with whom she has a son, Theo Cote. She is a professor of creative writing at University at Albany, SUNY.
Davis is considered hugely influential by a generation of writers including Jonathan Franzen, David Foster Wallace and Dave Eggers, who once wrote that she "blows the roof off of so many of our assumptions about what constitutes short fiction."
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 467 reviews
September 3, 2025
O femeie de 34 de ani, profesoară, a avut o legătură cu un student de 22 de ani (nu era studentul ei), au stat împreună o vreme (cam doi ani), cu unele intermitențe, fiindcă femeia a călătorit din vestul Statelor Unite în est (și înapoi). Cei doi s-au mai și certat de la nimicuri, și-au luat zile de meditație solitară (studentul, îndeosebi). Așa se întîmplă în toate iubirile, amanții abia așteaptă să-și scoată ochii și să se despartă definitiv pentru o zi.
Acum, în prezentul narațiunii la persoana I, în prezentul feminin al narațiunii - povestea este privită prin ochii femeii -, relația s-a încheiat, deși femeia nu și-a dorit asta: ea încearcă să înțeleagă ce n-a mers, unde a greșit, cînd a greșit, dacă a greșit. Poate a fost de vină diferența de vîrstă, poate firile lor deosebite, poate Soarta. Cine știe?
Femeia se hotărăște să scrie un roman despre această relație și astfel avem dintr-un foc o poveste gata încheiată (iubirea lor) și una în curs de desfășurare: relatarea acestui eșec amoros, povestea scrisă a poveștii trăite. Înaintarea poveștii către sfîrșit este lentă, întreruptă de descrieri minuțioase. Ofer un exemplu:
Ca de obicei, foarte bună traducerea realizată de Veronica D. Niculescu.
Acum, în prezentul narațiunii la persoana I, în prezentul feminin al narațiunii - povestea este privită prin ochii femeii -, relația s-a încheiat, deși femeia nu și-a dorit asta: ea încearcă să înțeleagă ce n-a mers, unde a greșit, cînd a greșit, dacă a greșit. Poate a fost de vină diferența de vîrstă, poate firile lor deosebite, poate Soarta. Cine știe?
Femeia se hotărăște să scrie un roman despre această relație și astfel avem dintr-un foc o poveste gata încheiată (iubirea lor) și una în curs de desfășurare: relatarea acestui eșec amoros, povestea scrisă a poveștii trăite. Înaintarea poveștii către sfîrșit este lentă, întreruptă de descrieri minuțioase. Ofer un exemplu:
„Eucalipţii, cu mirosul lor de fum uleios, creşteau peste tot, foarte înalţi, cu trunchiurile înălţîndu-se netede mult înainte de prima ramură. Erau copaci care făceau mizerie, cu lemn fin şi moale. Le tot cădeau crengile, aşa încît de-a lungul trunchiurilor erau goluri mari. Le tot cădeau frunzele înguste, cafenii, în formă de ţepuşă, care acopereau pămîntul de sub ei, şi straturi de scoarţă cădeau de pe ei în fîşii lungi, laolaltă cu micii nasturi de lemn, maro, cu cruci scobite pe o parte şi de un albastru prăfos pe cealaltă” (p.48).
Ca de obicei, foarte bună traducerea realizată de Veronica D. Niculescu.
January 11, 2012
There is some kind of style in this book that made me like it. That style is strange and I did not know how Davis was able to walk away with it.
(1) No plot
(2) No dialogues
(3) Started the 1st person narration ("unreliable") with the ending of the story
(4) Time period went back and forth with no pattern
(5) Unnecessary characters, events, musings
It’s an endless recollection of the unnamed narration’s failed love story with a man 12 years her senior. The narrator is a college literature professor and a translator. Her boyfriend is a jobless young man, penniless and dabbles in writing poetry. Both of them are trying to write their first books. They live together, they probably are having sex. Although Davis chose not to mention sex she also did not mention - I carefully waited for this while reading – love. That is a unusual strange feat: she was able to write a book about her love story without mentioning sex and even love. Point: this book is emotionally cunning. It talks about love yet it is not mushy not even sentimental. Is that possible? Yes, you have to read between the lines and interpret what the characters are doing and probably bring in your own stories of failed love affairs and you will know what I am trying to say here.
This is not for everyone though as the narration goes on and on. If you don’t pay attention to what she is saying, you’ll say that all her blubbering is rubbish. It is like listening to an old friend. Hey, we don't listen to everything that our friends say, right? They are friends but sometimes they talk rubbish too. Well, as I was saying, let’s say you had a friend in high school that you accidentally bumped with one afternoon. You decided to go to a café and catch up with each other’s lives. You asked how she was. She said okay. Then you remembered that she used to date another friend back during the time you all were in high school. She said that her relationship with him did not work out. You asked why. Then she started to tell you everything about it.
Will you listen? Are you interested?
If that friend was Lydia Davis, I would.
239 pages of brilliant writing.
She, Lydia Davis was the first wife of Sir Paul Auster.
And this failed love seems to be their love story.
(1) No plot
(2) No dialogues
(3) Started the 1st person narration ("unreliable") with the ending of the story
(4) Time period went back and forth with no pattern
(5) Unnecessary characters, events, musings
It’s an endless recollection of the unnamed narration’s failed love story with a man 12 years her senior. The narrator is a college literature professor and a translator. Her boyfriend is a jobless young man, penniless and dabbles in writing poetry. Both of them are trying to write their first books. They live together, they probably are having sex. Although Davis chose not to mention sex she also did not mention - I carefully waited for this while reading – love. That is a unusual strange feat: she was able to write a book about her love story without mentioning sex and even love. Point: this book is emotionally cunning. It talks about love yet it is not mushy not even sentimental. Is that possible? Yes, you have to read between the lines and interpret what the characters are doing and probably bring in your own stories of failed love affairs and you will know what I am trying to say here.
This is not for everyone though as the narration goes on and on. If you don’t pay attention to what she is saying, you’ll say that all her blubbering is rubbish. It is like listening to an old friend. Hey, we don't listen to everything that our friends say, right? They are friends but sometimes they talk rubbish too. Well, as I was saying, let’s say you had a friend in high school that you accidentally bumped with one afternoon. You decided to go to a café and catch up with each other’s lives. You asked how she was. She said okay. Then you remembered that she used to date another friend back during the time you all were in high school. She said that her relationship with him did not work out. You asked why. Then she started to tell you everything about it.
Will you listen? Are you interested?
If that friend was Lydia Davis, I would.
239 pages of brilliant writing.
She, Lydia Davis was the first wife of Sir Paul Auster.
And this failed love seems to be their love story.
October 22, 2020
“Bazı şeyleri birinci tekil şahıs ağzıyla, diğerlerini ve sanırım en acı verici veya en şaşırtıcı olanları ise üçüncü tekil şahısla yazdım. O kadar uzun bir süredir “ben” yerine “o” zamirini kullanıyordum ki bir gün üçüncü tekil şahıs bile bana çok yakın durmaya başladı ve üçüncü şahıstan bile uzak başka bir zamire ihtiyaç duydum. Fakat böyle bir zamir yoktu.”
“O’nu görmek benim için hala zordu. Fakat üzüntüm doğrudan ayrılmış olmaktan mı kaynaklanıyordu yoksa O’nu görmekle tetiklenen ve hep olmaya devam edecek belli bir acıya mı alışmıştım bilmiyorum. Hatta şimdi, bunca yıl sonra O’nu görsem bile, hayatımdaki hiçbir şeyle bir bağlantısı kalmamış olsa bile aynı acıyı hissederim.”
“Bahar geçiyor hava günden güne daha da ısınıyordu. O, sanki sıcakla birlikte kuruyan bir ıslak leke gibi hayatımdan çıkıyordu.”
Üstteki paragrafları okuyup hemen içselleştirebilenlerin romanı Hikayenin Sonu. Hayatının bir evresinde O’na sahip olmuş ve sonra O’nu kaybetmişlerin, ve O gittikten sonra asıl meselenin O’nu kaybetmek olmadığını anlasa da, O’nun yarattığı boşluğa sıkı sıkı bağlanıp o bozkır gibi sonsuz boşlukta yol almaya başlayarak, o boşluktan vazgeçemeyecek hale gelenlerin romanıdır. E bir de şu son dediklerimi okuyunca “evet çok iyi biliyorum bu hissi” diyenlerin romanı elbette...
