After reading this whole book on Balthus, I still don't know what his first name is, but I do
know about his paintings. Balthus's paintings remind me of my daughter's paintings, and I read
Davenport's words for insight into how one writes about such a visual medium. What surprised me
most was the recurrent auditory metaphors that Guy used. In one place he talked about Balthus's
paintings as though each were holding a conversation with another artist's paintings; in another place
he said that the figure in one of Balthus's paintings "rhymed" with a figure in another artist's painting.
This small book, less than 100 pages, is a gem - each page, whether a short, one-sentence-paragraph, or a full page of text, stands alone, sparkles with insight, coruscates in the reflected light
of the paintings he describes.
Named "A Balthus Notebook" - an appropriate name for the casual, disorganized presentation
of the material, like a literal translation from his notebooks into book form- it might be just as well
named, "An Essential Guide to Balthus" for two reasons. One, Davenport grasps and presents
cogently the essence of Balthus's work, and two, no library of works on Balthus would be complete
without this book.
The book of a mature writer, it contains no filler, no fluff, only hard crystals of insight set
out on a mantelpiece for inspection. The picture of Davenport on the rear jacket cover says volumes:
there is a sparkle in his eyes and a look of peace on his face that was not there in his earlier photo
on "The Geography of Imagination," a book I bogged down in halfway through.
After completing "Notebook" I reread his "Geography" and found a delightful bit on
"Hobbitry" ahead of my bookmark. In it he describes how his former professor Ronnie came to
acquire the delightful names of his characters in "The Lord of The Rings" from local names in rural
Kentucky. Surprises are never more that a sentence or two away when one enters the realm of
Davenport's imagination.
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