Can't and Won't: Stories
By Lydia Davis
3.5/5
()
About this ebook
A new collection of short stories from the woman Rick Moody has called "the best prose stylist in America"
Her stories may be literal one-liners: the entirety of "Bloomington" reads, "Now that I have been here for a little while, I can say with confidence that I have never been here before." Or they may be lengthier investigations of the havoc wreaked by the most mundane disruptions to routine: in "A Small Story About a Small Box of Chocolates," a professor receives a gift of thirty-two small chocolates and is paralyzed by the multitude of options she imagines for their consumption. The stories may appear in the form of letters of complaint; they may be extracted from Flaubert's correspondence; or they may be inspired by the author's own dreams, or the dreams of friends.
What does not vary throughout Can't and Won't, Lydia Davis's fifth collection of stories, is the power of her finely honed prose. Davis is sharply observant; she is wry or witty or poignant. Above all, she is refreshing. Davis writes with bracing candor and sly humor about the quotidian, revealing the mysterious, the foreign, the alienating, and the pleasurable within the predictable patterns of daily life.
Lydia Davis
Lydia Davis is the author of Essays One, a collection of essays on writing, reading, art, memory, and the Bible. She is also the author of The End of the Story: A Novel and many story collections, including Varieties of Disturbance, a finalist for the 2007 National Book Award for Fiction; Can’t and Won’t (2014); and The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, described by James Wood in The New Yorker as “a grand cumulative achievement.” Davis is also the acclaimed translator of Swann’s Way and Madame Bovary, both awarded the French-American Foundation Translation Prize, and of many other works of literature. She has been named both a Chevalier and an Officier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government, and in 2020 she received the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story.
Read more from Lydia Davis
The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Essays One Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Essays One Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe End of the Story: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Essays Two: On Proust, Translation, Foreign Languages, and the City of Arles Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Cows Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Freeman's: Arrival: The Best New Writing on Arrival Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
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Reviews for Can't and Won't
114 ratings16 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It is always with great pleasure when one discovers a mind which seems both related to oneself and brilliant. She does go on a little too long sometimes, and yes, the stories marked "dreams" - what is that all about? But the mixture is a whole and it is a slice of a whole and makes much more sense like that, like a jumble sale - must take all! I have not only taken it - I have devoured it all.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I never read short stories. Well hardly ever. But are these short stories, or entries in a commonplace book? Whatever they are I found them compulsively readable. I will let Ms. Davis complete this very short review ... "Now that I have been here for a little while, I can say with confidence that I have never been here before." [Bloomington, p. 8.]
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love her style; well-crafted prose. 5 stars if she had something to say.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Mixture of short stories. Some sad, some funny. Some short, some long. Some made perfect sense, some made none.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I didn't get this at first. Maybe I still don't. Many of the short 'stories' are similar to the social media status updates that I see every day, equally well written, from friends and others. After reading through several of these, the longer episodes seem unnecessarily verbose and in need of pruning. The language is certainly clear, almost in the manner of technical writing when it comes to the dream sequences, and the expression is bold. However, what seems to make this 'a thing' is simply that it expresses the everyday thoughts that we all must certainly have. To get this published with dust-jacket reviews that compare it to Kafka, Flaubert, and Proust suggests, in my view, that the author must have influential friends in the publishing business. I still don't get it, no.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I like the conceit of disrupting the structure of the short story - Davis is heavy on details and description (to sometimes a pathological degree), low on action and plot. Some of the most interesting pieces contain just three lines or two paragraphs, which because of the brevity and economy of language become puzzles, to be returned to and re-interpreted, unsolvable. Perhaps as a consequence of the level of detail at this extreme micro level, the narrator is obscured - detached and distant, unknowable. What is the meaning of the letter about the peas? Those short riddle stories, what (or who?) hides behind them? They are always cocooned in the narrator's perspective yet give little away. They feel lonely, transient - glimpses of inner moments, lists, preferences. Perhaps they are the best possible description of isolation and the impossibility of true connection.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Liked, but not quite as much as her earlier stuff.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Why this title is not available in my country?? Am i not paying the same charges??
