Guy Davenport occupies an unusual position in contemporary American literature because his accomplishments cover so many diverse disciplines. Not only is he considered one of the most respected short-...
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Critical Essay by Richard Pevear
The highly developed critical sensibility of the modern era is a product of fiction. The Tatlin! stories are, in part, essays in a criticism by mimesis. The most diffi...
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Critical Essay by Richard Wertime
[The six stories in Tatlin!] have a maturity, a philosophic depth, and a richness of effect beyond the reach of the younger writer, even one like Thomas Pynchon, whos...
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Critical Essay by Hugh Witemeyer
Tatlin! is historical fiction of an unusual kind. It is concerned more with the sensibility than with the events of the period it covers. That period is our own; four ...
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Critical Essay by George Stade
Different styles, times, places, characters are juxtaposed [in "Da Vinci's Bicycle"] sans connective or commentary, except that they comment on one ...
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Critical Essay by Jack Sullivan
[Almost] everything about Da Vinci's Bicycle … is complicated. Writing in the tradition of Joyce, Pound, Beckett, and Eliot (all of whom appear in allusio...
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Critical Essay by Hugh Kenner
"Ten stories" is the publisher's description of Da Vinci's Bicycle. Davenport's own word for what he makes is assemblages. His paragrap...
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