I’ve started on The Collected Works of Lydia Davis.  Ms. Davis is a pretty wonderful writer.  She’s a close, but wry, observer of the emotions of human frailty.  Here is my favorite passage from “Mr. Burdoff’s Visit to Germany”:

“Now Mr. Burdoff feels a growing attraction to the Hawaiian woman, who has moved to a seat directly in front of him.  During each lesson he stares at her lacquered black ponytail, her narrow shoulders, and the lower edge of her buttocks that delicately protrude through the opening at the back of her chair within inches of his knees.  He hungers for a glimpse of her neatly crossed legs, her ballet slipper bobbing as she struggles to answer a question, and her slim hand as it writes, regularly traveling out across the page and then withdrawing again from sight.

He is enchanted by the colors she wears and the objects she carries with her. Every night he lies awake and dreams of helping her out of a serious difficulty.  Every dream is the same and stops just short of the first kiss.

His love, however, is more fragile than he knows, and it dies in a moment the day a tall and sumptuous Norwegian woman joins the class.”

The memory of being a teenage boy causes a blush of recognition inside me when I read this passage.