Lost

At this point, I've probably squandered about 50% of my waking life on unsuccessful attempts to get from point A to point B. Lostness inevitably leads to lateness-or maybe the two problems arise from the same source?- in any event I'm also that girl whose friends assume "I'll be there at 2:00" means 2:30, or maybe 3, or maybe "Wait, didn't we plan that for Tuesday? No? Shit." On vacation this week I rediscovered the fact that Lost in New York means something entirely different than Lost in Los Angeles. Trying to get from Harlem to Brooklyn, I took two wrong trains and spent about 3 hours bumbling about underground. I also finished three books. Three! Just riding back and forth on the train. Most likely, this had a lot to do with why I kept missing my stops but, whatever, it was raining and I had nowhere pressing to be.

Lydia Davis writes stories that aren't so much stories as they are collections of thoughts, ideas for plots, gatherings of information organized according to the Scientific Method, and mathematical analyses of everyday situations. The pieces in Varieties of Disturbance are often about grammar, marriage, maids, and fraught relationships but however improbably she sidesteps sentimentality to create tiny, compact bits of impeccable prose. She also blurs the line between fiction and poetry in a way that makes the whole concept of genre seem futile. She's got an infectious prose style, so if you pick up this book don't be surprised when you start thinking in straight lines. Reading it on the train made me feel less like I was lost, per se, and more like I'd just suddenly decided to surprise myself and go somewhere other than originally planned. Like, um, Queens.