By Lydia Davis, in the Fall 1999 issue of Bomb. “The Old Dictionary” appears in The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, published in 2010 by Picador.

I have an old dictionary, about 120 years old, that I need to use for a particular piece of work I’m doing this year. Its pages are brownish in the margins and brittle, and very large. I risk tearing them when I turn them. When I open the dictionary I also risk tearing the spine, which is already split more than halfway up. I have to decide, each time I think of consulting…