Different styles, times, places, characters are juxtaposed [in "Da Vinci's Bicycle"] sans connective or commentary, except that they comment on one another. They reflect on one another in ways too complex and numerous for commentary to fix in words. Less is more. The gaps fill up with meaning. But there is more to it than that. For one thing, the stories reflect on one another with the kind of variable light that the parts within the stories also shed on one another….

In Mr. Davenport's [stories], Mussolini, like Nixon, Mao, Nero and numerous others …, is one of a series of farcical and ferocious despots. Pound, like Leonardo, Gertrude Stein and many others, is one of a series of artists whose concern is to discover or create order. But then we remember that Mao, in the first story, is also a poet. Then we remember that Gertrude Stein, in...