The Cows
Lydia Davis
Sarabande Books
<p>"<i>You read Lydia Davis to watch a writer patiently divide the space between epiphany and actual human beings by first halves, then quarters, then eighths, and then sixteenths, into infinity,</i>" says <b>The Village Voice</b>. Indeed, Lydia Davis is a mathematician, philosopher, sculptor, jeweller, and scholar of the minute. Few writers map the process of thought as well as she, and few <i>perceive</i> with such charged intelligence.</p><p><b>The Cows </b>is a close study of the three much-loved cows that live across the road from her. The piece, written with understated humour and empathy, is a series of detailed observations of the cows on different days and in different positions, moods, and times of the day. It could be compared to some sections of Wallace Stevens' "<b>Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird</b>" or to Claude Monet's paintings of Rouen Cathedral.</p><p><i>"Forms of play: head butting; mounting, either at the back or at the front; trotting away by yourself; trotting together; going off bucking and prancing by yourself; resting your head and chest on the ground until they notice and trot toward you; circling each other; taking the position for head-butting and then not doing it.</i></p><p><i>She moos toward the wooded hills behind her, and the sound comes back. She moos in a high falsetto before the note descends abruptly, or she moos in a falsetto that does not descend. It is a very small sound to come from such a large, dark animal."</i><br></p>