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A stripped down review.Kind of like the stories or poems in Davis' compelling collection "can't and won't." I bought it with no preconceived conceptions, one of those bookstore finds, I think there was a staff pick on it, anyway, I was desperate for something different to read, and I got it.Some of what I liked a lot...Short fiction pieces from Flaubert's actual writings—I learned this from her very last note in the acknowledgements—most were found in letters written from the author of Madame Bovary to his lover, Louise Colet. I liked less the two or three lines musings, but some I did like. I think every writer or would be writer should read, "The Language of Things in The House," what she imagines the sounds are from various activities such as "The wooden spoon in the plastic bowl stirring the pancake mix: 'What the hell, what the hell.' I imagine this would be a fun writing exercise in a workshop.It's good, and it's imperfect enough to want me to keep reading other Lydia Davis collections. --Caroline
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Lydia Davis, recently awarded the Man Booker International Prize for Fiction, is as interesting and eclectic a writer as I have rarely encountered. Her latest collection, Can’t and Won’t, will wrinkle your brow, bring a smile to your face, and set the reader to thinking about the world and its wide variety of inhabitants.Davis was born in 1947 to parents who were both of a literary bent. She married the writer, Paul Auster, but they divorced, and she then married Alan Cote. She has two children. Lydia is most known for her short stories of extreme brevity, referred to as “flash fiction.” Some of her stories consist of a single line, sometimes even as few as 3-4 words. Despite their size, each of these stories contains a nugget of pure gold, some even have streaks of platinum. Here is an example of one of those nuggets titled “The Dog Hair.” She writes, “The dog is gone. We miss him. When the doorbell rings, no one barks. We still find his white hairs here and there around the house and on our clothes. We pick them up. We should throw them away. But they are all we have left of him. We don’t throw them away. We have a wild hope -- if only we collect enough of them, we will be able to put the dog back together again” (4). The sadness and the memories of a beloved pet are all packed into 88 words.Here is another slightly shorter story, “Circular Story”: “On Wednesday mornings early there is always a racket out there on the road. It wakes me up and I always wonder what it is. It is always the trash collection truck picking up the trash. The truck comes every Wednesday morning early. It always wakes me up. I always wonder what it is” (5). Whatever will she do if they change the route and it passes by her home after lunch?Here is a pair of funny little tales. “Contingency (vs. Necessity). “He could be our dog. // But he is not our dog. // So he barks at us” (18), and “Contingency (vs. Necessity) 2: On Vacation”: “He could be my husband. // But he is not my husband. // He is her husband. // And so he takes her picture (not mine) as she stands in her flowered beach outfit in front of the old fortress” (20). Some of these stories have a definite poetic flair.Another of my favorites is “The Bad Novel.” Davis writes, “This dull, difficult novel I have brought with me on my trip – I keep trying to read it. I have gone back to it so many times, each time dreading it and each time finding it no better than the last time, that by now it has become something of an old friend. My old friend the bad novel” (23). I have experienced this quite a few times, but unfortunately for me, I do not have the patience for more than three strikes. Finally, the title story, “Can’t and Won’t. “I was recently denied a writing prize, because, they said, I was too lazy. What they mean by lazy was that I used too many contractions: for instance, I would not write out in full the words cannot and will not, but instead contract them to can’t and won’t. (46).The most recent collection by Lydia Davis, Can’t and Won’t has dozens more of these fun and entertaining little nibblettes. She also includes a number of her dreams and fragments of the story of Madame Bovary, which she recently translated. This is one of my favorite novels of the 19th century. I am seriously close to reading this new translation of a classic novel. 5 stars.--Jim, 12/11/16
