Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Into the Weeds

Into the Weeds

Davis, Lydia

Hardcover

Series: Why I Write

Literary FiguresLiterary CriticismWriting Instruction

Publisher Price: $20.00

ISBN10: 0300279744
ISBN13: 9780300279740
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: Sep 16 2025
Pages: 152
Weight: 0.50
Height: 0.80 Width: 4.80 Depth: 7.10
Language: English

An illuminating reflection on the creative process from acclaimed fiction writer, essayist, and translator Lydia Davis

Reporting from the slipstream of her reading life, [Davis] offers less a new way to think than perhaps an old one, pushing back against mechanization and the collapse of context by reframing reading in the most particular and human terms.--David L. Ulin, The Atlantic

When asked why she writes, Lydia Davis confesses that the question makes her uncomfortable. Maybe she would rather not know. Instead, Davis considers how she writes her stories, how other writers write, and what insights the how might provide into the why.

In this free-ranging exploration, Davis discovers that one reason she writes is for pleasure: the pleasure of encountering something that demands to be treated in language, of handling and manipulating the language into the form it ought to take, and, finally, of seeing a story exist where it didn't exist before. As she observes the processes of some of the authors who interest her the most, she finds that there seem to be as many reasons to write as there are writers: to relive an experience, to share an experience, to articulate something one has not quite comprehended.

Reflecting on an eclectic mix of thinkers, including James Baldwin, Kate Briggs, Walter Raleigh, Christina Sharpe, Knut Hamsun, Grace Paley, Josep Pla, John Ashbery, and John Clare, Davis undertakes a clear-eyed, patient inquiry into the manifold reasons we choose to put pen to paper and begin something new.

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