PositiveColumbia JournalIn Essays One, Davis’s talents as a writer of both poetic and prosodic tendencies are on full display ... On the whole, the essays in each section are sharp in their analysis, but the sections themselves don’t communicate an overlying structure or purpose ... Essays One takes readers through the \'unsuspected\' rooms of Davis’s mind: an endless series of queries about work habits, elements of writing, works of art, the difficulties of translation, photography and clothing, the concept of time, and even her family’s strange, fortuitous connection to Abraham Lincoln. Her love for language is what drives her curiosity and guides her penetrative eye; the journey is rendered in exquisite prose ... to read Essays One sequentially from cover to cover is to float in Lydia Davis’s limbo. Part of this limbo-like feeling comes from her persistent and often repetitive questioning. Davis sometimes crafts entire half-page paragraphs of only questions, most of which are rhetorical, some of which are relevant, very few of which are answered. A bit of her thinking, in this sense, feels unfinished ... Davis is at her best when she is most personal and open, when the lens of her analytical mind is turned inward and she blends her criticism with examples and experiences from her own life ... She may not know what she’s after or how to get there, but there are few writers today who are as easy, and enjoyable, to follow as Lydia Davis.
