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Guy Mattison Davenport (November 23 1927 – January 4 2005) was an American writer, translator, painter, illustrator, intellectual, and teacher.

Life and Work (one version)

Guy Davenport was born in Anderson, South Carolina in the foothills of Appalachia on November 23, 1927. His father was an agent for the Railway Express Agency. Davenport said that he became a serious reader at age ten, with a neighbor’s gift of one of the Tarzan series. He left high school early and enrolled at Duke University at age seventeen. At Duke, he studied classics, English literature, and art.

He was a Rhodes scholar at Merton College Oxford from 1948 to 1950, where his studies included Old English (taught by J.R.R. Tolkien) and where he wrote Oxford’s first thesis on James Joyce. In 1950, upon his return to the U.S., Davenport entered the U.S. Army , where he spent the next two years: First, at Fort Bragg (756th Field Artillery, then 18th Airborne Corps), then in Korea. Leaving the army, he taught until 1955 at Washington University in St. Louis, then began his Ph.D. at Harvard University, where he studied with Harry Levin and Archibald MacLeish.

He befriended Ezra Pound during the poet’s incarceration in St. Elizabeth's Hospital, visiting him annually from 1952 until his release in 1958, and at his home in Rapallo (Italy) in 1963 (a visit that became Davenport’s story, “Ithaka”). Davenport wrote his dissertation on Pound’s poetry (published as Cities on Hills in 1983). During his years in Cambridge, he was briefly married.

After completing his Ph.D., he taught at Haverford College from 1961 to 1963 but soon took a position at the University of Kentucky, “the remotest offer with the most pay” (as he wrote to Jonathan Williams), where he taught until his retirement at the end of 1990.

Davenport began publishing fiction in 1970 with “The Aeroplanes at Brescia”, which is based on Kafka’s visit to an air show in September 1909. His books include Tatlin!, Da Vinci’s Bicycle, Eclogues, Apples and Pears, The Jules Verne Steam Balloon, The Drummer of the Eleventh North Devonshire Fusiliers, A Table of Green Fields, The Cardiff Team, Twelve Stories, and The Death of Picasso (which also includes a selection of essays), and "Wo es war, soll ich werden". His fiction uses three general modes of exposition: The fictionalizing of historical events and figures; the foregrounding of formal narrative experiments, especially in the use of collage; and the depicting of a Fourierist utopia, where small groups of men, women, & children have eliminated the separation between mind and body.

Before publishing fiction, Davenport was a regular reviewer for National Review and The Hudson Review. His essays ranged from literary to social topics, from small book reviews to lectures such as the title essay for his first collection, The Geography of the Imagination. Davenport was especially passionate about the destruction of the American metropolis by the automobile.

His other collections of essays were Every Force Evolves a Form and The Hunter Gracchus and Other Papers on Literature & Art. He also published two slim volumes on art: A Balthus Notebook and Objects on a Table.

Davenport wrote a handful of poems; the longest are “The Resurrection at Cookham Churchyard” (borrowing the title from a painting by Stanley Spencer) and the book-length Flowers & Leaves, an intricate meditation on art and America. His selected poems is Thasos and Ohio.

Davenport also translated ancient Greek texts, particularly from the archaic period (published in small volumes, then collected into 7 Greeks), the occasional other piece (a few poems of Rilke's, some ancient Egyptian texts [with Boris de Rachewiltz) and, with Benjamin Urrutia, the sayings of Jesus, published as The Logia of Yeshua.

Before Davenport was a writer, he was a visual artist, and he drew or painted every day of his life. His notebooks are filled with drawings, cheek by jowl with his own observations and quotes from others. Many of his earlier stories are combinations of picture and text, especially Tatlin! and Apples and Pears (where some of the illustrations are of pages of his notebook). He also supplied illustrations for the books of others, particularly his friend, Hugh Kenner, in The Counterfeiters and The Stoic Comedians.

Davenport was remarkable for the range of his literary and artistic friendships. In addition to Pound, Williams, and Kenner, Davenport knew Louis Zukofsky, Samuel Beckett, Christopher Middleton, Thomas Merton, Wendell Berry, Buckminster Fuller, Eudora Welty, Samuel Delany, Robert Kelly, James Laughlin, Allen Ginsberg, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Stan Brakhage, and Ronald Johnson.

