The 2026 LRB Autumn Lecture in NYC: Lydia Davis on Marcus Aurelius

Dying, or Doing Something Else: Reflections on Marcus Aurelius and Other Stoics

Lydia Davis will reflect on some of the concepts of the Stoic philosophers, especially the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, author of a private notebook of meditations written, many of them, in his tent on a battlefield. She will associate these concepts with the ideas conveyed by other texts, including some of the English sonnets, and will also describe her attempts to try out the ideas of the Stoics on the vagaries of her own daily life in a world that, while culturally so distinct from that of Marcus Aurelius, shares the same challenges presented by such difficult passions as anger, envy, grief, ambition and fear of death.

Lydia Davis is the author of a novel and eight story collections as well as two books of essays and many translations. In 1999 she was named a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government, and in 2015 an Officier, both for her fiction and translations. She received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2003 and the Man Booker International Prize in 2013. Her latest book is Into the Weeds, about a lifetime of reading and writing.