The thing about Guy Davenport is that he is a god.
To a certain kind of person, he is a quiet giant — but only a few devotees seem to know who he is. He once described the forbiddingly difficult modernist writer Louis Zukofsky as “a poet’s poet’s poet,” and he must have sensed that he courted a similarly damning compliment, for he often joked that he had all of 13 readers. There is no doubt that his restlessly polymathic stories, essays and stories-cum-essays are an acquired taste (albeit one that everyone should strive to acquire). There is even less doubt that they are the work of one of the most sinuous stylists and searching minds of the 20th century.
