The Cows (Quarternote Chapbook Series)

A disclaimer of sorts: As a boy I spent several weeks each summer on farms that had dairy cows or steers. That experience, coupled with a dash of nostalgia, may make me more susceptible than some to the charms of this spare book by Lydia Davis.Across the road from her house in rural upstate New York is the home pasture of three cows. They are black, black cows with white markings on their faces. (I think they are Black Baldies.) THE COWS contains Davis's careful observations of those three cows over a year's time, together with about two dozen black-and-white photographs. It is a pastoral book, closely observed and empathetically rendered. It also is humorous, in a loving, understated way.Here are several excerpts:"Each new day, when they come out from the far side of the barn, it is like the next act, or the start of an entirely new play.They amble out from the far side of the barn with their rhythmic, graceful walk, and it is an occasion, like the start of a parade. * * *They come out from behind the barn as though something is going to happen, and then nothing happens. * * *Today, they are positioned exactly one behind the next in a line, head to tail, head to tail, as though coupled like the cars of a railway train, the first looking straight forward like the headlight of the locomotive."

I already previously read The Cows in a short story book I had from Lydia Davis but I really like this story a lot. I like how this smaller book has added pictures and it's just a nice addition to my short story copies that I have. I don't think Lydia Davis is really for everyone but I am a big fan.

I love this little book. The writer is an author I have before and liked. It is such a simple book with pictures of cows being cows, and the author's writing is the same. I have gifted this book to others many times and I still reread my copy once in a while. Cows, being cows, delightful and peaceful.

I just finished The Cows by Lydia Davis and I loved it. It is slow and melodious just like the cows that she is writing about. Reminds me of when I was young and we were driving to Wisconsin and we would get so excited whenever we would see cows grazing slowly out in the pastures. I always wanted to stop and "chat" with them and follow them through their day. I was probably only 5 years old and the cows seemed so magical.

funny, beautiful, thoughtful, and thought-provoking. Davis's descriptions of the cows gives texture and interest to scenes which most of us simply pass by.

This is a series of very short observations of the cows that live across the street from the author. It is spare and often quite beautiful, though just as often uninteresting. It is very similar to the cockroaches story in one of her collections. I found myself wishing for the cockroach piece to have a similar presentation!So unlike any other book I own. Strange little books like this are such a treat to find.

Quirky. Eclectic. Here is Davis on her day off. Watching the cows across the way. If you are familiar with Lydia Davis you know her intellectual commitment to her writing. This short chap book doesn't disappoint, but it is Davis in her down time, gazing and grazing on the bovine horizon. A Sunday drive in the country.

This is a lovely book. Quietly we see a small herd of cows spend their days and be, simply, cows. The writing is sweet and observant and we are there, participating in the small graces of nature.

Until recently I had read all of Lydia Davis's work except for 'the Cows'; I left it out, thinking it unnecessary. But then I read her story 'We Had Wondered What Animal Might Arrive' - which won the 2009 Pushcart Prize - in Noon, and started to come around to the idea of what Lydia Davis might see in cows.That other story - a summation and a glorious best of, featuring all the best LD tropes and motifs collapsed into five elegant paragraphs - sets up this more detailed look at the animals, and the pastoral scene around them. This is one of the gentlest and clearest of her projects, and yet there is still space for humour, philosophical nail-hitting and even the breathtaking, in this 37-page story, which reminds you, like Knausgaard's My Struggle, that you really are in your own skin.

What a happy way to spend a couple of hours - ruminating on the small events in a field of cows - loved it, really made me smile.