Lydia Davis’s most recent collection of stories is Can’t and Won’t (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014). Her translation of Marcel Proust’s Letters to His Neighbor was published in 2017 by New Directions, and a collection of her essays, Essays One, was published in 2019 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. She is currently preparing a second volume of essays and recently completed a translation of stories by the Dutch writer A. L. Snijders. This essay was adapted from Essays Two to be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in July 2021.