Lydia Davis belli ki çok kıvrak zekaya sahip bir kadın. Üslubu, karakterine karşı merhametsizliği ve müthiş bir dengede tuttuğu kırılganlığı, ettiği her cümle, felsefi derinliği olan bir meseleyi basit ve olağan ama incecik detaylarla aktarabilmesi beni kendine hayran bıraktı.
Tavsiye ederim.
“O’nu görmek benim için hala zordu. Fakat üzüntüm doğrudan ayrılmış olmaktan mı kaynaklanıyordu yoksa O’nu görmekle tetiklenen ve hep olmaya devam edecek belli bir acıya mı alışmıştım bilmiyorum. Hatta şimdi, bunca yıl sonra O’nu görsem bile, hayatımdaki hiçbir şeyle bir bağlantısı kalmamış olsa bile aynı acıyı hissederim.”
“Bahar geçiyor hava günden güne daha da ısınıyordu. O, sanki sıcakla birlikte kuruyan bir ıslak leke gibi hayatımdan çıkıyordu.”
Üstteki paragrafları okuyup hemen içselleştirebilenlerin romanı Hikayenin Sonu. Hayatının bir evresinde O’na sahip olmuş ve sonra O’nu kaybetmişlerin, ve O gittikten sonra asıl meselenin O’nu kaybetmek olmadığını anlasa da, O’nun yarattığı boşluğa sıkı sıkı bağlanıp o bozkır gibi sonsuz boşlukta yol almaya başlayarak, o boşluktan vazgeçemeyecek hale gelenlerin romanıdır. E bir de şu son dediklerimi okuyunca “evet çok iyi biliyorum bu hissi” diyenlerin romanı elbette...
Lydia Davis belli ki çok kıvrak zekaya sahip bir kadın. Üslubu, karakterine karşı merhametsizliği ve müthiş bir dengede tuttuğu kırılganlığı, ettiği her cümle, felsefi derinliği olan bir meseleyi basit ve olağan ama incecik detaylarla aktarabilmesi beni kendine hayran bıraktı.
Tavsiye ederim.
November 16, 2007
Fuck.
That's really all I can say.
That's really all I can say.
May 10, 2015
1.5 stars
Rub enough elbows with the literary cognoscenti, you're bound to hear glowing praise about Lydia Davis' short stories. I was delighted to see The End of the Story, her first novel, made available to our library system's e-book exchange to see what the hoopla was all about.
Delight turned to unalleviated boredom rather quickly, followed by utter exasperation with the realization (at about page 40) that it never was going to get any better. It's further frustrating that many GR folks found beauty in this, when all I could find was an excuse to keep my Extra Strength Tylenol nearby. This was one painful slog disguised as art.
Its 240-page entirety is devoted to the first-person obsessions of a 35 year-old woman obsessing over every single micrometer, ångstrom, tissue-thin sense memory of a failed relationship with a man (really, barely older than a kid) twelve years younger than her. That's it. Just a.part-time university professor/translator/aspiring novelist (perhaps not unlike, um, Lydia Davis?) exhausting every detail of what really amounted to little more than an ill-advised fling. Worse yet, it's obsession times two, because not only does she obsess about the relationship, she feels the need to write a novel about the experience. Yeah, okay, we've all chalked up a crummy relationship or two in our dating CV, but few of us feel the urgency to dissect the experience, then novelize the attempt to write the novel.
Allow me to share with you a snippet of this, not of the protagonist's recalling the relationship (which is plenty bad enough), but of her describing the process of sorting through the memories to write the novel:
"But at other times I am really confused and uncomfortable. For instance I am trying to separate out a few pages to add to the novel and I want to put them together in one box, but I'm not sure how to label the box. I would like to write on it MATERIAL READY TO BE USED, but if I do that it may bring me bad luck, because the material may not really be "ready". I thought of adding parentheses and writing MATERIAL (READY) TO BE USED, but. the word "ready" was still too strong despite the parenthesis. I thought of throwing in a question mark so that it read MATERIAL (READY?) TO BE USED but the question mark immediately introduced more doubt than I could stand. The best possibility may be MATERIAL--TO BE USED, which does not go far as to say that it is ready but only that in some form it will be used, though it does not have to be used, even if it is good enough to use."
This is just her thought process in compiling the material for this failed relationship (a relationship, by her very admission, she had no business being in). This to me is just a protracted, pointless exercise in nothingness. It's not an achingingly poignant, artistic exposition into the mind of a woman in a failed relationship. This is a few rungs above gibberish. Maybe Ms. Davis' style of writing works better in short story format, but in a 240 page plot-less novel, it escapes me how this was even published.
(Just recalling this dreck brought my headache screaming back; I was gonna round up thanks to some really odd non sequitur dream recollections toward the end that made me chuckle, but nah.)
Rub enough elbows with the literary cognoscenti, you're bound to hear glowing praise about Lydia Davis' short stories. I was delighted to see The End of the Story, her first novel, made available to our library system's e-book exchange to see what the hoopla was all about.
Delight turned to unalleviated boredom rather quickly, followed by utter exasperation with the realization (at about page 40) that it never was going to get any better. It's further frustrating that many GR folks found beauty in this, when all I could find was an excuse to keep my Extra Strength Tylenol nearby. This was one painful slog disguised as art.
Its 240-page entirety is devoted to the first-person obsessions of a 35 year-old woman obsessing over every single micrometer, ångstrom, tissue-thin sense memory of a failed relationship with a man (really, barely older than a kid) twelve years younger than her. That's it. Just a.part-time university professor/translator/aspiring novelist (perhaps not unlike, um, Lydia Davis?) exhausting every detail of what really amounted to little more than an ill-advised fling. Worse yet, it's obsession times two, because not only does she obsess about the relationship, she feels the need to write a novel about the experience. Yeah, okay, we've all chalked up a crummy relationship or two in our dating CV, but few of us feel the urgency to dissect the experience, then novelize the attempt to write the novel.
Allow me to share with you a snippet of this, not of the protagonist's recalling the relationship (which is plenty bad enough), but of her describing the process of sorting through the memories to write the novel:
"But at other times I am really confused and uncomfortable. For instance I am trying to separate out a few pages to add to the novel and I want to put them together in one box, but I'm not sure how to label the box. I would like to write on it MATERIAL READY TO BE USED, but if I do that it may bring me bad luck, because the material may not really be "ready". I thought of adding parentheses and writing MATERIAL (READY) TO BE USED, but. the word "ready" was still too strong despite the parenthesis. I thought of throwing in a question mark so that it read MATERIAL (READY?) TO BE USED but the question mark immediately introduced more doubt than I could stand. The best possibility may be MATERIAL--TO BE USED, which does not go far as to say that it is ready but only that in some form it will be used, though it does not have to be used, even if it is good enough to use."
This is just her thought process in compiling the material for this failed relationship (a relationship, by her very admission, she had no business being in). This to me is just a protracted, pointless exercise in nothingness. It's not an achingingly poignant, artistic exposition into the mind of a woman in a failed relationship. This is a few rungs above gibberish. Maybe Ms. Davis' style of writing works better in short story format, but in a 240 page plot-less novel, it escapes me how this was even published.
(Just recalling this dreck brought my headache screaming back; I was gonna round up thanks to some really odd non sequitur dream recollections toward the end that made me chuckle, but nah.)
August 5, 2021
One of the few books I come back to over and over again. I have never read anything quite like this nearly plotless, dialogue-less book detailing the slow decline of a relationship. The tone is hauntingly lonely and there is never a question about where the narrative is headed, but the observations are so smart and the sentences so well-crafted that I highly recommend this book to those interested in reading about the small nuances of desperate, yet honest love.
October 18, 2018
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O carte deosebită! Despre o relație care se sfârșește înainte sa accepte ca acest lucru este posibil. O carte jurnal, o confesiune!
Recenzia mea completa o găsiți aici :
https://www.delicateseliterare.ro/sfa...
O carte deosebită! Despre o relație care se sfârșește înainte sa accepte ca acest lucru este posibil. O carte jurnal, o confesiune!
Recenzia mea completa o găsiți aici :
https://www.delicateseliterare.ro/sfa...
January 3, 2018
Σας έχει τύχει ποτέ να βγείτε για καφέ /ποτό /φαγητό με κάποιον πραγματικά βαρετό άνθρωπο που φλυαρει διαρκώς με μια μονότονη φωνή; Κι εσείς κρυφοκοιτατε διαρκώς το ρολόι για να δείτε αν πέρασε η ώρα και χαζεύετε τους περαστικούς που λογικά θα περνάνε καλύτερα απο εσας; Ε έτσι ακριβώς με εκανε να νιώσω αυτό το βιβλίο.