Two sentences he wrote about his friend and neighbour, Meatyard, apply as well to himself: “He was rare among American artists in that he was not obsessed with his own image in the world. He could therefore live in perfect privacy in a rotting Kentucky town.”

Davenport bought Oscar Mayer bologna, fried it, and ate it with Campbell's soup. He died of lung cancer on January 4 2005.

Life and Work (another version)

Guy Davenport was born in Anderson, South Carolina in the foothills of Appalachia on November 23, 1927. His father was an agent for the Railway Express Agency. Davenport became a serious reader at age ten, with a neighbor’s gift of one of the Tarzan series. Davenport left high school at either age 14 or 16, sources differ. From age 16 he studied classics, English Literature, and art at Duke University.

He was a Rhodes Scholar at Merton College Oxford from 1948 to 1950 where, among other subjects, he studied Old English under J.R.R. Tolkien. He wrote Oxford’s first thesis on James Joyce. He returned to the U.S., serving in the U.S. Army at Fort Bragg (756th Field Artillery, (18th Airborne Corps) and in Korea (1950-1952). Upon leaving the army, he taught until 1955 at Washington University in St. Louis, then began his Ph.D. at Harvard University where he studied with Harry Levin and Archibald MacLeish. He befriended Ezra Pound after the poet was incarcerated in St. Elizabeth's Hospital, visiting Pound annually from 1952 till his release in 1958. Davenport also visited Pound at his home in Rapallo (Italy) in 1963, a visit that became Davenport’s story, “Ithaka”. Davenport wrote his dissertation on Pound’s poetry (published as Cities on Hills in 1983). During his years in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he was briefly married.

After completing his Ph.D., he taught at Haverford College from 1961 to 1963 but relocated from 1963 to a position at the University of Kentucky, “the remotest offer with the most pay” (as he wrote to Jonathan Williams), where he taught until his retirement at the end of 1990.

Davenport began publishing short stories in 1970 with “The Aeroplanes at Brescia”, which is based on Franz Kafka’s visit to an air show in September 1909. His stories use three general modes of exposition: the fictionalizing of historical events and figures; the foregrounding of formal narrative experiments, especially in the use of collage; and the depicting of a Fourierist erotic utopia, where small groups of men, women, and children have eliminated the separation between mind and body.

His story collections include Tatlin!, Da Vinci’s Bicycle, Eclogues, Apples and Pears, The Jules Verne Steam Balloon, The Drummer of the Eleventh North Devonshire Fusiliers, A Table of Green Fields, The Cardiff Team, Twelve Stories, and The Death of Picasso (which also includes a selection of essays).

Many of his short stories are highly acclaimed, but the fact that they often contain significant "forthrightly homoerotic" content (Bruce Bawer, Artforum, 04.05) has prompted enthusiastic reviews by Andre Furlani, as well as defenses of Davenport's willingness to consider taboo topics by Wyatt Mason in Harper's. Talking in 2002 with John Jeremiah Sullivan for an interview for The Paris Review, Davenport explained, “When Tatlin! was accepted for publication, I remember being anxious and frightened, truly frightened, that reviewers would say, ‘This is pretentious.’ What they said is, ‘This is obscene’. I’ve gotten over that”. Negative reactions continued well into the 1990s, when Tatlin! and Da Vinci’s Bicycle were on the "stop, seize and destroy" list used by Canadian customs officers, and even a broadly sympathetic Christopher Cahill review in the Boston Review began “If Guy Davenport were to publish his fiction, criticism, and drawings on the Internet, he would likely find himself trailed by the FBI.”

Before publishing stories, from 1961 to 1973 Davenport was a regular reviewer for National Review, yet in a VORT interview he once said that he “didn't like their politics.” His essays ranged from literary to social topics, from small book reviews to lectures such as the title essay for his first collection, The Geography of the Imagination. He also wrote for The Hudson Review. Davenport was especially passionate about the destruction of the American metropolis by the automobile. He claimed never to have driven and, indeed, to have refused a position at Johns Hopkins because it would have necessitated commuting by car. (Source: Washington Post obit.)