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Halfway between poetry and prose, can't and won't is a collection of vignettes - a series of moments, dreams, letters, and perceptions ranging in length from a single sentence to a couple dozen pages. It's like rifling through the minds of strangers at random. I've never read anything else quite like it. I expect it might be even more enjoyable for those familiar with the work of Flaubert.In particular, I loved "I'm Pretty Comfortable, But I Could Be a Little More Comfortable." I found it brilliant. Everything else ranged from mildly interesting to fascinating with just a couple of pieces that I found lackluster. I think the book does itself a disservice by adding "Stories" to the title. These pieces are not what one expects from a story.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I'm glad Lydia Davis does her thing. I'm unsure we need 280 pages of it, and I'm starting to get a bit suspicious of people who talk about how she's the best thing since sliced bread. I'm starting to suspect that her work will be seen, in hindsight, as peak MFA writing. But also like reading a blog back when people still wrote blogs.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5One of the best books I've read for a long time. It is a collection of articles, short essays, descriptions of dreams, conversations overheard and observations. Some are hilarious, some are very touching, some are masterpieces of insight. The best for me: The cows, The seals and The letter to the foundation. The problem of the vacuum cleaner is funny. Many make you stop reading and start writing something in similar vein.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Mixture of short stories. Some sad, some funny. Some short, some long. Some made perfect sense, some made none.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Some of the stories, I liked. Others, I did not.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The more than 120 “stories” collected together in Can’t and Won’t range from pieces as short as a dozen words, through a larger set of paragraph-length “dreams” and incidents sourced from Flaubert’s correspondence, to longer pieces typically “letters” to heads of foundations or businesses recounting a recent incident. Atypically for Davis, the majority of these items are not particularly humorous. They tend to be pithy but not necessarily instructive in any sense. The “dreams” are most often banal. And it is only in the longer pieces that Davis’ trademark irony flourishes.Perhaps surprising, the list of acknowledgements at the end of the book reveals that virtually every piece here has been previously published, often in small literary journals, but also in such esteemed outlets as The Paris Review. That makes one wonder whether publication, individually, would impact a reader’s opinion of many of these literary morsels. Gathered together, perhaps, the weight of any single item may be lost. Or perhaps that’s wishful thinking. For I regret to say that I didn’t find many of the items in this collection particularly illuminating. They are never poorly written. Just a bit dull. Enough so that I found myself wondering more than once, “Why did she bother writing that?” Of course that might be the effect she was hoping for. In which case, this is a brilliant success. But otherwise, probably recommended only for the half dozen or so pieces that do not illicit that questioning response.
Book preview
Can't and Won't - Lydia Davis
I
A Story of Stolen Salamis
My son’s Italian landlord in Brooklyn kept a shed out back in which he cured and smoked salamis. One night, in the midst of a wave of petty vandalism and theft, the shed was broken into and the salamis were taken. My son talked to his landlord about it the next day, commiserating over the vanished sausages. The landlord was resigned and philosophical, but corrected him: They were not sausages. They were salamis.
Then the incident was written up in one of the city’s more prominent magazines as an amusing and colorful urban incident. In the article, the reporter called the stolen goods sausages.
My son showed the article to his landlord, who hadn’t known about it. The landlord was interested and pleased that the magazine had seen fit to report the incident, but he added: They weren’t sausages. They were salamis.
The Dog Hair
The dog is gone. We miss him. When the doorbell rings, no one barks. When we come home late, there is no one waiting for us. We still find his white hairs here and there around the house and on our clothes. We pick them up. We should throw them away. But they are all we have left of him. We don’t throw them away. We have a wild hope—if only we collect enough of them, we will be able to put the dog back together again.
Circular Story
On Wednesday mornings early there is always a racket out there on the road. It wakes me up and I always wonder what it is. It is always the trash collection truck picking up the trash. The truck comes every Wednesday morning early. It always wakes me up. I always wonder what it is.
Idea for a Sign
At the start of a train trip, people search for a good seat, and some of them take a careful look at the people nearby who have already chosen their seats, to see if they will make good neighbors.
It might help if we each wore a little sign saying in what ways we will and will not be likely to disturb other passengers, such as: Will not talk on cell phone; will not eat smelly food.