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January 6, 2025Minimalist Fiction and Self-Awareness
Davis's minimalist voice (which I find myself mimicking in this review, always a sign of a style's power to inhabit the imagination and control the pen) is not at all the usual minimalism. This novel is life with its content subtracted away. It's about a love affair, but we are scarcely told anything about what either person looks like. We hear, in passing, that the narrator likes to identify species of grass and spiders, but we aren't given any names of grasses or spiders. She falls in love with a man, but we have no idea what kind of person he is. They are both attached to a university, but we hear next to nothing about what they study or teach. She is a translator of French, but there is no French in the book. (That is especially unusual: think of other Francophiles, like Wallace Stevens or John Ashbery, who can't help thinking through French.) Nothing has content, everything is told as her recollections of actions and places.
In this contentless, abstract world the writer's voice is all we have. We listen as she wonders whether her memories are correct and admits that some are not. We hear her descriptions of her own behavior, written as if she were at some remove from them. When she is suffering most acutely from the absence of the man she fell in love with, we hear that she seems to see herself from a distance. That is the book's strangest moment. We have always seen her from a distance. What kind of narrator could construct a novel so impeccably abstracted from the proper names and direct emotions of life, and then say that in her memory she was only abstracted in that way during a period of grief?
The book is psychologically unusual: sympathetic, sad, and detached, but at the same time entirely perverse, and because of that perversity incomprehensible.
Note, added in winter 2017
Some years after I wrote this, I visited Davis at her farmhouse. It was after the publication of Cows, and she was becoming central to American writing. I wonder about the effect all that might have on the carelessness of the minimalism in this book, which seems sometimes untended (as distinct from unintended). Her recent work has been more aware of its subtractions, more faced outward toward an audience that already expects certain kinds of reticence and abbreviation, more curated and wary of preciousness. I wonder, then, if her work suggests two ways to be minimalist: a first, commoner kind, in which an author knows she is performing minimalist gestures; and a second, rarer and more interesting kind, in which an author is growing into awareness of her minimalisms.
Revised January 2025
Davis's minimalist voice (which I find myself mimicking in this review, always a sign of a style's power to inhabit the imagination and control the pen) is not at all the usual minimalism. This novel is life with its content subtracted away. It's about a love affair, but we are scarcely told anything about what either person looks like. We hear, in passing, that the narrator likes to identify species of grass and spiders, but we aren't given any names of grasses or spiders. She falls in love with a man, but we have no idea what kind of person he is. They are both attached to a university, but we hear next to nothing about what they study or teach. She is a translator of French, but there is no French in the book. (That is especially unusual: think of other Francophiles, like Wallace Stevens or John Ashbery, who can't help thinking through French.) Nothing has content, everything is told as her recollections of actions and places.
In this contentless, abstract world the writer's voice is all we have. We listen as she wonders whether her memories are correct and admits that some are not. We hear her descriptions of her own behavior, written as if she were at some remove from them. When she is suffering most acutely from the absence of the man she fell in love with, we hear that she seems to see herself from a distance. That is the book's strangest moment. We have always seen her from a distance. What kind of narrator could construct a novel so impeccably abstracted from the proper names and direct emotions of life, and then say that in her memory she was only abstracted in that way during a period of grief?
The book is psychologically unusual: sympathetic, sad, and detached, but at the same time entirely perverse, and because of that perversity incomprehensible.
Note, added in winter 2017
Some years after I wrote this, I visited Davis at her farmhouse. It was after the publication of Cows, and she was becoming central to American writing. I wonder about the effect all that might have on the carelessness of the minimalism in this book, which seems sometimes untended (as distinct from unintended). Her recent work has been more aware of its subtractions, more faced outward toward an audience that already expects certain kinds of reticence and abbreviation, more curated and wary of preciousness. I wonder, then, if her work suggests two ways to be minimalist: a first, commoner kind, in which an author knows she is performing minimalist gestures; and a second, rarer and more interesting kind, in which an author is growing into awareness of her minimalisms.
Revised January 2025
June 9, 2014
I always cry at endings.
This is the way in which we learn to let go while holding on .
Because when loss lessens us to the point that love's lessons leave us spent, less is more. Sometimes it takes a certain sort of numbness—time, work, drugs, sleep, food— to know how to begin to feel again.
Because there are parts of the heart which are always crying and that is the fountain of compassion.
Sold this book because I thought some other thing would take my mind off of that which this book elapses. Didn't really work. It seems that moving on means actually processing emotional trauma—not reliving one's memories but rather recollecting the reasons for one's actions and analyzing suppositions as to the reasons for the other & then ultimately coming to terms with being unable to know in full what the other was thinking, to only know the outer signs (what was said and done and fun and not and what is remembered and what is not) & to wish that other well and all the best and try to forget what pain may remain — not filing it away as easily as one does junk mail.
This sparse account is Davis's own way of coming to terms with the sorrow of parting.
This is the way in which we learn to let go while holding on .
Because when loss lessens us to the point that love's lessons leave us spent, less is more. Sometimes it takes a certain sort of numbness—time, work, drugs, sleep, food— to know how to begin to feel again.
Because there are parts of the heart which are always crying and that is the fountain of compassion.
Sold this book because I thought some other thing would take my mind off of that which this book elapses. Didn't really work. It seems that moving on means actually processing emotional trauma—not reliving one's memories but rather recollecting the reasons for one's actions and analyzing suppositions as to the reasons for the other & then ultimately coming to terms with being unable to know in full what the other was thinking, to only know the outer signs (what was said and done and fun and not and what is remembered and what is not) & to wish that other well and all the best and try to forget what pain may remain — not filing it away as easily as one does junk mail.
This sparse account is Davis's own way of coming to terms with the sorrow of parting.
June 24, 2020
“Başka biriyle yaşamak kolay değildir, en azından benim için kolay değil. Nasıl bir bencil olduğumu o zaman anlıyorum. Benim için başka birini sevmek kolay olmadı ama giderek buna alışıyorum. Ancak bir ay süreyle kibarlığımı koruyabiliyorum ama ondan sonra yine bencilleşiyorum. Birini sevmenin ne anlama geldiğini anlamaya çalışıyorum. Hippolyte Taine veya Alfred de Musset gibi başka açılardan beni ilgilendirmeyen ünlü yazarlardan alıntılar not ediyorum. Mesela Taine, sevmek başka birinin mutluluğunu kendi amacın yapmaktır, demiş. Bunu kendi durumuma uygulamaya çalışmak isterdim. Fakat, birini sevmek onu kendimden önceye koymaksa, bunu nasıl yapabilirim ki? Üç seçenek var gibi görünüyordu: birini sevmeye çalışmaktan vazgeçmek, bencillikten vazgeçmek veya bencilliğe devam ederken birini sevmeyi öğrenmek. İlk ikisini başarabileceğimi sanmam ama ara sıra birini sevmeye yetecek ölçüde bencilliğimden vazgeçmeyi öğrenebilirdim.”
Kitap kendisini o kadar güzel anlatıyor ki ekleyecek pek bir şey yok. Yazarın öykülerini çok sevmiştim, bu sefer de romanıyla hayran oldum. Unutamadığı eski bir aşkına veda töreni gibi. Bir vazgeçişin sonucu. Yazar dairesel bir anlatımla ilerlediğinden, zaman çizgisini takip etmek ve olay sıralamaları karmaşık gibi görünebilir ancak kendisine alıştığınızda bu sıçramalarda ilerlemeyi de seveceksinizdir. Benim çok sevdiğim bir kitap oldu; her ne kadar bir kurgu- roman da olsa yazarın hayatından izler de taşıyan bir iç döküş-yüzleşme seansı.
Kitap kendisini o kadar güzel anlatıyor ki ekleyecek pek bir şey yok. Yazarın öykülerini çok sevmiştim, bu sefer de romanıyla hayran oldum. Unutamadığı eski bir aşkına veda töreni gibi. Bir vazgeçişin sonucu. Yazar dairesel bir anlatımla ilerlediğinden, zaman çizgisini takip etmek ve olay sıralamaları karmaşık gibi görünebilir ancak kendisine alıştığınızda bu sıçramalarda ilerlemeyi de seveceksinizdir. Benim çok sevdiğim bir kitap oldu; her ne kadar bir kurgu- roman da olsa yazarın hayatından izler de taşıyan bir iç döküş-yüzleşme seansı.
April 30, 2020
زنی درحال نوشتن رمان است و همزمان رابطه اش با پسری جوانترازخودش رامرورمیکندوتلاشهایش برای فراموش کردن .بسیاری ازخاطرات با شک یادآوری می شود. زن رابطه را با جهتی متفاوت از پسرجوان دنبال میکرده . .یک بسترودورویا .مرا بسیار به یاد کتاب " تصرف عدوانی " از لنااندرشون انداخت . علیرغم پس وپیش ها ی زمانی برای من خوشخوان بودو یک شبه تمامش کردم.
سعی میکردم به چیز دیگری فکرکنم .ولی موفق نمی شدم به چیزدیگری فکرکنم .به نظرمی رسید که انگار گوشت وپوستم درعصاره وجوداو خیس خورده بود.این عصاره تامغزم بالا می آمدوهمه سلول هاراپرمیکرد..
حالا دیگررابطه ای نبود. هنوزبه ان دلبسته بودم . مجبوربودم ویرانش کنم تاازدستش خلاص شوم ولی به محض اینکه ازدستش خلاص می شدم مجبوربودم دل بسته اش بمانم .انگارنیازداشتم همیشه روی لبه آن باشم .
سعی میکردم به چیز دیگری فکرکنم .ولی موفق نمی شدم به چیزدیگری فکرکنم .به نظرمی رسید که انگار گوشت وپوستم درعصاره وجوداو خیس خورده بود.این عصاره تامغزم بالا می آمدوهمه سلول هاراپرمیکرد..
حالا دیگررابطه ای نبود. هنوزبه ان دلبسته بودم . مجبوربودم ویرانش کنم تاازدستش خلاص شوم ولی به محض اینکه ازدستش خلاص می شدم مجبوربودم دل بسته اش بمانم .انگارنیازداشتم همیشه روی لبه آن باشم .
Read
January 3, 2023Al principio pensaba que no recomendaría este libro a amigas que estuviesen locas (yo misma lo he estado) por culpa de un hombre, pero según avanzaba he cambiado de opinión. Me ha hecho sentirme acompañada en mi locura, como si la protagonista y yo nos repartiéramos la culpa por hacer cosas que muchas veces no tienen sentido al margen del amor.
April 24, 2024
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«اولين باري که گفتم عاشقش هستم، بدون يک کلمه حرف خيلي متفکرانه فقط نگاهم کرد، انگار داشت حرفم را مزه مزه مي کرد. آن موقع درنگش را نفهميدم. کلمات تقريبا خلاف ميل خودم از دهنم پريدند بيرون و او جوابي نداد. الان گمان مي کنم اگر او براي گفتن همين جمله به من، آن قدر دقت کرده، احتمالاخيلي عميق تر از آن که من عاشقش بودم عاشقم بوده. احتمالامن آن قدر زود بر زبان آورده بودم که نمي شده جدي گرفت، و او اين را مي دانسته، هرچند نتوانست جلوي خودش را بگيرد و چند روز بعد، همين را به من گفت چون احتمالاواقعا عاشقم بود يا گمان مي کرد که هست. جايي مي گويم کاملاناگهاني عاشقش شدم، وقتي زير نور شمع زل زده بوديم به هم. ولي اين خيلي ساده انگارانه است، به علاوه، يادم نمي آيد دقيقا درباره کدام نور شمع دارم حرف مي زنم. شب اول، توي کافه از نور شمع خبري نبود، و بعد، در خانه من هم از نور شمع خبري نبود، پس از قرار معلوم، منظورم اين نيست که شب اول عاشقش شدم. بااين حال، يادم هست درست صبح روز بعد که او را دوباره ديدم، يک احساس شديد و غيرمنتظره داشتم...»
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آخرِ داستان، کتابی بسیار ناب و دلنشین و خواندنی و پرکشش. شاید دلیل کمتر دیده شدندش این باشد که تصور میشود روایتگر عشقی باشد که جذابیتی ندارد از بس سوژه فیلم و کتابهای متعدد شده. اشتباه نکنید، حتما بخوانیدش. دیدویس در کتاب به خوبی درد فراق و جدایی را، شرح حال را، بیان احساسات را توانسته توصیف کند.
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شخصیت اصلی یک نویسنده است که دهه پنجم زندگی خود را پشت سر میگذارد، عاشق پسری شاعر که بیش از یک دهه از او جوانتر است می شود. پسر در کتاب نامی ندارد و زن وی را با ضنیر "او" خطاب می کند. روایت ها اغلب با عدم اطمینان از سوی زن روایت می شوند، شاید چون حالش پریشان است و شاید هم گذر زمان و سنش این اجازه را به او نمی دهد که اتفاقات را درست و دقیق بیان کند. "او" خیلی عاشق پیشه به نظر نمی رسد و بیش تر در پی سوء استفاده و گذران زندگی خویش است، ولی زن اسیر "اوست". بی توجهی های بسیار، عدم صداقت و خیلی رفتارهای دیگر مانند سوهانی است بر روح زن. زن از فراق یارش رمانی می نویسد، از دردها و سختی هایی که کشیده، از کابوس هایی که خواب شب را ازش گرفته، رمان همین کتابی است که ما می خوانیم، اسمش آخرِ داستان است، مرثیه ای بر آخرِ داستانِ عاشقانه زن و "او".
«اولين باري که گفتم عاشقش هستم، بدون يک کلمه حرف خيلي متفکرانه فقط نگاهم کرد، انگار داشت حرفم را مزه مزه مي کرد. آن موقع درنگش را نفهميدم. کلمات تقريبا خلاف ميل خودم از دهنم پريدند بيرون و او جوابي نداد. الان گمان مي کنم اگر او براي گفتن همين جمله به من، آن قدر دقت کرده، احتمالاخيلي عميق تر از آن که من عاشقش بودم عاشقم بوده. احتمالامن آن قدر زود بر زبان آورده بودم که نمي شده جدي گرفت، و او اين را مي دانسته، هرچند نتوانست جلوي خودش را بگيرد و چند روز بعد، همين را به من گفت چون احتمالاواقعا عاشقم بود يا گمان مي کرد که هست. جايي مي گويم کاملاناگهاني عاشقش شدم، وقتي زير نور شمع زل زده بوديم به هم. ولي اين خيلي ساده انگارانه است، به علاوه، يادم نمي آيد دقيقا درباره کدام نور شمع دارم حرف مي زنم. شب اول، توي کافه از نور شمع خبري نبود، و بعد، در خانه من هم از نور شمع خبري نبود، پس از قرار معلوم، منظورم اين نيست که شب اول عاشقش شدم. بااين حال، يادم هست درست صبح روز بعد که او را دوباره ديدم، يک احساس شديد و غيرمنتظره داشتم...»
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آخرِ داستان، کتابی بسیار ناب و دلنشین و خواندنی و پرکشش. شاید دلیل کمتر دیده شدندش این باشد که تصور میشود روایتگر عشقی باشد که جذابیتی ندارد از بس سوژه فیلم و کتابهای متعدد شده. اشتباه نکنید، حتما بخوانیدش. دیدویس در کتاب به خوبی درد فراق و جدایی را، شرح حال را، بیان احساسات را توانسته توصیف کند.
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شخصیت اصلی یک نویسنده است که دهه پنجم زندگی خود را پشت سر میگذارد، عاشق پسری شاعر که بیش از یک دهه از او جوانتر است می شود. پسر در کتاب نامی ندارد و زن وی را با ضنیر "او" خطاب می کند. روایت ها اغلب با عدم اطمینان از سوی زن روایت می شوند، شاید چون حالش پریشان است و شاید هم گذر زمان و سنش این اجازه را به او نمی دهد که اتفاقات را درست و دقیق بیان کند. "او" خیلی عاشق پیشه به نظر نمی رسد و بیش تر در پی سوء استفاده و گذران زندگی خویش است، ولی زن اسیر "اوست". بی توجهی های بسیار، عدم صداقت و خیلی رفتارهای دیگر مانند سوهانی است بر روح زن. زن از فراق یارش رمانی می نویسد، از دردها و سختی هایی که کشیده، از کابوس هایی که خواب شب را ازش گرفته، رمان همین کتابی است که ما می خوانیم، اسمش آخرِ داستان است، مرثیه ای بر آخرِ داستانِ عاشقانه زن و "او".
