Date: 2008-06-30 18:04 Subject: Fifth Business by Davies Security: Public Tags: canada, highly_recommended, loss_of_faith_2008, re-read, robertson_davies

Fifth Business (1970)
by Robertson Davies
273 pages - Penguin Books

'Fifth Business' is a term (according to Davies) in opera or theatre which refers to a character that is neither hero or heroine, confidante or villain, but is still integral to the plot. In this case that role is played by Dunstan Ramsay, who is relating his experiences, but finds himself a supporting character in his own life story.

Dunstan Ramsay is born in the early twentieth century in a small Ontario town, and as a child he has an experience that will affect him the rest of his life: his lifelong friend and enemy Boy Staunton throws a snowball at him, but Dunstan ducks and the snowball hits the pregnant Mrs. Dempster instead, which leads to the premature birth of Paul Dempster. It's an event that haunts Dunstan with guilt all his life, but also opens up possibilities for all three of Dunstan, Boy, and Paul that wouldn't be there otherwise.

Dunstan goes on to fight in the Great War, and then becomes a teacher at a private school. One of his main interests in life becomes saints and the stories around them, and in fact he believes Mrs. Dempster to be a saint of a kind, and attributes three miracles to her. Dunstan (like the author Davies) is a Protestant, and hence there is some tension in his fascination with saints, as he belongs to a branch of Christianity that still honours the old saints, but doesn't recognize any in the modern age, as if sainthood was something that had gone out of style, or as if God had once been present in the world but has now departed.

The book follows Dunstan's life until he's about sixty years old. I find it hard to relate the quality of this book, but it is very good, and is not only Davies' best, but could quite easily be considered the greatest Canadian novel ever. It stands alone, but it can also be read as the first part in The Deptford Trilogy, which also includes The Manticore and World of Wonders.

'He told us, quietly and in the simplest language, that he had to run his Mission by begging, and that sometimes begging yielded nothing; when this happened he prayed for help, and had never been refused what he needed; the blankets, or more often the food, would appear somehow, often late in the day, and more often than not, left on the steps of the Mission by anonymous donors. Now, pompous young ass that I was, I was quite prepared to believe that St John Bosco could pull off this trick when he appealed to Heaven on behalf of his boys; I was even persuaded that it might have happened a few times to Dr Barnardo, of whom the story was also told. But I was far too much a Canadian, deeply if unconsciously convinced of the inferiority of my own country and its people, to think it could happen in Toronto, to a man I could see.' (pg.128)

Date: 2007-01-10 19:17 Subject: The Cunning Man by Davies Security: Public Tags: canada, robertson_davies

The Cunning Man (1994)
by Robertson Davies
514 pages - Penguin

Jonathan Hullah is the narrator of this novel which chronicles his life. He spends his childhood in a small town in Northern Ontario, and then moves to Toronto for schooling, eventually becoming a doctor and setting up an unorthodox practice that takes a holistic approach, considering people's medical troubles within the scope of their entire lives. Many of the characters in previous books by Davies make a shorter or longer appearance; for example the murder that begins the novel Murther & Walking Spirits occurs here near the end of the book.

I'd heard that this was Davies's weakest book, but I didn't realize how bad it would be. There is no urgency or guiding purpose to these episodes from Hullah's life, many of which seem like watered-down and rejected versions of things that had occurred in Davies's previous books. This was his last novel, published about a year before he died, and it sadly does have a tone that creeps in fairly often of the 'senile old coot'. For example, Hullah moves into a renovated barn that's now in the middle of the city, where he both lives and has his office, and he sets up the old bell in the small tower to ring every hour, even during services in the church next door, even during all hours of the night. Neighbours complain to him and the city puts him through various red tape, and the narrator is just utterly pleased with the pointless trouble he's causing everybody.

There's also a lot of things thrown in that I think are just supposed to be 'controversial' and 'shocking', but again just sadly come off as an otherwise uninteresting person trying to annoy you. I have no trouble with bringing up any of these things, but the problem is they don't go anywhere. The issues aren't delt with in any way, they're just raised and then forgotten. For example, what is the point of just mentioning in passing that child prostitutes can sometimes get violently abused by their clients? The book is full of that sort of stuff. I can't believe I read the whole thing, but the prose style makes it pretty easy to keep flipping the pages.

Date: 2006-06-17 23:24 Subject: A Mixture of Frailties by Davies Security: Public Tags: canada, robertson_davies

A Mixture of Frailties (1958)
by Robertson Davies
379 pages - Penguin

In this final book of the Salterton trilogy, Solly Bridgetower's mother dies; but she does not leave her money to her son, instead establishing a trust that will be inherited by Solly's first-born son, if he and his new wife manage to have one. In the meantime, the interest from the money is to be spent on choosing a young woman from Salterton with talent in the arts, and giving her an education in Europe. Monica Gall, who sings in a small evangelical church group, is selected and sent to London, England, where most of the story takes place.