His other collections of essays were Every Force Evolves a Form and The Hunter Gracchus and Other Essays. He also published two slim volumes on art: A Balthus Notebook and Objects on a Table.

Davenport wrote a handful of poems; the longest are “The Resurrection at Cookham Churchyard” (borrowing the title of a painting by Stanley Spencer) and the book-length Flowers & Leaves, an intricate meditation on art and America. His poems were collected in Thasos and Ohio: Poems and Translations 1950-1980 (1986).

Davenport also translated ancient Greek texts, particularly from the archaic period, which were collected in his 7 Greeks (1995) with Boris de Rachewiltz, the occasional other piece (a few poems by Rilke, some Maxims of the Ancient Egyptians texts) and, with Benjamin Urrutia, the sayings of Jesus, in The Logia of Yeshua (1996).

Davenport was also an accomplished painter and illustrator. Many of his earlier stories are combinations of picture and text, especially "Tatlin!" and "Apples and Pears". For his limited editions, he worked with letterpress designers and printers Andrew Hoyem, Steve Miller, Barry Magid, Peter Koch, Leslie Miller, A. Doyle Moore, and Carol Sturm.

Among numerous literary awards, Davenport won a $365,000 MacArthur Fellowship in 1990, the O. Henry Award for his short stories, and the Leviton-Blumenthal Prize for his poetry. In 1998 Davenport became a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Fiction

  • Tatlin!: Six Stories (Scribner's, 1974) (illustrated by Davenport)
  • Da Vinci's Bicycle: Ten Stories (University of Chicago Press, 1979) (illustrated by Davenport)
  • Eclogues: Eight Stories (North Point Press, 1981) (illustrated by Roy Behrens)
  • Trois Caprices (The Pace Trust, 1981) (three stories later collected in The Jules Verne Steam Balloon)
  • The Bowmen of Shu (The Grenfell Press, 1984) (limited ed.) (collected in Apples & Pears)
  • Apples & Pears and Other Stories (North Point Press, 1984) (illustrated by Davenport)
  • The Bicycle Rider (Red Ozier Press, 1985) (limited ed.) (later collected—in a different version—in The Jules Verne Steam Balloon)
  • Jonah: A Story (Nadja Press, 1986) (limited ed.) (later collected in The Jules Verne Steam Balloon)
  • The Jules Verne Steam Balloon: Nine Stories (North Point Press, 1987)
  • Belinda's World Tour (Dim Gray Bar Press, 1991) (illustrated by Deborah Norden) (limited ed.) (collected in A Table of Green Fields)
  • August Blue (Larkspur Press, 1992) (limited ed.) (collected in A Table of Green Fields)
  • The Drummer of the Eleventh North Devonshire Fusiliers (North Point Press, 1990)
  • The Lark (Dim Gray Bar Press, 1993) (illustrated by Davenport) (limited ed.)
  • A Table of Green Fields: Ten Stories (New Directions, 1993)
  • The Cardiff Team: Ten Stories (New Directions, 1996)
  • Twelve Stories (Counterpoint, 1997) (selections from Tatlin!, Apples and Pears, and The Drummer of the Eleventh North Devonshire Fusiliers)
  • The Death of Picasso: New and Selected Writing (2003, Shoemaker & Hoard) (contains seven essays uncollected along w/ nineteen stories uncollected & one play)
  • Wo es war, soll ich werden: The Restored Original Text (2004, The Finial Press) (limited ed.)