March 26, 2018
Senryu Review:
Supreme break-up book
in stark self-aware prose trumps
all-night make-up sex.
Supreme break-up book
in stark self-aware prose trumps
all-night make-up sex.
November 21, 2014
I admire what the author did with this book and the way she captured the challenge of processing memories after the fact, of trying to reconstruct a logical timeline of events as they actually occurred, not how we have come to believe they happened or how we wish they had happened. It was definitely a unique book and was worth reading for that alone. However, the story itself just never grabbed my interest and I never felt at all invested in the characters or their actions, so in the end this book was just okay for me.
August 2, 2020
4 buçuktan 5... Sabah 5’ten akşam 5’e ilerlerken zamanı yakalamak, tutturmak ama aynı zamanda akışa da izin vermek... İç döküşleri keyif alarak okudum.
February 6, 2016
I made it more than half way through this basic retread of some short stories Lydia Davis has previously written and published. Seems she writes a bit here and there about a boy and her relationship and perhaps a bit more about a girl and her relationship and sometimes about both of them and her relationship with them all and by the time I get to where I am I am so tired and too tired of reading this boring tale of nothing. Ray Johnson, the artist, whose last act was a performance piece in which he leaves a trail of friends who all know a piece of him but no one knows his all, goes and kills himself by drowning in a river. Ray used to do performance pieces in the city and called them "plays about nothing". He had a loyal following and somebody made a movie about his life that was very interesting. It was called How to Draw a Bunny. Let me give you an example of how Ray operated. If a buyer of his hard art only could afford to pay say three quarters of what Ray's asking price was then after a bit of haggling back and forth Ray would graciously accept the deal, collect the money, and send the buyer three quarters of the piece. Whatever became of the leftover pieces of Ray's art remain a mystery, at least to me. In this novel by Lydia Davis I often noticed a short story of hers that I had already seen elsewhere in other of her collections. For example, Story, from her first collection of short stories titled Break It Down, tells how the narrator's boyfriend couldn't see her before she was to embark on a trip very early the next morning so she stays up all night in her obsessive search to find out why. She makes several trips back and forth to his apartment, several phone calls, and she meets him or talks to him but never quite believes his story and she shouldn't. The names in this story were changed in the novel, but the story is the same story as the text entered into her novel. This happens often in here. Too often for me. It is lame and is a poor way to garner loyalty from me. I had already purchased from amazon.com the The Collected Stories based on the one superb story I read in the collection Fakes: An Anthology of Pseudo-Interviews, Faux-Lectures, Quasi-Letters, "Found" Texts, and Other Fraudulent Artifacts edited by David Shields and Matthew Vollmer. The Lydia Davis Funeral Parlor story was about a letter she wrote to a funeral home about the attendant naming what was left of her father after his cremation his "cremains". I thought the letter so clever and brilliant and so well written that I bought the entire Lydia Davis collected short story work and now I almost wish I hadn't. The book arrived in the mail today and it matched the description online so I can't send it back. I guess I will see more of what is in it when I have more time and space to do so this coming mid winter. But the few stories I have already read in my perusal of it, as I have had the book on loan to me from the library and I have decided to return it to the library tomorrow in addition to returning the novel which I also borrowed from the library, is that Davis is at the very least a re-treader and not at all an original novelist. Or she is senile. Or she has dementia? In the meantime I have to abandon her novel today because it is driving me crazy trying to read it. It is even a more daunting prospect to pick the book up to read when I have Extinction now taking a back seat. In fact, just a few moments ago I did try to pick the book up to continue on with my reading and the feeling of dread was killing me. My eyes floated down below that novel to see EXTINCTION resting there so elegantly and noble at the bottom of my pile of now four books I am currently reading that sit on my end table by my chair in my personal reading library. To think I had temporarily set down this particular novel by Thomas Bernhard in order to read this drivel ahead of finishing this great one. I am so sorry, Thomas. I got excited. Forgive me. I thought I had discovered another living genius in our midst. But it is possible she is the real deal of short story writers. Just don't tell me I should have stayed with her and the novel until the end because the novel gets so much better later. If that is the case, and I really do not doubt that this may be true, then she should have started there.
June 17, 2016
На пръв поглед (или да кажем - на първо прелистване в книжарницата) писането на Лидия Дейвис изглежда доста просто, но това е само на пръв поглед. Всъщност "Краят на историята" е компексно направено вглеждане в детайлите на любовното преживяване, вглеждане до изнемога с едно мазохистично на моменти удоволствие, в което би се разпознал всеки уважаващ себе си overthinker. ;-) Пиша това с ясното съзнание, че то автоматично ще откаже много хора от книгата, но пък толкова по-добре, защото съм сигурна, че точно тази книга би останала неразбираема за читатели без съответната житейска нагласа.
"Историята" е почти безсюжетна, но много интензивна, отчайващо понякога реалистична в отделните си елементи. (Може би писането на Лидия Дейвис напомня на Мураками - кратките изречения, изчерпателността в изборяванията, вниманието към хранителните продукти :D, смътната меланхолия и разни такива неща.)
Изключително ми хареса едновременното развитие на история за случване, за рефлексия върху случването и за писателство. И семплата искреност.
July 29, 2022
Hikayenin Sonu, bir ilişkinin başlangıcını ve bitişini anlatıyor. Kitap boyunca kendisinden "O" diyerek bahsettiği sevgilisiyle ilişkilerinin başlangıcı, devamında yaşadıkları sorunlar, yoğun sevgi ve kaçınılmaz olarak ilişkinin O'nun tarafından bitirilişi... Asla ismini öğrenemediğimiz "O" ister istemez her okuyucu için kendi geçmişinden biri oluveriyor. Kendi geçmiş romantik ilişkilerinizi, ayrılıkta yaşananları, hayatta olsa da sizinle iletişim kurmadığı için artık olmayan bir insanın yokluğunun acısını hatırlıyorsunuz. Böyle yazınca sanılmasın ki ağlak, yapış yapış bir aşk hikayesi bu. Asla değil. Roman içinde roman kurgusuyla yazılmış, düz bir çizgide ilerlemeyen zaman örgüsüyle Hikayenin Sonu, oldukça iyi bir roman. 2013 yılında Man Booker almış olması da bunun kanıtı niteliğinde. Ben sevdim. Yazın değil de kışın okusam daha çok sever ve etkilenirdim diye düşündüm bir de.
November 13, 2015
How much do I adore Lydia Davis? I like her writing because no one is able to categorize it. Sometimes a work of hers that appears in a prose magazine will also appear in a poetry magazine--the same exact piece of writing. I love that. Some libraries list her stuff as personal essays while others have it in the fiction section.
The End Of The Story is definitely a novel. I know that because the narrator keeps referring to what she's writing as a novel and the novel she's writing is the novel I was reading. It's fabulous because it's metafiction as well as seemingly-semi-autobiographical as well as fiction. Additionally, it's not in order. The time frame skips around, fast fowarding and then backtracking and then retelling the same part but with different information still from the same point of view. It works so well because the main goal, which is also the main conflict, is trying to find out exactly where a story ends, meaning how to finish a novel about a relationship, meaning how to find closure from a relationship.
I've read Davis before, so I'm used to her circular style that is sometimes confusing. I go along with it, gliding through each passage, trying to keep characters straight in my mind. When I first started reading this book in particular, I thought I'd read it before because the narrator talks about a poem she's received in the mail from an ex that she needs to translate into English, and the ex hasn't included anything else in the envelope. Then I realized that I hadn't read this book before, but I did read a snippet from Break It Down that has a similar concept. I think that she may have stolen from herself or took that short and turned it into something more. I followed the storyline and it moved away from the short story and developed and then regressed.
Then towards the end, it hit me. The aha moment. All her books have them. Finally, I got giddy and couldn't put the book down. Oh! This is where she was going with it! Of course!!!! I didn't say that out loud, but I thought it. Then again, I still had a fever so I could have yelled it out loud and not realized it. My aha moment wasn't for the book alone, but for all the relationships I've had, too. I figured them out all at once.
The point here is that reading The End Of The Story is exactly the kind of reading experience I expect to have when I read Lydia Davis's works. They leave me panting from a vigorous mental workout.
The End Of The Story is definitely a novel. I know that because the narrator keeps referring to what she's writing as a novel and the novel she's writing is the novel I was reading. It's fabulous because it's metafiction as well as seemingly-semi-autobiographical as well as fiction. Additionally, it's not in order. The time frame skips around, fast fowarding and then backtracking and then retelling the same part but with different information still from the same point of view. It works so well because the main goal, which is also the main conflict, is trying to find out exactly where a story ends, meaning how to finish a novel about a relationship, meaning how to find closure from a relationship.