Davies makes a noticeable shift here, from the light humour of his first two books to this fairly serious story of the education of an artist, the kind of narrative he would explore many times in the future. All the basics of a story are here and I wanted to like it, but it just didn't really have any kind of urgency or cohesion. The story goes on and on and it never feels very necessary. There's also a lot of 'life advice' that's spouted by the various people, and most of it comes off as very overbearing and paternalistic, like you're being hectored with trite sayings by someone very self-satisfied and smug.

It would be more than ten years before Davies published another novel, and things that that fell flat here would begin to work masterfully, for that book would be Fifth Business, probably the greatest Canadian novel ever.

Date: 2006-04-06 17:44 Subject: Leaven of Malice by Davies Security: Public Tags: canada, robertson_davies

Leaven of Malice (1954)
by Robertson Davies
262 pages - Penguin

In this second book of the Salterton trilogy, a crisis is created when on Halloween someone inserts a notice in the paper announcing the engagement of two young people who barely know each other, with the marriage set for the (non-existent) date of November 31st. The supposed bride's father is enraged since he's had a feud with the family of the supposed groom, and he threatens the paper with a libel lawsuit, and the ripples of the practical joke keep spreading. This book won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour for 1955.

In a lot of ways this isn't a strong book, as it takes more than a hundred pages to even introduce all the main characters, and even for a small old Ontario city in the 50's, to have something like this cause enough outrage to threaten launching suits and counter-suits seems an exaggeration. Davies uses a lot of his experience as a publisher of a newspaper, but I have to say that the world of the newspaper just isn't as dramatic as the world of the stage, which was the focus of the previous Tempest-Tost. But it's also just really pleasant to follow the story as it rolls gently along, and there's some kind of appeal in the well-drawn lives of many of the characters, and the little asides about life, especially the ones that come out of the mouth of Henry Cobbler, the eccentric bohemian church organist who's a burr in the side of anyone who tries to put up a false front. I probably liked this book more than it deserved. It's a wonderful world.

'Wisdom may be rented, so to speak, on the experience of other people, but we buy it at an inordinate price before we make it our own forever.' (pg.222)

Date: 2006-03-18 12:09 Subject: Tempest-Tost by Davies Security: Public Tags: canada, robertson_davies

Tempest-Tost (1951)
by Roberston Davies
284 pages - Penguin

The first book of the Salterton Trilogy, this novel introduces us to the fictional city of Salterton, a medium-sized city in Ontario 'with one university and two cathedrals,' that seems to be modeled on Kingston. The amateur theatre company is planning on putting on a production of Shakespeare's The Tempest during the summer, and interesting characters with assorted talents and temperaments converge.

My expectations were kind of low as this is Davies' first novel, but it was very good, and really a delightful reading experience. Davies spent time as an actor in the Old Vic company in England, and he effectively applies his first-hand experience of theatrical productions. He was also a publisher of a newspaper, so his prose style is already well developed in his first novel. There's an emphasis on humour and the story doesn't go very deep compared to the books that would follow, but you can already see some signs of the themes that he would explore in greater detail later.

Davies is always amazing at telling a story that's interesting and engaging without ever being simple-minded. Never dour or dense, it's easy to forget how wise and deep he is because the stories are so much darn fun. It's also interesting to look back to a time when many things were quite the same as they are now, but then you blink when you realize God Save the King is our national anthem. Oh, and there's also a fantastic sequence in which a rabble of clergy strip a private library bare during a giveaway of books after the owner's death.

Date: 2005-08-01 20:30 Subject: Murther & Walking Spirits by Davies Security: Public Tags: canada, robertson_davies

Murther & Walking Spirits (1991)
by Robertson Davies
357 pages
McClelland & Stewart

In the first sentence of this novel, the narrator is murdered (or, if you prefer ye olde english, murthered). He's the editor of the entertainment section of a Toronto newspaper, and finds his wife in bed with his theatre critic, who promptly strikes him dead. Being a disembodied spirit with nothing pressing (the dead seem to have a lot of time on their hands), he decides he might as well attend the film festival he was planning to go to anyway. However, when he attends the screenings of historic films (tagging along with his murderer), he alone privately sees films that tell of the lives of his ancestors. We follow stories of one branch, Loyalists who flee New York city after the American Revolution, and another branch in Wales who experience poverty and riches and poverty again while being heavily influenced by John Wesley and the Methodists. Other stories are told as they find success and failure in Ontario, and the last film is of the life of the narrator's own father.

This is just an excellent book, smooth and engaging as Davies always is, but with a new level of sympathy and compassion for all the characters. It's a stunning glimpse of what goes into making one single person today, all those people over the centuries all fighting their own hard battles, wrapped up in their own problems and trying to do their best while being as flawed and egotistical as anyone. All the characters are wonderfully rounded-out, so that while there's more likable and less likable people, it's always rewarding to understand more about a person.

And who knew Davies was a film buff too? He names some pretty obscure titles here. Also, he does quite a neat thing during the screening of Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage, adopting a sort of Joyce/Woolf stream-of-consciousness style, where you just float along with a person's thoughts, giving a short chapter to each person in the room.

This was supposed to be the first book of his 'Toronto Trilogy', but he died after completing the second one. This is now probably my favourite of his, apart from Fifth Business.