Lydia Davis, who was awarded the Man Booker International Prize in 2013, has been publishing short stories utterly unlike anyone else’s for almost 40 years. Sometimes as brief as a sentence or several paragraphs, they dispense with conventional narrative and character in favor of astringent wit and aphoristic insight. Davis’s commentary on these two drafts of an early story reveals that every word is ripe for scrutiny.
Born in New Zealand and now living in Kentucky, LYDIA DAVIS and her widely traveling husband are authors of a joint autobiography, DR. TO THE ISLANDS.
LYDIA DAVISof New Zealand followed her husband “Dr. Tom" back to his home island of Rarotonga and was his valiant ally during the six years of his uphill struggle as medical officer in the Cook Islands. When Dr. Tom had won through,the Davises sailed away on their dream ketch, the Miru, a 45-footer,bound for Boston where he had been offered a fellowship at the Harvard School of Public Health. With their young sons and two deck hands,they crossed 12,000 miles of the Pacific in an epic voyage of 155 days. All this they tell in their joint biography, Doctor to the Islands, which has just been published under the Atlantic-Little,Brown imprint. That their life was not always one of strain and buffeting can be judged from the enchanting glimpses in Lydia’s short story.