[Almost] everything about Da Vinci's Bicycle … is complicated. Writing in the tradition of Joyce, Pound, Beckett, and Eliot (all of whom appear in allusions or as actual characters), Davenport mixes chronologies, tones, voices, languages, and chunks of other learned books to create dizzying collages that are often impressive in their cleverness and intricacy, but sometimes wearying in their self-conscious erudition.

In several passages, both qualities appear at once. Of a balloon trip he writes, "It was like striding over a sea of gelatin, that bell-stroke swing of our nacelle through the rack of the upper air on elastic wicker, wind thrumming the frapping with the elation of Schumann strings allegro molto vivace." One admires the musical effect but resents the musical analogy. Schumann doesn't sound any more like balloons than Stravinsky ("The crickets sing around us, fine as Stravinsky") sounds like crickets.

The best stories, ironically, are the...