Lydia Davis is one of the few writers I can think of who reads her work with such inimitable nuance and rhythm that I feel I’m cheating myself whenever I come across her work without the benefit of her voice’s guidance.  Her prose is as fine and lovely and funny and precise as any being produced today, but a new, deeper poignancy emerges when she is given the opportunity to recite it: the work becomes a performance – when most writers read their work, it feels rather like mere, and often boring, recitation –, and I find myself more often than not thinking of how wonderful an actor she is, as if having forgotten that she is also responsible for the marvelous source material.  Click here to listen to an excerpt from End of the Story, her only novel; it comes via the formidable Penn Sound.