I've read Davis before, so I'm used to her circular style that is sometimes confusing. I go along with it, gliding through each passage, trying to keep characters straight in my mind. When I first started reading this book in particular, I thought I'd read it before because the narrator talks about a poem she's received in the mail from an ex that she needs to translate into English, and the ex hasn't included anything else in the envelope. Then I realized that I hadn't read this book before, but I did read a snippet from Break It Down that has a similar concept. I think that she may have stolen from herself or took that short and turned it into something more. I followed the storyline and it moved away from the short story and developed and then regressed.
Then towards the end, it hit me. The aha moment. All her books have them. Finally, I got giddy and couldn't put the book down. Oh! This is where she was going with it! Of course!!!! I didn't say that out loud, but I thought it. Then again, I still had a fever so I could have yelled it out loud and not realized it. My aha moment wasn't for the book alone, but for all the relationships I've had, too. I figured them out all at once.
The point here is that reading The End Of The Story is exactly the kind of reading experience I expect to have when I read Lydia Davis's works. They leave me panting from a vigorous mental workout.
August 16, 2020
Bencil bir kadının ayrıldığı erkek arkadaşıyla ilgili duygusal ve dram yüklü cümlelerini herhangi bir olay örgüsü olmaksızın okumak isteyenler varsa buyursun. Şayet bu tarzdan hoşlanmayan biriyseniz naçizane uzak durmanızı tavsiye ederim. Bu tür, benim ilgi çekmiyor açıkçası. Kitabı sonuna kadar okumaya çalıştım. Fakat bir yandan "bilmiyorum" veya "hatırlamıyorum" diyerek bir konunun kendi nazarında önemsiz olduğunu ısrarla vurgulamaya çalışması, bir yandan da özleminin gerçek olduğunu ispatlamak için fiziksel rahatsızlıklar edindiğini anlatarak tezatlıklar deryasında boğulması benim özellikle konsantrasyonumu bozan şeylerden biriydi. Ve tekrarlıyorum, olay örgüsü yok. başlangıcı da sonu da olmayan yaklaşık 300 sayfalık bir sızlanma metnini okumak ilginizi çekiyorsa tercih edin derim.
May 25, 2025
El primer libro que abandono en años. Un coñazo, Lydia.
July 18, 2015
El amor como hilo conductor en una relación de pareja con una considerable diferencia de edad, donde la desconfianza, el posible interés, la sospecha permanente del uno hacia el otro llevará a una dependencia de la protagonista por su particular compañero convirtiéndose todo en una obsesión cuando ya todo se ha terminado y se da cuenta viendo hacia atrás de cómo el tiempo de esa relación resultó un gran fracaso, esta es la base donde Lydia Davis va a contarnos una trama de obsesión y manipulación..
“El final de la historia” es la primera novela escrita hace ya quince años por Lydia Davis a quien Jonathan Franzen (quien no es muy conocido por emitir buenos comentarios ni buenas opiniones públicas sobre otros colegas) calificó a esta autora como “la versión abreviada de Proust”, gracias a la Editorial Alpha Decay se puede disfrutar después de tanto tiempo esta novela sobre una novela. Hablando de manera clara sobre este trabajo hay dos hechos que resaltan inmediatamente, el primero es la historia de una relación de una mujer 12 años mayor que su compañero la cual decide contar por escrito todo lo que sucedió entre ambos recapacitando y recordando todos los errores que se cometieron entre ellos, la otra parte importante es que la protagonista también nos presenta lo difícil que puede resultar para un autor construir y relatar hechos reales dentro de un libro, cosas como que puede sobrar, que no debe ir o que debería eliminar para no hundirse mas en los recuerdos, de esta manera asistimos durante la lectura en dos formas de relatar que la hacen doblemente interesante.
De Lydia Davis había disfrutado algunos cuentos sueltos la mayoría leídos por internet pero nunca había tenido la oportunidad de tener en mis manos un libro completo de ella y casualmente me inicio en su trabajo con esta su primera novela. El lenguaje de Davis es acelerado, cuenta sin pudor y frontal toda la historia, si algo decide retirar durante el dialogo la protagonista se lo pregunta a ella misma antes. “El final de la historia” es un libro escrito de manera muy inteligente, sabe contar en primera persona y demostrar lo complicado que son las relaciones humanas por las que todos pasamos permanentemente pero en el caso de los protagonistas la diferencia de edad hace que todo se acelere hacia un choque sentimental y muy complejo destinado al quiebre y ruptura por las inseguridades de la mujer sobre este joven, así como el rechazo dentro de el amor convierte en una obsesión la relación. Usando elipsis muy bien logradas con diálogos internos hacen que uno la lea para poder descifrar como será la manera en que ella pueda poner un punto final o como ambos van a terminar chocando sentimentalmente.
“El final de la historia” algunos la calificaron uno de los mejores libros del año 2014, aunque yo no me atrevería a tanto, me parece que Davis en los cuentos es donde mejor sabe desempeñarse, pero este es un libro que debe de leerse porque la manera en que se construyen los personajes hacen que sea una novela de disfrute asegurado.
“El final de la historia”
Lydia Davis
Editado por Alpha Decay (2014)
240 paginas
“El final de la historia” es la primera novela escrita hace ya quince años por Lydia Davis a quien Jonathan Franzen (quien no es muy conocido por emitir buenos comentarios ni buenas opiniones públicas sobre otros colegas) calificó a esta autora como “la versión abreviada de Proust”, gracias a la Editorial Alpha Decay se puede disfrutar después de tanto tiempo esta novela sobre una novela. Hablando de manera clara sobre este trabajo hay dos hechos que resaltan inmediatamente, el primero es la historia de una relación de una mujer 12 años mayor que su compañero la cual decide contar por escrito todo lo que sucedió entre ambos recapacitando y recordando todos los errores que se cometieron entre ellos, la otra parte importante es que la protagonista también nos presenta lo difícil que puede resultar para un autor construir y relatar hechos reales dentro de un libro, cosas como que puede sobrar, que no debe ir o que debería eliminar para no hundirse mas en los recuerdos, de esta manera asistimos durante la lectura en dos formas de relatar que la hacen doblemente interesante.
De Lydia Davis había disfrutado algunos cuentos sueltos la mayoría leídos por internet pero nunca había tenido la oportunidad de tener en mis manos un libro completo de ella y casualmente me inicio en su trabajo con esta su primera novela. El lenguaje de Davis es acelerado, cuenta sin pudor y frontal toda la historia, si algo decide retirar durante el dialogo la protagonista se lo pregunta a ella misma antes. “El final de la historia” es un libro escrito de manera muy inteligente, sabe contar en primera persona y demostrar lo complicado que son las relaciones humanas por las que todos pasamos permanentemente pero en el caso de los protagonistas la diferencia de edad hace que todo se acelere hacia un choque sentimental y muy complejo destinado al quiebre y ruptura por las inseguridades de la mujer sobre este joven, así como el rechazo dentro de el amor convierte en una obsesión la relación. Usando elipsis muy bien logradas con diálogos internos hacen que uno la lea para poder descifrar como será la manera en que ella pueda poner un punto final o como ambos van a terminar chocando sentimentalmente.
“El final de la historia” algunos la calificaron uno de los mejores libros del año 2014, aunque yo no me atrevería a tanto, me parece que Davis en los cuentos es donde mejor sabe desempeñarse, pero este es un libro que debe de leerse porque la manera en que se construyen los personajes hacen que sea una novela de disfrute asegurado.
“El final de la historia”
Lydia Davis
Editado por Alpha Decay (2014)
240 paginas
September 30, 2015
Without a doubt, one of the great books on writing that is not non-fiction, but in fact a work of fiction. On one level, a narrative (of sorts) regarding the beginning and ending of a relationship, or what we are led to believing is a relationship. One is not sure, since we're getting the story or narrative from the author -for all I know she maybe making this all up, or it could be a demented diary of sorts. Fragmented, yet totally readable, the narrator comments on every aspect of her relationship with a younger free-spirit. She is a college professor who does translations (Lydia is a well-known and great translator) who is writing a novel. "The End of the Story" is about her relationship or at the very least, based on her affair with this younger guy. It is also the dread of finishing a novel or a work of literature. One thinks that it is due to the end of a romance, but it goes down more serious than that. So far, this is her only novel, and honestly she doesn't need to do another one -because this is very much a perfect work. Also I enjoy her short (short) stories so much, I never want her to stop that. Lydia Davis is a great American (but French loving) writer. If I was teaching writing in a class, for sure the authors I would bring up are: Richard Stark, PG Wodehouse, and of course, Lydia Davis. A writer can learn a lot from these masters.
