Samuel Johnson Is Indignant Stories

From one of our most imaginative and inventive writers, a crystalline collection of perfectly modulated, sometimes harrowing and often hilarious investigations into the multifaceted ways in which human beings perceive each other and themselves. A couple suspects their friends think them boring; a woman resolves to see herself as nothing but then concludes she's set too high a goal; and a funeral home receives a letter rebuking it for linguistic errors. Lydia Davis once again proves in the words of the Los Angeles Times "one of the quiet giants in the world of American fiction."

Lydia Davis is the author of the story collections Almost No Memory (Picador, 2001) and Break it Down, and the novel The End of the Story. She has won the Guggenheim, the Lannan Foundation Award, the Lila Wallace/Reader's Digest Award and a Chevalier from the French government.

"Highly intelligent, wildly entertaining stories, bound by visionary, philosophical, comic prose-part Gertrude Stein, part Simone Weil, and pure Lydia Davis."—Elle

"Davis should be counted among the true originals of contemporary American short fiction."—San Francisco Chronicle

"Davis deploys her gift for verbal bemusement, annoyance, and high anxiety . . . [and] converts her characters' complex ruminations into narratives full of insight and pleasure."—The Village Voice

"Her stories are intellectual and playful, and rigorous as brainteasers."—Bookforum