Guy Davenport

Guy Mattison Davenport (1927 - 2005) was an American writer, translator, painter, illustrator, intellectual, and teacher.

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.

Related Topics:
Anderson, South Carolina - Appalachia - Railway Express Agency - Tarzan - Classics - English Literature - Art - Duke University

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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.

Related Topics:
Rhodes Scholar - Merton College - Oxford - 1948 - 1950 - Old English - J.R.R. Tolkien - Thesis - James Joyce - U.S. Army - Fort Bragg - 756th Field Artillery - 18th Airborne Corps - Korea - 1952 - 1955 - Washington University in St. Louis - Ph.D. - Harvard University - Harry Levin - Archibald MacLeish - Ezra Pound - St. Elizabeth's Hospital - 1958 - Rapallo - Italy - 1963 - Dissertation - 1983 - Cambridge, Massachusetts

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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.

Related Topics:
Haverford College - 1961 - 1963 - University of Kentucky - Jonathan Williams - 1990

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Davenport began publishing short stories in 1970 with ?The Aeroplanes at Brescia?, which is based on 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, & children have eliminated the separation between mind and body.

Related Topics:
1970 - Kafka - 1909 - Exposition - Narrative - Collage - Fourier - Utopia

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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).

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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.?

Related Topics:
Homoerotic - Andre Furlani - Wyatt Mason - Harper's - 2002 - John Jeremiah Sullivan - The Paris Review - Obscene - Canadian - Customs officers - Christopher Cahill - Boston Review

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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.)

Related Topics:
1961 - 1973 - National Review - The Hudson Review - Johns Hopkins

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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.

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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).

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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).

Related Topics:
Ancient Greek - Archaic - Rilke - Maxims - Egyptian - Benjamin Urrutia - Jesus

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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.

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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.

Related Topics:
MacArthur Fellowship - 1990 - O. Henry Award - Leviton-Blumenthal Prize - 1998 - American Academy of Arts and Sciences

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Davenport was remarkable for the range of his literary and artistic friendships. In addition to Pound, Davenport knew Louis Zukovsky, Samuel Beckett, Hugh Kenner, 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.

Related Topics:
Louis Zukovsky - Samuel Beckett - Hugh Kenner - Christopher Middleton - Thomas Merton - Wendell Berry - Buckminster Fuller - Eudora Welty - Samuel Delany - Robert Kelly - James Laughlin - Allen Ginsberg - Ralph Eugene Meatyard - Stan Brakhage - Ronald Johnson

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His last major project was to select more than 150 photographs by Ralph Eugene Meatyard for a major retrospective exhibition and book. 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.?

Related Topics:
Ralph Eugene Meatyard - Kentucky

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Davenport was often noted for his eating habits; including buying Oscar Mayer bologna, frying it, and eating it with Campbell's soup. He once said: "I've learned I can get by with Campbell's soup and Snickers bars".

Related Topics:
Oscar Mayer - Campbell's soup

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He died of lung cancer on January 4, 2005.

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