Read
September 1, 2011As a break from the theoretical turn Evening All Afternoon has been taking of late, let me rhapsodize straightforwardly about the numerous things I love in the writing of Lydia Davis. In particular, I've just finished her 2004 The End of the Story, which treats of the end, beginning, and aftermath (in that order) of a love affair, and also of the process of transforming that love affair into a novel.
I was particularly intrigued to pick up Davis's novel, as her stories tend to the radically succinct—one or two paragraphs each, a page or less. Nor is her work overtly affective, consisting of schematic yet detailed accounts of a character's actions, surroundings, habits, or mental processes. Like Proust, whose Swann's Way she translated, Davis pays attention to nuance and is intrigued by the often-perverse twistings and turnings of the human psyche. Unlike Proust, her paragraphs tend to fit on one page, and can usually be enjoyed on their own as single, jewel-like units. While some writers are most impressive at the level of the sentence or the chapter, Davis shines on the level of the paragraph—either single paragraphs or, often, a longer paragraph followed by a shorter paragraph, which shows the earlier paragraph in a new light. It reminds me of the way haikus often work, with the last line casting the first two in a new perspective. In this paragraph pair, for example, the narrator is describing a dream she had just after embarking on the relationship around which the book revolves:
I find Davis's paragraphs so compelling because, while each one does suggest narrative motion, they are short enough that no real resolution is expected. They allow the reader simply to notice contradiction and live within it at the level of the thought or the moment, without requiring that contradiction to be resolved. Above, for example, the narrator observes the contrast between the lyrical passage and the plain writing that surrounds it; between the brevity of the final sentence and those that preceded it; between her opinions of the last sentence before and after waking. In the second paragraph we have the narrator's feeling that her dream-composition belongs to her ex-lover, which contrasts with her intellectual knowledge that it was created in her own mind. She doesn't seek to explain or interpret any of this in any explicit way, or decide that one impression is correct and the other incorrect. She simply lays out paradox in clean lines, and allows the reader to do with it what she will. I enjoy the aesthetics of art that simply dwells within contradiction, possibly because I find this so difficult to do in my own life.
Nor is it easy for Davis's narrator. Despite the detachment of the narrative style, and the fact that reading this book imparted to me a sense of calm, the narrator in her daily life appears anything but peaceful. She is anxious and high-strung, and her behavior both during and after the relationship is often less than admirable—although she seldom makes this explicit judgment herself, writing instead simply, "At that time I liked to drink. I always needed a drink if I was going to sit and talk to someone," or "Most of his friends were as young as he was, and [...] I did not regard people of that age as very interesting, even though I had been that age myself." Oddly, it's the understatement in Davis's prose that makes her depictions of depression and bad behavior particularly uncomfortable for me, as if, in calmly acknowledging these unattractive aspects of her own personality, the narrator is making room for me to do the same. The emotions felt at a given time are simply another piece of information to be recounted, no more freighted or difficult than anything else. Or, if they are more difficult, then this difficulty can in turn be acknowledged, and the narrator can live beside it.
Although it can sometimes be sobering, Davis's un-emotive delivery can also be dryly hilarious. I was particularly tickled by her portraits of her own compulsive or inconvenient habits of thought, which often had me chuckling and insisting on reading passages aloud to my partner David. The same technique I outlined above, of returning to things previously discussed in order to cast them in a new light, can be extremely funny as well as meditative and thought-provoking, and Davis uses it in all these applications to good effect. My favorite humorous example of this technique, involving the narrator's confusion in the face of her own elaborate filing system for different types of fictional material, is too long to share here, but trust me, it's worth a read. Instead I'll give you this passage on lying awake scheming, which strikes me as both funny and a great union of form and content. Just as the brain of the sleepless narrator becomes more and more fixated on her crusading busy-bodying, the paragraph itself focuses in on a particular, esoteric scheme:
For some reason, the isolated sentence "I wonder what I can do to help save local farms" is especially funny to me.
But as much as I enjoy the humor, my favorite thing about Davis might be her examination of the subjectivity involved in our experiences of reality and in the truths we believe we know. The narrator continually struggles with what to include in her story and how to tell it. The same incident appears differently in her memory each time she remembers it, depending on her mood at the time of remembering, information she has learned in the meantime, or other external factors. In one case, she remembers the same house as three completely different settings: the kitchen in which she played a word game; the back yard through which she entered a party with her lover; the front door and living room she visited after he left her. What is the reality? Are these "really" the same place, or three separate places? Likewise, Davis explores the mental tricks of perception which create a surprising percentage of the texture of one's reality.
Of course there is not actually another person making editorial decisions for the narrator, but her lived reality includes a ghost or an impression of this other woman helping her write. In combination with her koan-like style, it's Davis's insights into the unexpected reverses of human consciousness and behavior that will keep me coming back to her work. And although I think she's probably more accomplished as a "micro-story" writer than a novelist, The End of the Story has no problem sustaining its novelistic momentum from beginning to end. I look forward to more of Davis's work, in any format at all.
Notes on Disgust
(for more information on the disgust project, see here.)
Davis's style tends toward the schematic and is unlikely to provoke any disgust in the reader. Still, there is this interesting passage, in which the narrator, just before her lover leaves her, encounters him unexpectedly at a party:
What struck me so forcibly about this passage is the narrator's extremely Douglasian description of her own revulsion. Seeing her lover at this party disgusts her because he seems "a thing that intruded where it didn't belong"—matter out of place, just as Douglas describes. The narrator's momentary revulsion even causes her to perceive her lover's feature as "primitive," and we notice the dehumanizing tendency that so often goes hand-in-hand with the disgust emotion. The lover's appearance in a place that the narrator doesn't expect to see him, when she is feeling alienated from him, gives him a repulsive and marginal appearance, almost seeming to melt back into an undifferentiated lump "the color of clay," yet in his distorted, sub-human form is still monstrous, "deadly" and "vicious."
True to form, there were also times when the narrator is disgusted at herself, in particular a passage in which she remembers with loathing the chips and playing cards she and her lover bought at the store in an attempt to disguise their growing boredom with each other. But it's this passage that really stood out as intriguing and oddly extreme.
I was particularly intrigued to pick up Davis's novel, as her stories tend to the radically succinct—one or two paragraphs each, a page or less. Nor is her work overtly affective, consisting of schematic yet detailed accounts of a character's actions, surroundings, habits, or mental processes. Like Proust, whose Swann's Way she translated, Davis pays attention to nuance and is intrigued by the often-perverse twistings and turnings of the human psyche. Unlike Proust, her paragraphs tend to fit on one page, and can usually be enjoyed on their own as single, jewel-like units. While some writers are most impressive at the level of the sentence or the chapter, Davis shines on the level of the paragraph—either single paragraphs or, often, a longer paragraph followed by a shorter paragraph, which shows the earlier paragraph in a new light. It reminds me of the way haikus often work, with the last line casting the first two in a new perspective. In this paragraph pair, for example, the narrator is describing a dream she had just after embarking on the relationship around which the book revolves:
Later that night I dreamed I had found a short piece of his writing on the hall floor. It had a title page and my name on it and my address at the university. Most of it was plainly written, but it contained a passage about Paris in which the writing became suddenly more lyrical, including a phrase about the "shudder of war." Then the style became plain again. The last sentence was briefer than the rest: "We are always surprising our bookkeepers." In the dream, I liked the piece and was relieved by that, although I did not like the last sentence. Once I was awake, I liked the last sentence too, even more than the rest.
I see now that since I hadn't yet read anything by him at the time of the dream, what I was doing was composing something by him that I would like. And although this was my dream and he did not write what I dreamed he wrote, the words I remember still seem to belong to him, not to me.
