Davenport on Thoreau

People have been telling me I should read Guy Davenport. I've put it off because they showcase him back in Kentucky, which is not a recommendation--it allows you to confuse him with the tobacco farmer and all round sentimentalist, Wendell Berry, whom I can pretty much do without.

But suitably braced, I have now laid my hands on a copy of Davenport's Death of Picasso. It's distinctive, I'll say that for it. Before making much further comment, I think I'll let it sink in for a bit. But I do like Davenport's introduction of this, from Thoreau, as "a paragraph which no intelligence can understand:

I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a tuertledove, and am still on their trail. Many are the travellers whom I have spoken concerning them, describing their tracks and what calls they answered to. I have met one or two who had heard the hound, and the tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove disappear behind a cloud, and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they had lost them themselves.