Night Train

Gorgeously translated by Lydia Davis, the miniature stories of A. L. Snijders might concern a lost shoe, a visit with a bat, fears of travel, a dream of a man who has lost a glass eye: uniting them is their concision and their vivacity. Lydia Davis in her introduction delves into her fascination with the pleasures and challenges of translating from a language relatively new to her. She also extols Snijderss straightforward approach to storytelling, his modesty and his thoughtfulness. Selected from many hundreds in the original Dutch, the stories gathered herehumorous, or bizarre, or comfortingly homelyare something like daybook entries, novels-in-brief, philosophical meditations, or events recreated from life, butinhabiting the borderland between fiction and realitymight best be described as autobiographical mini-fables. This morning at 11:30, in the full sun, I go up into the hayloft where I havent been for years. I climb over boxes and shelving, and open the door. A frightened owl flies straight at me, dead quiet, as quiet as a shadow can fly, I look into his eyeshes a large owl, its not strange that Im frightened too, we frighten each other. I myself thought that owls never move in the daytime. What the owl thinks about me, I dont know.