Can't and Won't

Can't and Won't is a collection of short fiction that explores the strange logic of everyday life through Lydia Davis’s signature blend of precision, humor, and emotional restraint. The stories range from a few sentences to longer reflections, taking the form of observations, dreams, complaints, conversations, and fragmented thoughts. Davis focuses on the small disturbances that shape ordinary experience — misunderstandings, anxieties, habits, social awkwardness, and obsessive patterns of thinking — revealing how seemingly trivial moments can contain surprising emotional and philosophical depth.

Throughout the collection, Davis examines communication, aging, memory, work, domestic life, and the limits of language itself. Many stories transform mundane situations into quietly unsettling or darkly funny meditations on perception and human behavior. Others move into more experimental territory, blurring the line between fiction, essay, and prose poem. Both playful and deeply attentive to the mechanics of thought, the collection showcases Davis’s ability to uncover complexity and resonance within the smallest details of everyday existence.