Lydia Davis

A long review of the short story writer in this week’s New Yorker (click here). An early story, The Thirteenth Woman, is two sentences and 138 words long. Not as short as Hemingway’s six word: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn”, but short.  Here it is.

The Thirteenth Woman

In a town of twelve women there was a thirteenth. No one admitted she lived there, no mail came for her, no one spoke of her, no one asked after her, no one sold bread to her, no one bought anything from her, no one returned her glance, no one knocked on her door, the rain did not fall on her, the sun never shone on her, the day never dawned for her, the night never fell for her; for her the weeks did not pass, the years did not roll by; her house was unencumbered, her garden unattended, her path not trod upon, her bed not slept in, her food not eaten, her clothes not worn; and in spite of all this she continued to live in the town without resenting what it did to her.

Lydia Davis