Translations

Poetry

Fugitive Pieces

Davenport wrote introductions or contributions to many books: Jack Sharpless's Presences of Mind; Will McBride's Coming of Age; Paul Cadmus's Drawings; Charles Burchfield's Charles Burchfield's Seasons; Simon Dinnerstein's Paintings and Drawings; Anne Carson's Glass, Irony, and God; Jonathan Williams's Palpable Elysium, Ear in Bartram's Tree, Elite/Elate Poems and tribute to Edward Dahlberg; Lenard D. Moore's Forever Home; the first volume of Paul Metcalf's Collected Works; Jonathan Greene's tribute to Jonathan Williams, JW/50; Daniel Haberman's Lug of Days to Come; Burton Raffel's Pure Pagan: Seven Centuries of Greek Poems and Fragments; James Laughlin's Man in the Wall; Vladimir Nabokov's Lectures on Don Quixote; Ralph Eugene Meatyard's Father Louie and Ralph Eugene Meatyard; Aperture's monographs on Eudora Welty's and Ralph Eugene Meatyard's photographs; University of Virginia's small monograph on Lafcadio Hearn; Elizabeth Turner Hutton's Americans in Paris (1921-31): Man Ray, Gerald Murphy, Stuart Davis, & Alexander Calder; Riva Castleman's Art of the Forties; Ronald Johnson's Ark: The Foundations and Valley of Many-Colored Grasses; O. Henry's Cabbages & Kings and Selected Stories (which he also edited); and his selection of Louis Agassiz's scientific writings (The Intelligence of Louis Agassiz) (which he also edited). Some of these pieces were included in Davenport's collections of essays.

Introductions (another version)

Davenport wrote protective introductions to the work of many gay artists, especially Will McBride (Coming of Age) and Paul Cadmus (The Drawings of Paul Cadmus).

Commentary (one version)

  • The Intelligence of Louis Agassiz (Beacon Press, 1963)
  • Key-Indexed Study Guide to Homer's The Iliad (Educational Research Associates, 1967)
  • Key-Indexed Study Guide to Homer's The Odyssey (Educational Research Associates, 1967)
  • The Geography of the Imagination: Forty Essays. (North Point Press, 1981)
  • Cities on Hills: Ezra Pound's Cantos (UMI Research, 1983)
  • Charles Burchfield's Seasons (Pomegranate Artbooks, 1994)
  • The Drawings of Paul Cadmus (Rizzoli, 1989)
  • Every Force Evolves a Form: Twenty Essays (North Point Press, 1987)
  • A Balthus Notebook. (The Ecco Press, 1989)
  • The Hunter Gracchus and Other Papers on Literature and Art. (Counterpoint, 1996)
  • Objects on a Table: Harmonious Disarray in Art and Literature (Counterpoint, 1998)

Collections of criticism (another version)

  • The Geography of the Imagination: Forty Essays. (North Point Press, 1981)
  • Every Force Evolves a Form: Twenty Essays. (North Point Press, 1987)
  • A Balthus Notebook. (1989)
  • The Hunter Gracchus and Other Papers on Literature and Art. (1996)
  • Objects on a Table: Harmonious Disarray in Art and Literature. (Counterpoint, 1998)

Paintings & drawings

  • A Balance of Quinces: The Paintings and Drawings of Guy Davenport (New Directions, 1996)
  • 50 Drawings (1996)
  • Joan Crane's Guy Davenport: A Descriptive Bibliography, 1947-1995 (1996) contains 25 pages of his drawings.
  • Some of Davenport's finest quill & ink crosshatch work appears in his friend Hugh Kenner's books, The Counterfeiters and The Stoic Comedians.

References

  • Furlani, Andre. "A Postmodern Utopia Of Childhood Sexuality: The Fiction Of Guy Davenport", IN: Curiouser: On the Queerness of Children. University of Minnesota Press, 2004.
  • Mason, Wyatt. "There must I begin to be: Guy Davenport's heretical fictions". Harper's Magazine, April 2004.
  • Sullivan, John Jeremiah. "The Art of Fiction CLXXIV: Interview with Guy Davenport." The Paris Review. No. 163, Fall 2002. 42-87
  • Bawer, Bruce. "Wise guy", Artforum, April 2005.
  • Cahill, Christopher. "Prose" (The Cardiff Team and The Hunter Gracchus). Boston Review, April/May 1997.

External links

Published Bibliography

  • Crane, Joan.Guy Davenport: A Descriptive Bibliography, 1947-1995. Green Shade, 1996.

MacArthur Fellows | 1927 births | 2005 deaths

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Guy Davenport".

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