Attain Fifth Business (The Deptford Trilogy, #1) Assembled By Robertson Davies EPub

is a wonderful book thanks Nanou by an author I had never heard about, It's a firstperson memoir of sorts written as a letter to the Headmaster of the school where the narrator had worked all his life, but that is rather irrelevant of a man born in a large Canadian village at the very end of theth century about his outwardly uneventful life apart from a tour of duty during World War I.
Religious and irreverent, deeply psychological and subversive toward any psychologizing, a book that cannot be called fastpaced but is nevertheless a pageturner, "Fifth Business" is a gem.
The narrator's manner of introducing new information is astonishing there are many twists and turns, but each of them is subtle, his Scottish shrewdness combined with his awe for hagiography creates an impossible and immensely likeable cocktail, and the denouement which I was dreading  I did not expect a book like that could be ended in a satisfactory manner is mindblowing.


PS. Still very good on rereading perhaps it would make sense to offer a more substantial retelling here, but I'm sure it can be found somewhere online.
Ramsay is a man twice born, a man who has returned from the hell of the battlegrave at Passchendaele in World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross and destined to be caught in a no man's land where memory, history, and myth collide.
As Ramsay tells his story, it begins to seem that from boyhood, he has exerted a perhaps mystical, perhaps pernicious, influence on those around him.
His apparently innocent involvement in such innocuous events as the throwing of a snowball or the teaching of card tricks to a small boy in the end prove neither innocent nor innocuous.


Fifth Business stands alone as a remarkable story told by a rational man who discovers that the marvelous is only another aspect of the real.
Last week was Robertson Davies readalong week in the blog world, which was my excuse to finally try him for the first time.
Of course, Canadians have long recognized what a treasure he is, but hes less known elsewhere, I do remember that Erica Wagner, one of my literary heroes an American in England former books editor of the London Times, etc.
, has expressed great admiration for his work,

I started with what I had to hand: Fifth Business, the first volume of The Deptford Trilogy.
In the theatre world, the title phrase refers to a bit player who yet has importance to the outcome of a drama, and thats how the narrator, Dunstan Ramsay, thinks of himself.
I was reminded right away of the opening of Charles Dickenss David Copperfield: “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.
” In the first line Ramsay introduces himself in relation to another person: “My lifelong involvement with Mrs, Dempster began at.oclock p. m. onDecember, at which time I was ten years and seven months old, ”

Specifically, he dodged a snowball meant for him thrown by his frenemy, Percy Boyd Staunton and it hit Mrs.
Dempster, wife of the local Baptist minister, in the back of the head, knocking her over andsending her into early labor with Paul, who also plays a major role in the book andpermanently compromising her mental health.
Surprisingly, given his tepid Protestant upbringing, Ramsay becomes a historian of Christian saints, and comes to consider Mrs, Dempster part of his personal pantheon for a few incidents he thinks of as miracles not least his survival during First World War service.
And this is despite Mrs, Dempster being caught in a situation that seriously compromises her standing in Deptford,

The novel is presented as a long, confessional letter Ramsay writes, on the occasion of his retirement, to the headmaster of the boys school where he taught history foryears.
Staunton, later known simply as “Boy,” becomes a sugar magnate and politician Paul becomes a worldrenowned illusionist known by various stage names.
Both Paul and Ramsay are obsessed with the unexplained and impossible, but where Paul manipulates appearances and fictionalizes the past, Ramsay looks for miracles.
The Fool, the Saint and the Devil are generic characters were invited to ponder perhaps they also have incarnations in the novel

Fifth Business ends with a mysterious death, and though there are clues that seem to point to whodunit, the fact that the story segues straight into a second volume, with a third to come, indicates that its all more complicated than it might seem.
I was so intrigued that, thanks to my omnibus edition, I carried right on with the first chapter of The Manticore, which is also in the first person but this time narrated by Stauntons son, David, from Switzerland.
Freudian versus Jungian psychology promises to be a major dichotomy in this one, and Im sure that the themes of the complexity of human desire, the search for truth and goodness, and the difficulty of seeing oneself and others clearly will crop up once again.


