guy fucking davenport
the GOAT
The only thing I have to say in what will be a genre-bending post—a Substack that aspires to shrink into a Tweet—is that I got to write about Guy Davenport this week, and I hope you’ll read it and then him because he is the best: https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2024/01/11/guy-davenport-geography-imagination-review/.
Guy Davenport, it could be argued, literally saved my life, though I’m sure it was unintentional. In 1981, when the book was published, I had just given up on a career in philosophy and was about to give up on academe completely. To say that I had no idea what to do with my life - well, I still don’t. That book, though! That book! After happening upon it at the library, I couldn’t stop reading it. I mean, I’d finish it and start again, repeatedly. Something about those essays, so learned, so free of cant- something about them gave me the courage to imagine a bookish life outside of the academy, and to just go on living, pretty much. (And he lived his entire life without getting a driver’s license, which is probably the only thing we have in common.)
He is the best and it fucks me up on the inside when people don’t know who he is