Included in mine would be: Will not talk on cell phone at all, aside from perhaps a short communication to my husband at the beginning of the trip home, summarizing my visit in the city, or, more rarely, a quick warning to a friend on the way down that I will be late; but will recline my seat back as far as it will go, for most of the trip, except when I am eating my lunch or snack; may in fact be adjusting it slightly, back and up, from time to time throughout the trip; will sooner or later eat something, usually a sandwich, sometimes a salad or a container of rice pudding, actually two containers of rice pudding, though small ones; sandwich, almost always Swiss cheese, with in fact very little cheese, just a single slice, and lettuce and tomato, will not be noticeably smelly, at least as far as I can tell; am as tidy as I can be with the salad, but eating salad with a plastic fork is awkward and difficult; am tidy with the rice pudding, taking small bites, though when I remove the sealed top of the container it can make a loud ripping noise for just a moment; may keep unscrewing the top of my water bottle and taking a drink of water, especially while eating my sandwich and about one hour afterwards; may be more restless than some other passengers, and may clean my hands several times during the trip with a small bottle of hand sanitizer, sometimes using hand lotion afterwards, which involves reaching into my purse, taking out a small toiletries bag, unzipping it, and, when finished, zipping it up again and returning it to my purse; but may also sit perfectly quietly for a few minutes or longer staring out the window; may do nothing but read a book through most of the trip, except for one walk down the aisle to the restroom and back to my seat; but, on another day, may put the book down every few minutes, take a small notebook out of my purse, remove the rubber band from around it, and make a note in the notebook; or, when reading through a back issue of a literary magazine, may rip pages out in order to save them, though I will try to do this only when train is stopped at a station; lastly, after a day in the city, may untie my shoelaces and slip my shoes off for part of the trip, especially if the shoes are not very comfortable, then resting my bare feet on top of my shoes rather than directly on the floor, or, very rarely, may remove shoes and put on slippers, if I have a pair with me, keeping them on until I have nearly reached my destination; but feet are quite clean and toenails have a nice dark red polish on them.
Bloomington
Now that I have been here for a little while, I can say with confidence that I have never been here before.
The Cook’s Lesson
story from Flaubert
Today I have learned a great lesson; our cook was my teacher. She is twenty-five years old and she’s French. I discovered, when I asked her, that she did not know that Louis-Philippe is no longer king of France and we now have a republic. And yet it has been five years since he left the throne. She said the fact that he is no longer king simply does not interest her in the least—those were her words.
And I think of myself as an intelligent man! But compared to her I’m an imbecile.
At the Bank
I take my bag of pennies to the bank and throw them into a machine that will count them. I am asked by a teller to guess how much my pennies are worth. I guess $3.00. I am wrong. They amount to $4.24. But since I am within $1.99 of the correct sum, I qualify for a prize. Many people nearby in the bank congratulate me warmly. I may choose from among a number of prizes. When I refuse the first and the second, and seem likely to refuse the next, the anxious teller unlocks a secure vault and shows me the full array, which includes a large plastic piggy bank, a coloring book and crayons, and a small rubber ball. At last, so as not to disappoint her, I choose what I think is the best of them, a handsome Frisbee with its own carrying case.
dream
Awake in the Night
I can’t go to sleep, in this hotel room in this strange city. It is very late, two in the morning, then three, then four. I am lying in the dark. What is the problem? Oh, maybe I am missing him, the person I sleep next to. Then I hear a door shut somewhere nearby. Another guest has come in, very late. Now I have the answer. I will go to his room and get in bed next to him, and then I will be able to sleep.
dream
At the Bank: 2
Again, I go to the bank with my bag full of pennies. Again, I guess that my pennies will add up to $3.00. The machine counts them. I have $4.92. Again, the bank teller decides that I am close enough to the correct amount to win a prize. I look forward to seeing what the selection of prizes will be this time, but there is only one prize—a tape measure. I am disappointed, but I accept it. At least this time I can see that the teller is a woman. Before, I could not be sure whether she was a woman or a man. But this time, though she is still bald, she moves more gracefully and smiles more gently, her voice is higher, and she is wearing a pin on her chest that says Janet.
dream
The Two Davises and the Rug
They were both named Davis, but they were not married to each other and they were not related by blood. They were neighbors, however. They were both indecisive people, or rather, they could be very decisive about some things, important things, or things to do with their work, but they could be very indecisive about smaller things, and change their minds from one day to the next, over and over again, being completely decided in favor of something one day and then completely decided against the same thing the next day.