This was a very rewarding reading experience, Id recommend Davies to those who enjoy novels of ideas, such as Iris Murdochs, Ill carry on with at least the second volume of the trilogy for now, and Ive also acquired the first volume The Rebel Angels of another, later trilogy to try.


Some favorite lines:

“I cannot remember a time when I did not take it as understood that everybody has at least two, if not twentytwo, sides to him.
”

“Forgive yourself for being a human creature, Ramezay, That is the beginning of wisdom that is part of what is meant by the fear of God and for you it is the only way to save your sanity.
”


Its also fascinating to see the contrast between how Ramsay sees himself, and how others do:

“it has been my luck to appear more literate than I really am, owing to a cadaverous and scowling cast of countenance, and a rather pedantic Scots voice”

vs.


“Good God, dont you think the way you rootle in your ear with your little finger delights the boys And the way you waggle your eyebrows and those horrible Harris tweed suits you wear And that disgusting trick of blowing your nose and looking into your handkerchief as if you expected to prophesy something from the mess.
You look ten years older than your age, ”


Originally published on my blog, sitelinkBookish Beck,.stars

Robertson Davies is one of my literary heroes, At a time in my youth when I had been engulfed with Canadian Literature that was, in my humble opinion at the time at least, depressing, uninteresting, and decidedly parochial, here was a man who wrote stories with verve, humour, erudition and a view to the wider world.
Fifth Business is the first book of Davies Deptford trilogy, a series of books that centre around people from the fictional small town of Deptford, Ontario.
Sounds parochial already, doesnt it But wait, theres more, The main character, and narrator, of this tale is Dunstan Ramsay, a man who seems to have been destined to exist on the periphery of the life he is now looking back on.
Sharptongued and intelligent, Ramsay has let himself fall into the role of schoolteacher at an allboys private school, unencumbered not only by a wife and children, but also by any truly close friends.
The closest he has is Percy Boyd “Boy” Staunton, the golden boy of Deptford and frenemy of his youth, Boy is everything Ramsay is not: outgoing, active, popular and rich, Boy soon makes his mark in the wider world, parlaying the small fortune of his grasping father into the foundations of a business empire that certainly does nothing to lessen Boys innate pride and narcissism.
Aside from their origins in a small Ontario town as part of the same generation, the two boys share something else, a link to the tragedy that occurred in the life of Mrs.
Mary Dempster. On a fateful winter day, when Boys pride is goaded on by the shrewd antagonism of Ramsay, the thenpregnant Mrs.
Dempster becomes the victim of a snowball hurled by Boy and meant for Ramsay which had a stone at its heart.
This blow not only precipitates the early delivery of her son Paul, but also leads to a loss of cognitive functions that makes her, in the words of the people of Deptford, “simple”.


Forever

keeping the facts secret, Ramsay is wracked by guilt over this event for the rest of his life despite the fact that his was certainly more a sin of omission when compared to Boys culpability.
It in fact becomes the shaping catalyst for his life and in large part determines the man he is to become.
Ramsay takes upon himself the care of Mrs, Dempster officially at the urging of his mother, who helped to deliver the womans son, but ultimately at the prodding of his own conscience and she becomes for him a figure of signal importance.
For Ramsay is convinced that there is something special about Mary Dempster, in fact he is certain that she is a saint.
This is not only the result of his guilt, but due to the fact that Ramsay is certain that he has personally witnessed three miracles performed by her one the resurrection of his apparently dead older brother.
Ramsay becomes obsessed with saints and saintliness and his lifes work, his true passion, the study of these enigmatic figures in human history.
He is not a particularly religious man, but he is not incredulous of the validity of religious experience either, This is where Davies is able to bring in one of his own favourite obsessions: Jungian archetypes and the mythical significance of history.
The lens through which Ramsay sees the world is coloured by this interpretation and it is a fascinating one that informs all of Davies other books.


Dunstan Ramsay is an excellent narrator and his voice is pitchperfect, He seems to contain the perfect balance of incisive observation with a somewhat deprecating selfawarenessthough of course we probably shouldnt take everything he says as gospel.
Through Ramsays eyes we view the petty concerns and grotesqueries of small town life, things that, while petty or perhaps because they are petty, are more than powerful enough to destroy a human life we share in some of the horrors of the First World War as well as the ennobling elements of life that can overcome such things and we witness the ways in which, sometimes unbeknownst to us, our lives are intertwined with those of everyone we meet, no matter how disconnected and solitary we think we are.