I find Davis's paragraphs so compelling because, while each one does suggest narrative motion, they are short enough that no real resolution is expected. They allow the reader simply to notice contradiction and live within it at the level of the thought or the moment, without requiring that contradiction to be resolved. Above, for example, the narrator observes the contrast between the lyrical passage and the plain writing that surrounds it; between the brevity of the final sentence and those that preceded it; between her opinions of the last sentence before and after waking. In the second paragraph we have the narrator's feeling that her dream-composition belongs to her ex-lover, which contrasts with her intellectual knowledge that it was created in her own mind. She doesn't seek to explain or interpret any of this in any explicit way, or decide that one impression is correct and the other incorrect. She simply lays out paradox in clean lines, and allows the reader to do with it what she will. I enjoy the aesthetics of art that simply dwells within contradiction, possibly because I find this so difficult to do in my own life.
Nor is it easy for Davis's narrator. Despite the detachment of the narrative style, and the fact that reading this book imparted to me a sense of calm, the narrator in her daily life appears anything but peaceful. She is anxious and high-strung, and her behavior both during and after the relationship is often less than admirable—although she seldom makes this explicit judgment herself, writing instead simply, "At that time I liked to drink. I always needed a drink if I was going to sit and talk to someone," or "Most of his friends were as young as he was, and [...] I did not regard people of that age as very interesting, even though I had been that age myself." Oddly, it's the understatement in Davis's prose that makes her depictions of depression and bad behavior particularly uncomfortable for me, as if, in calmly acknowledging these unattractive aspects of her own personality, the narrator is making room for me to do the same. The emotions felt at a given time are simply another piece of information to be recounted, no more freighted or difficult than anything else. Or, if they are more difficult, then this difficulty can in turn be acknowledged, and the narrator can live beside it.
But no matter how clearly I saw what I was doing, I would go on doing it, as though I simply allowed my shame to sit there alongside my need to do it, one separate from the other. I often chose to do the wrong thing and feel bad about it rather than do the right thing, if the wrong thing was what I wanted.
Although it can sometimes be sobering, Davis's un-emotive delivery can also be dryly hilarious. I was particularly tickled by her portraits of her own compulsive or inconvenient habits of thought, which often had me chuckling and insisting on reading passages aloud to my partner David. The same technique I outlined above, of returning to things previously discussed in order to cast them in a new light, can be extremely funny as well as meditative and thought-provoking, and Davis uses it in all these applications to good effect. My favorite humorous example of this technique, involving the narrator's confusion in the face of her own elaborate filing system for different types of fictional material, is too long to share here, but trust me, it's worth a read. Instead I'll give you this passage on lying awake scheming, which strikes me as both funny and a great union of form and content. Just as the brain of the sleepless narrator becomes more and more fixated on her crusading busy-bodying, the paragraph itself focuses in on a particular, esoteric scheme:
Now and then I am too excited to sleep, because I have a plan to reform something: if not what we eat, which should be the diet of the hunter-gatherers, then what we have in our house, which should include as little plastic as possible and as much wood, clay, stone, cotton, and wool; or the habits of the people in our town, who should not cut down trees in their yards or burn leaves or rubbish; or the administration of our town, which should create more parks and lay down a sidewalk by the side of every road to encourage people to walk, etc. I wonder what I can do to help save local farms. Then I think we should keep a pig here to eat our table scraps, and that the Senior Citizens Center should keep a pig, too, because so much food is thrown out when the old people don't eat it, as I used to see when I went to pick up Vincent's father at lunchtime. The pig could be fattened on these scraps until the holiday season, and then provide the senior citizens with a holiday meal. A new baby pig could be bought in the spring and amuse the senior citizens with its antics.
For some reason, the isolated sentence "I wonder what I can do to help save local farms" is especially funny to me.
But as much as I enjoy the humor, my favorite thing about Davis might be her examination of the subjectivity involved in our experiences of reality and in the truths we believe we know. The narrator continually struggles with what to include in her story and how to tell it. The same incident appears differently in her memory each time she remembers it, depending on her mood at the time of remembering, information she has learned in the meantime, or other external factors. In one case, she remembers the same house as three completely different settings: the kitchen in which she played a word game; the back yard through which she entered a party with her lover; the front door and living room she visited after he left her. What is the reality? Are these "really" the same place, or three separate places? Likewise, Davis explores the mental tricks of perception which create a surprising percentage of the texture of one's reality.
In the same way, I will decide to include a certain thought in a certain place in the novel and then discover that several months before, I made a note to include the same thought in the same place and then did not do it. I have the curious feeling that my decision of several months ago was made by someone else. Now there has been a consensus and I am suddenly more confident: if she had the same plan, it must be a good one.
Of course there is not actually another person making editorial decisions for the narrator, but her lived reality includes a ghost or an impression of this other woman helping her write. In combination with her koan-like style, it's Davis's insights into the unexpected reverses of human consciousness and behavior that will keep me coming back to her work. And although I think she's probably more accomplished as a "micro-story" writer than a novelist, The End of the Story has no problem sustaining its novelistic momentum from beginning to end. I look forward to more of Davis's work, in any format at all.
Notes on Disgust
(for more information on the disgust project, see here.)
Davis's style tends toward the schematic and is unlikely to provoke any disgust in the reader. Still, there is this interesting passage, in which the narrator, just before her lover leaves her, encounters him unexpectedly at a party:
It was a feeling of absolute displeasure to see him there, as though he were a hostile element in that place, a thing that intruded where it didn't belong, so that as I watched him among the moving figures, over the shoulders of the other people in the crowded place, those same features of his that had held such a positive attraction for me not long before, and that would exert such a fascinating force again not long after, were just then repugnant to me, blunt and deadly, primitive and vicious, without intelligence, without humanity, the color of clay.
What struck me so forcibly about this passage is the narrator's extremely Douglasian description of her own revulsion. Seeing her lover at this party disgusts her because he seems "a thing that intruded where it didn't belong"—matter out of place, just as Douglas describes. The narrator's momentary revulsion even causes her to perceive her lover's feature as "primitive," and we notice the dehumanizing tendency that so often goes hand-in-hand with the disgust emotion. The lover's appearance in a place that the narrator doesn't expect to see him, when she is feeling alienated from him, gives him a repulsive and marginal appearance, almost seeming to melt back into an undifferentiated lump "the color of clay," yet in his distorted, sub-human form is still monstrous, "deadly" and "vicious."
True to form, there were also times when the narrator is disgusted at herself, in particular a passage in which she remembers with loathing the chips and playing cards she and her lover bought at the store in an attempt to disguise their growing boredom with each other. But it's this passage that really stood out as intriguing and oddly extreme.
June 21, 2013
I had a really hard time getting through this small book. I like Lydia Davis, and I respect her a lot as a writer. That's why I'm not giving this book 1 star. I felt like for all of the time she described organizing her thoughts, this was a disorganized mess of rambling. It was not only a story about her failed relationship with someone who was not right for her, whom she didn't much care for until he left her, but also the story of her writing the story. I wanted to care, but I couldn't make myself care.
This line from the book seems appropriate: "The book was open in front of me, but I could not understand what it was saying, or if I concentrated hard on the sentences, whose many parts all had to be kept in mind at once, and understood it, I forgot almost immediately what I had read. My mind wandered from it constantly, I constantly pulled my mind back to it, and finally I was exhausted by this struggle, and still didn't remember anything from the few pages I had read."
This line from the book seems appropriate: "The book was open in front of me, but I could not understand what it was saying, or if I concentrated hard on the sentences, whose many parts all had to be kept in mind at once, and understood it, I forgot almost immediately what I had read. My mind wandered from it constantly, I constantly pulled my mind back to it, and finally I was exhausted by this struggle, and still didn't remember anything from the few pages I had read."
October 4, 2007
just because. just because the sentences don't end, like the landscapes. because the mix of how she moves from thoughts to deeds, place to past, memories to wish. it doesn't have to be that way, the words we said didn't have to be the words we said, the way he carries his shoulders and head don't begin to describe the longing that resides inside, when the sound of a whisker scratches the surface of a page he's reading in the back room, where kitchen tiles stack on the paint-spattered counter and mountains peer through the cracked windows just enough to let us know that there's lots of places we haven't gone yet, so don't stop.
January 27, 2010
Stephen told me the other day I wasn’t a sensitive person and I was all, “Yes I am,” confusing ‘sensitive’ with ‘perceptive’ and ‘thoughtful’ and then started adding, “Just because I’m not going to sit around and blah blah blah feelings all day and cry over puppies and care about things that are just stupid and,” needless to say he was all, “Point proven.” I guess this furthers his cause, as some of the sentences were stabbingly beautiful and I’m always interested in the exploration of faulty memory and revisionist history, but in the end this was mostly a heavy-handed diarist’s lobotomy of feelings and I’m all “Buck up little camper,” let’s move on.
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