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The Guy Davenport Reader
“The difference between the Parthenon and the World Trade Center, between a French wine glass and a German beer mug, between Bach and John Philip Sousa, between Sophocles and Shakespeare, between a bicycle and a horse, though explicable by historical moment, necessity, and destiny, is before all else a difference of imagination.
The imagination is like the drunk man who has lost his watch, and must get drunk again to find it. It is as intimate as speech and custom, and to trace its ways we need to re-educate our eyes.”—Guy Davenport
Modernism spawned the greatest explosion of art, architecture, literature, painting, music, and dance of any era since the Renaissance. In its long unfolding, from Yeats, Pound and Eliot to Picasso and Matisse, from Diaghilev and Balanchine to Cunningham and Stravinsky and Cage, the work of Modernism has provided the cultural vocabulary of our time.
One of the last pure Modernists, Guy Davenport was perhaps the finest stylist and most protean craftsman of his generation. Publishing more than two dozen books of fiction, essays, poetry and translations over a career of more than forty years, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1990. In poetry and prose, Davenport drew upon the most archaic and the most modern of influences to create what he called “assemblages”—lush experiments that often defy classification. Woven throughout is a radical and coherent philosophy of desire, design and human happiness. But never before has Davenport’s fiction, nonfiction, poetry and translations been collected together in one compendium. Eight years after his death, The Guy Davenport Reader offers the first true introduction to the far-ranging work of this neglected genius.
The imagination is like the drunk man who has lost his watch, and must get drunk again to find it. It is as intimate as speech and custom, and to trace its ways we need to re-educate our eyes.”—Guy Davenport
Modernism spawned the greatest explosion of art, architecture, literature, painting, music, and dance of any era since the Renaissance. In its long unfolding, from Yeats, Pound and Eliot to Picasso and Matisse, from Diaghilev and Balanchine to Cunningham and Stravinsky and Cage, the work of Modernism has provided the cultural vocabulary of our time.
One of the last pure Modernists, Guy Davenport was perhaps the finest stylist and most protean craftsman of his generation. Publishing more than two dozen books of fiction, essays, poetry and translations over a career of more than forty years, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1990. In poetry and prose, Davenport drew upon the most archaic and the most modern of influences to create what he called “assemblages”—lush experiments that often defy classification. Woven throughout is a radical and coherent philosophy of desire, design and human happiness. But never before has Davenport’s fiction, nonfiction, poetry and translations been collected together in one compendium. Eight years after his death, The Guy Davenport Reader offers the first true introduction to the far-ranging work of this neglected genius.
400 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 2013
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191 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 3, 2021
Gorgeous. A good starting place for those of you curious
August 1, 2013
Since this book wasn't my own first reading of Mr. Davenport, I don't know for sure how a brand new reader might respond to it. But it feels like a sincere and successful effort to represent the range and quality of his writing. The engaging afterword makes it clear that this edition is a gesture of love by editor Erik Reece.
My only gripe concerns the typos—important little things that add up. I'm no expert on the state of proofing throughout the US publishing world, but I hope a good company like Counterpoint can rise to a higher standard than this edition sets.
My only gripe concerns the typos—important little things that add up. I'm no expert on the state of proofing throughout the US publishing world, but I hope a good company like Counterpoint can rise to a higher standard than this edition sets.
August 1, 2013
I don't adore every piece in this anthology, but what is fine here is so fine that 5-stars is the only realistic option. The best essays convey information one might have never heard before; the best stories likewise convey a great deal of information in truly intelligent and lovely language; the translations from Diogenes and Heraclitus are thought-provoking and (in Diogenes' case) even quite amusing; the journal selections are full of great things to ponder.
May 20, 2017
Certainly one of the most lucid, articulate, engaging, (and often times comical) essayists of the twentieth century Davenport is a rare writer, whose polymathic closely resembles Montaigne in its scope and authority, yet whose prose is often times profoundly melancholic in tone.
Davenport, like a true 'modernist' is antediluvian, full of resentment, and disillusioned with the cultural state of postmodernity. As I read his essays, translations, poems, stories, and notes I can only hope and trust that Davenport is remembered and read by American readers (Europeans have known about Davenport for quite some time). From Shaker music and arrow heads to Heraclitus and Paul Metcalf, Davenport's works prove his statement about art:
"a work of art easily offers us three angles of interest: how it came to be, what it is, and how the world has honored or neglected it."
Davenport, like a true 'modernist' is antediluvian, full of resentment, and disillusioned with the cultural state of postmodernity. As I read his essays, translations, poems, stories, and notes I can only hope and trust that Davenport is remembered and read by American readers (Europeans have known about Davenport for quite some time). From Shaker music and arrow heads to Heraclitus and Paul Metcalf, Davenport's works prove his statement about art:
"a work of art easily offers us three angles of interest: how it came to be, what it is, and how the world has honored or neglected it."
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February 20, 2021Criminally under-read. Come and feast at Guy Davenport's long table. Dishes from all places and all ages spill into each other and taste better by the mixing.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews