Lydia Davis. Sketches For A Life Of Wassily. 1981.

Hooray for Station Hill

A short story bound as a tiny novel. This is a melancholy book with more characterization, development, and detail than I normally associate with Davis. Wassily wavers between brilliance and uselessness and neither you nor he knows for sure. In this sense the book’s design—tiny but sober—complements the story, as Wassily is a sort of a children’s intellectual.

The prose is perfect.