The Jules Verne Steam Balloon

by Guy Davenport

Book Overview

Guy Davenport - regarded by the "New York Times" "one of our most gifted and versatile men of letters" - has produced in this collection of stories a remarkably harmonious synthesis of subjects and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0801846803
• ISBN13: 9780801846809
• Release Date: September 1993
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Three angels, or daimons, or maybe neutrinos

Three angels, or "daimons," or maybe neutrinos--who may also have been the Three Wise Men--"drop" into several of these stories via their steam balloon, the Jules Verne. They bring messages from the "Consiliarii," but who are they? A council of heavenly spirits? The Force? A code name for God? And what might their message be? Could it be as simple as "All you need is love"? Maybe. Davenport ranges from ancient Greece to a somewhat contemporary Denmark; from Christian theology and ancient philosophy to pubescent phallocentrism and drug overdose. "The Jules Verne Steam Balloon" is perplexing and enlightening, humorous and melancholy, and vibrant with life and the joy of living it. These stories move as only Davenport's fiction does, as full of "fact" as of "fiction," as full of life in the body and in the world as of philosophical discourse and natural science. And--oh,yes! be warned--accompanied by much doffing of undergarments.