Objects on a Table: Harmonious Disarray in Art and Literature (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "Between the gathering of foods and its consumption there is an interval when it is on display..." (more)
Key Phrases: life with onions, summer fruit, New York, House of Usher, Sherlock Holmes (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

Urbane meditations on the history and meaning of the still life in art and literature. Essayist, poet, translator, and fiction writer Davenport (The Cardiff Team, 1996, etc.) takes as his subject the idea of the still life in art. However, he doesnt offer any sort of academically systematic treatise of the topic. Instead, its more accurate to say that he takes the idea of harmonious disarray in art as a way of focusing and stimulating his own wide-ranging and historically literate imagination. Here is a conservative sample of the Davenport mode of verbal meditation: ``The pipe begins to appear in Renaissance still lifes as a memento mori: life passes away like smoke. An extinguished candle usually accompanied a pipe, and books and food and musical instruments added up to the vanity of our brief life. The nineteenth century would transmute these symbols into ones of peace, cosiness, and domesticity, until in Picasso and Braque they are emblems of shrinking privacy, the precious vestiges of harmony in a distracting and insane world.'' Sometimes his leaps of imagination and lists of connections strain credulity. This kind of thing can be dazzling or irritating, depending on how you feel about argument and documentation. Davenport knows this, of course, and aims by virtue of his book's ``disarray of perceptions and conjunctions'' to charm his consenting partner into a like state of meditation on van Gogh, on Nietzsche, on Edgar Allen Poe, on the persistence of apples and pears in the Western imagination, on the assemblage of objects on Sherlock Holmes's desk at 221B Baker Street. Davenport has the wonderful ability to ``read'' inanimate objects in their historical setting, and he seems to remember everything he ever read. The range of allusion is immense and challenging and rewarding. Davenport is a virtuoso of the literary essay, and here the magic mostly works. (8 pages b&w illustrations, not seen) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review

That such diverse elements ... are quite loosely combined ... in no way diminishes the reader's pleasure at following the mazy motions of Davenport's protean mind. -- The New York Times Book Review, David Yezzi

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 116 pages
• Publisher: Counterpoint; illustrated edition edition (October 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1887178856
• ISBN-13: 978-1887178853
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 7.8 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,260,889 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This is a book which draws lines in history & art., November 25, 1998

By A Customer

This author is extremely atuned to the historical and literary 'trade routes' by which ideas and techniques are conveyed to our time. If you haven't read his "Geography of the Imagination", you have a treat in store. There are at least two sides to Guy Davenport: one is his 'own work' which consists of stories in a completely unique genre, and the other is his 'detective work' or book worm mode which yield astounding ties from one writer to another, or from painter to writer, or culture to culture. This is a work to treasure.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Found Treasure, August 2, 2002

By	Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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This review is from: Objects on a Table : Harmonious Disarray in Art and Literature (Paperback)

Whatever reason guides our quest for information to discover small treasures, the rewards of finding writing as quiet and yet celebratory as Guy Davenport's OBJECTS ON A TABLE are immeasurable. This small volume of four essays on the intransigence of Still Life paintings and their concommitant relationship to music, philosophy, literature, history, poetry, and simply Life is satisfying on every level. While the art world strains to design the NEW trends/schools/movements that will incite or induce controversy and a step toward the now ubiquitous Warhol 15 minutes of fame, writers and lecturers such as Davenport (and Mark Doty, Norbert Schneider, et al) offer solace in the simplicity of beckoning quietly toward the centuries old yet very much extant art of the painted Still Life. Meditations on the significance of baskets of fruit, on 'memento mori', on non-visual artists who attempt to capture the simplicity inherent in the Still Life spill over the pages of this beautiful little book, and in doing so enhance our vision of the world about us. The writing here is superb, the pleasures of pausing to read solitarily the thoughts of a writer so well informed about so many issues makes this small volume a fine addition to the thinkers' librairies. Beautiful!