Overview

Part of our revived ""Poetry Pamphlet"" series, Two American Scenes features two masters of the essay discussing ""found material."" Excerpts: It was given to me, in the nineteenth century, to spend a lifetime on this earth. Along with a few of the sorrows that are appointed unto men, I have had innumerable enjoyments; and the world has been to me, even from childhood, a great museum.— Lydia Davis Bad rapids. Bradley is knocked over the side; his foot catches under the seat and he is dragged, head under water. Camped on a sand beach, the wind blows a hurricane. Sand piles over us likea snow-drift.— Eliot Weinberger

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Reviews

Both poets remind us that American history is rich with material for contemporary artists, and that the seeds of patriotism are simple and enduring--a patch of land, a handful of human beings. But like all good patriots, they have their disagreements. Davis reveres the American landscape for all that it gives us. Weinberger reveres it for what it challenges us to become. --Brian Hurley

Author Information

Lydia Davis is the author of one novel and seven story collections. Her collection Varieties of Disturbance: Stories was a finalist for the 2007 National Book Award. She is the recipient of a MacArthur fellowship, the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Award of Merit Medal, and was named a Chevalier of the Order of the Arts and Letters by the French government for her fiction and her translations of modern writers, including Maurice Blanchot, Michel Leiris, and Marcel Proust. Lydia Davis is the winner of the 2013 Man Booker International Prize. Eliot Weinberger is an essayist and translator, the editor of The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry, and the series editor of Calligrams: Writings from and on China (New York Review Books and Chinese University of Hong Kong Press). He lives in New York City.

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