The Jules Verne Steam Balloon by Guy Davenport
"The Jules Verne Steam Balloon" is a story from a collection by Guy Davenport that features a variety of narratives, each exploring different themes and styles. Central to this piece is the character of Hugo Tvemunding, a Danish theology student, who grapples with his identity and purpose. The tale introduces three male sprites—Tumble, Buckeye, and Quark—who descend to Earth in a steam balloon, symbolizing the importance of imagination in elevating human experience. Through their journey, they convey a message about the potential for transformation and visionary insight in everyday life. The collection also includes stories that tackle complex issues such as drug addiction and the moral dilemmas faced by artists, particularly regarding their responses to the world around them. Davenport's work is noted for its innovative narrative structures and intertextual references, which invite readers to reflect on deeper philosophical questions. Overall, "The Jules Verne Steam Balloon" serves as a reminder of the power of creativity and the artist's role in society.
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The Jules Verne Steam Balloon by Guy Davenport
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1987
Type of work: Short stories
The Work
This collection contains nine highly diverse stories that range from the pastoral Greek tale “Pyrrhon of Elis” to the avant-garde dramatic fragment “We Often Think of Lenin at the Clothespin Factory.” Adriaan von Hovendaal is replaced by the Danish theology student Hugo Tvemunding, who also teaches at a high school and who is featured in “The Bicycle Rider,” “The Jules Verne Steam Balloon,” and “The Ringdove Sign.” Davenport employs unusual narrative structures throughout the collection, such as a pastiche of quotations from the schoolbooks of Nazi children in “Bronze Leaves and Red” and a botanical listing of the components of Eden in “The Meadow.”
The three longest stories concern themselves with Hugo’s gradually emerging knowledge that he should not pursue his calling to the Lutheran ministry but should rather follow his leanings toward his vocation as an artist. He boldly confronts evil in the drug addiction of one of the more attractive young men, known as the Bicycle Rider, who eventually dies of an overdose because he has lost the ability to respond on a human level to his fellow companions. It is in this story that Hugo realizes fully what the purpose of art is and that an artist’s first duty is to respond to the world as authentically as he can, regardless of how demanding those responses may become. The title story presents three male sprites, Tumble, Buckeye, and Quark, as messengers from beyond who come down to earth in their steam balloon to remind humankind that salvation lies in the ability to use imagination to transform the mundane into forms of visionary experience.
Bibliography
Bawer, Bruce. “Guy Davenport: Fiction á la Fourier.” In Diminishing Fictions. St. Paul, Minn.: Graywolf Press, 1988.
Furlani, Andre. “Postmodern and After: Guy Davenport.” Contemporary Literature 43 (Winter, 2002): 709-735.
Kenner, Hugh. “A Geographer of the Imagination.” Harper’s 263 (August, 1981): 66-68.
Meanor, Patrick. “The Fourierist Parables of Guy Davenport.” In Postmodern Approaches to the Short Story, edited by Farhat Iftekharrudin and Joseph Boyden. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2003.
Olsen, Lance. “A Guidebook to the Last Modernist: Davenport on Davenport and ’Da Vinci’s Bicycle.’” Journal of Narrative Technique 16 (Spring, 1986): 148-161.
Sullivan, John Jeremiah. “Guy Davenport: The Art of Fiction CLXXIV.” Paris Review 163 (Fall, 2002): 43-87.
Vandiver, Elizabeth. “Fireflies in a Jar.” Parnassus: Poetry in Review 21 (Winter, 1995): 59-76.