Guy Davenport - regarded by the "New York Times" "one of our most gifted and versatile men of letters" - has produced in this collection of stories a remarkably harmonious synthesis of subjects and forms. Melding history, biography, botany, political theory, geology, and other interests, Davenport creates fictions that are complex but unified, mature, balanced, and resolved.
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Editorial Reviews
From Library Journal
Davenport writes in what might be called a cubist style. A typical story may be divided into dozens of fragments: snatches of philosophical banter; dense but lyrical lectures on botany and geology; erotic interludes in which young boys are forever "husking down" their underwear to "whack off." This latter obsession obscures Davenport's very real talent for aesthetic and intellectual fantasy. Consequently, the most beguiling item here, in which Davenport eschews his more tiresome habits, is "Pyrrhon of Elis," about a Greek philosopher profoundly skeptical of the "fine round world of people and things." For sophisticated readers. Grove Koger, Boise P.L., Id.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
"Few American writers connect as many things as Guy Davenport, and few surpass him in the integrity of his connections... His fiction is a record of difficult and sensuous philosophical though, and his characters make brilliant literary and artistic judgments, but the center of gravity in his stories is a child's knowledge of the body's possibilities... Never less than the conversation, sometimes the monologue of a warm, gregarious, large-minded man." -- Partisan Review
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Three angels, or daimons, or maybe neutrinos,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Jules Verne Steam Balloon (Johns Hopkins: Poetry and Fiction) (Paperback)
Three angels, or "daimons," or maybe neutrinos--who may alsohave been the Three Wise Men--"drop" into several of these stories via their steam balloon, the Jules Verne. They bring messages from the "Consiliarii," but who are they? A council of heavenly spirits? The Force? A code name for God? And what might their message be? Could it be as simple as "All you need is love"? Maybe. Davenport ranges from ancient Greece to a somewhat contemporary Denmark; from Christian theology and ancient philosophy to pubescent phallocentrism and drug overdose. "The Jules Verne Steam Balloon" is perplexing and enlightening, humorous and melancholy, and vibrant with life and the joy of living it. These stories move as only Davenport's fiction does, as full of "fact" as of "fiction," as full of life in the body and in the world as of philosophical discourse and natural science. And--oh,yes! be warned--accompanied by much doffing of undergarments.
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