They did not know this about each other until she decided to put her rug up for sale.
It was a brightly patterned wool rug, red, white, and black, with a bold design of diamonds and some black stripes. She had bought it at a Native American store near the town where she used to live, but now she found out it was not Native American. She had grown tired of it where it lay on the floor of her absent son’s room, because it was a little dirty and curled up at the corners, and she decided to sell it in a group sale that was being held to raise money for a good cause. But when it was much admired at the sale, more than she expected, and when the price of ten dollars that she had put on it was raised by an appraiser to fifty dollars, she changed her mind and hoped that no one would buy it. As the day wore on, she did not lower the price on the rug, as others were lowering their prices around her, and though people continued to admire it, no one bought it.
The other Davis came to the sale early in the day and was immediately attracted to the rug. He hesitated, however, because the pattern was so bold and the colors so starkly red, white, and black that he thought it might not look good in his house, though his house was furnished in a clean, modern way. He admired the rug out loud to her, but told her he wasn’t sure it would look right in his house and left the sale without buying it. During the day, however, while no one else was buying the rug and while she was not lowering the price, he was thinking about the rug, and later in the day he returned for the purpose of seeing the rug again, if it was still there, and making up his mind whether to buy it or not. The sale, however, had ended, all the goods had been either sold or bagged for donation, or packed up and taken back home, and the expanse of green lawn by the porch of the parish house, where the sale had been held, lay clear and smooth again in the late-afternoon shadows.
The other Davis was surprised and disappointed, and a day or two later, when he ran into this Davis at the post office, he said he had changed his mind about the rug and asked if it had been sold, and when she said it had not, he asked if he could try the rug in his house to see if it would look good.
This Davis was immediately embarrassed, because in the meantime she had decided she should keep the rug after all, clean it up, and try it out here and there in the house to see how it would look. But now, when the other Davis showed such interest in the rug, she was no longer sure she should do that. After all, she had been willing to sell it, and she had thought it was worth only ten dollars. She asked the other Davis if she could take a few more days to decide whether she was willing to part with it. The other Davis understood and said that was fine, to let him know if she decided she didn’t want to keep the rug.
For a while she left it in her son’s room, where it had originally been. She looked in on it now and then. It still looked a little dirty, with curled-up corners. She still found it somewhat attractive and at the same time somewhat unattractive. Then she thought she should bring it out where she would see it every day, so that she would feel more impelled to make a decision about whether or not to keep it. She knew the other Davis was waiting.
She put it on the landing between the first floor and the second floor, and thought it looked good with the drawing that hung on the wall there. But her husband thought it was too bright. She left it there, however, and continued to think about it whenever she went up or down the stairs. A day came when she decided quite firmly that although she found it quite attractive, the other Davis should have it, or at least try it out, because he liked it and it would probably look better in his house. But the next day, before she could act on her resolution, a friend came to the house and particularly admired the rug: this friend thought it was a new rug, and she thought it was very pretty. Now this Davis wondered if she shouldn’t keep it after all.
Meanwhile, however, the days were passing, and she worried very much about the other Davis. She felt that he had clearly wanted to try the rug out and she was selfishly keeping it, even though she had been willing to sell it—and for only ten dollars. She felt that he probably wanted it, or admired it, more than she did. And yet she did not want to give up something that she had once admired enough to buy in the first place, and that other people also admired, and that she might like very much if she cleaned it