The Cardiff Team: Ten Stories

by Guy Davenport

Guy Davenport’s story collection  A Table of Green Fields  (New Directions, 1993) was praised for its amazing artistry and “stratospheric” literary intelligence ( Kirkus Reviews ). As  The Washington Post  noted, “It draws one in with its austere, beautifully formal sentences, its rich pattern of memory.” In Davenport’s follow-up collection,  The Cardiff Team , the stories continue in this vein, their texts a wondrous collage of persons, events, and ideas from cultural history. The central theme is that of tribeless people joining, or trying to join, a team, a tribe, or a society. In “The Messengers,” Franz Kafka visits the Jungborn Health Spa in the Harz mountains and tries to feel comfortable in his own skin. In “Boys Smell Like Oranges,” a soccer team of boys from Henry de Montherlant’s  Les Olympiques  is its own contained tribe.  The Cardiff Team  perfectly displays Guy Davenport’s illustrious prose and his audacity; confirming  The New Yorker ’s assertion that his is “among the very few, truly original voices now audible in American letters.”

Genres: Fiction, American

168 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1996

Reviews

[Dave Lovely · Rating 4 out of 5]

I

[Erik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lacked Davenport's usually linguistic brilliance. I also have to admit I got tired of reading about young boys playing with their penises.