Fifth Business isnt my favourite book by Davies, but its a very good one and is an excellent introduction to the kind of writing youll experience if you choose to try him out.
Not only was Davies a learned man, able to convey his learning in his books without sounding like a schoolteacher or a man with a mission to convert even though he was, perhaps, both things, but he was also a very accomplished writer:

I know flattery when I hear it but I do not often hear it.
Furthermore, there is good flattery and bad this was from the best cask, And what sort of woman was this who knew so odd a word as “hagiographer” in a language not her own Nobody who was not a Bollandist had ever called me that before, yet it was a title I would not have exchanged to be called Lord of the Isles.
Delightful prose! I must know more of this,

Delightful prose indeed, Davies novels seem to flow effortlessly, partly due to the charming and fluid voice he attains in them, and partly, I think, through his clever weaving of myth and symbol throughout what is, on the surface, a rather mundane plot.
Ramsays life, especially in his eventually acknowledged role of “Fifth Business”, is not one that is full of monumental events or unexpected novelty, but it is a human life and one which Davies puts into the greater context not only of the lives that all of us lead, but of the mythic symbols and higher meanings that we look to in order to find greater significance in what we do and who we are.


Also posted at sitelinkShelf Inflicted The high school friend who managed somehow to hitch me with my lifelong soulmate and wife from a distance of thousands of miles away, many, many years ago, was FIFTH BUSINESS!

Whuzzat, you ask Well, to find that out youll have to read the book.


But its some sort of really Strange Magic, as ELO sang at the time I met my wife in the Seventies.
. .

Davies trilogy is Magic too,

This is the first book, All three together make up a long and intriguing journey through the magically murky labyrinths of the human mind,

Lifes not easy, as we all know! But here its magical and parochial, smalltown Ontario was never so strangely and savagely serendipitous BEFORE Boy Staunton threw that accursed Snowball.
. .

And suddenly its a World of Good and Evil Wonders, as if suddenly blanketed in a new twofoot sparkling carpet of Lake Effect snow, with ironic icicles hanging by the wall!

Thats where this novel starts.
You step into medias res, like in a classical epic only, if youre the impressionable kind I was, it seems to open up much like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe presented Narnia in a shimmering Ice Age of the human spirit.


And Fifth Business is a progressively more complicated, murky and allusive affair, as it morphs into the carnival of capricious capers that lurks in the two companion novels of this, the Deptford Trilogy, all set off aptly by the plodding, dourly academic main character Davies himself Dunstan.


I could have met Robertson Davies back in those early days of my life, had my high school marks permitted me to attend the U of T English Faculty.


Youd see him most days of the week, they used to say, on the leafy campus with his long white beard and long white hair, like some Old Testament prophet, decked out in a swanky beret, the nattiest tweeds and twirling an ivory cane!

But he was a highly respected teacher, and a DYNAMITE writer.
And a real oldfashioned CHARACTER!

This books got it all: magic, mystery, and merry Bohemian and Bay Street Mayhem!

And you know, if you trust in your lucky, even the WORST times in your life like Stauntons fateful snowball toss was for some can end up producing very good things for you.


Like the serendipitous Fifth Business that long ago introduced me to the girl that was to become my wife.
. .

And in a FLASH, the Evil in my life was transformed into Good,

Its like, if that unstable mixture of frailties that is our own uneven lives HADNT happened the exact way it did, we would never have been as happy as we turned out to be in the end TRULY Deus Ex Machina, as they said in olden times.


Though as Socrates says in Platos Eurythro, we all end up paying a penalty to each other for EACH misdeed!

And if there is evil intent in an act of Fifth Business, that evil will be mitigated.
And the good are saved harmless,

Read the book to find out more, . .

For as the old folks used to say in the good old days, back when life was simple, IT ALL COMES OUT IN THE WASH.
. .

FIVE of the FINEST STARS for this Magnificent Read, .