The Deptford Trilogy: Fifth Business; The Manticore; World of Wonders

If there is a boundary beyond which realistic fiction crosses into the fantastical, it seems to have been explored and even blurred by Robertson Davies in this trio of novels which represent the broadest imaginative range of realistic fiction. The closest contemporary comparison I can make is John Barth, but Davies, possibly by way of being Canadian, establishes his originality by balancing North American folk charm with a British style of sophistication. The subject is the turbulent and often hilarious lives of three men whose hometown is the rural village of Deptford, Ontario. They are Dunstan Ramsay, a history teacher, hagiographer (somebody who studies saints and sainthood), and decorated World War I veteran; the arrogant but vulnerable Percy Boyd "Boy" Staunton, a wealthy confectionery businessman, politician, and Dunstan's lifelong friend; and the pitiable Paul Dempster, whose premature birth was precipitated by his mother's injury from being hit accidentally by a snowball thrown by Staunton at Ramsay on a fateful winter day in 1908. The event that provides the basis for the trilogy is Staunton's death sixty years later, when his Cadillac mysteriously plunges off a pier into a harbor.The three novels form a complex story that is structured almost like a murder mystery but has much more psychological depth and detailed characterization and is more studious of the nature of consequences. The first two novels, "Fifth Business" and "The Manticore," discuss the life of Boy Staunton through the respective viewpoints of Ramsay, who tells all in an extensive, sarcastically toned report to the headmaster of the academy from which he is retiring, and Staunton's son David, now a successful criminal lawyer, who recalls his relationship with his father during a series of sessions with a Zurich psychiatrist. But it is the third novel, "World of Wonders," in which the continuation of the story really takes flight. This novel covers the fascinating life story of a brilliant magician and master illusionist named Magnus Eisengrim who, from humble and sordid beginnings as a carnival underling, has become famous throughout the world for his spectacular stage shows and now lives in a palatial Swiss chalet with his manager and consort, a strange woman named Liesl. That he has enlisted Ramsay as his biographer is not his only connection to Deptford or to the events surrounding Boy Staunton's watery death. Combining the themes of Ramsay's inquiries into the qualifications for sainthood, David Staunton's chimerical dreams, and Eisengrim's spellbinding but essentially mundane magic, "The Deptford Trilogy" maintains its narrative thrust by a thorough cross-pollination of ideas from reality and mythology. The insight revealed is that every human life, real or imagined, has qualities that are mythical because none of us can personally experience everything that happens to everybody else. This seems like an obvious precept of fiction, but it takes a marvel-mind

I had read some Robertson Davies in the past--Murther and Walking Spirits and The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks--and thought him a fine curmudgeon and a fine Canadian writer, but I had not given him much thought beyond this. I find this to my detriment now, for I remember friends who always had a copy of one or other of his novels about, and I faintly recall many recommendations in the past. So, what made me finally pick up one of these and read it? The recommendation, passed to me second-hand, by my favorite writer, Jonathan Carroll, given as one of his influences for conceiving novels with interlinking characters.Fifth Business is a marvelous book, and while it doesn't have quite the same mystery or horror of Carroll, it does have an excellent style, and there is indeed a twist or two along the way to keep most any reader sated. Basically the autobiography of Dunstable Ramsay, born around the turn of the century in the small Canadian town of Deptford, Fifth Business details not only Ramsay's life, but also the life of his oldest friend, Percy "Boy" Staunton. What makes this novel so remarkable is how realistic the portrayal is, without bogging down in pages of mundane description. Over the course of the novel, one's understanding for Dunstable grows, both in positive and negative turns, and by the end, he is as an old friend of one's own.Based on some of the cover blurbs, I had expected a little more magic realism, or at least an edge of the fantastic, to this book, and while it may be there, it is consistently down-played. Normally I am not one to go in for fiction without at least a feeling of the extraordinary, but Davies writing style kept me glued to the page, reading longer into the night than I would ordinarily wish during the work week. And I learned many things, including what the term hagiography refers to, and some feeling for Canada and their strange ties to Britain and the world.But it is the aspect of Fifth Business itself where this book receives full credit for its recommendation. "Fifth Business" refers to, as related in the novel: "You don't know what this is? Well, in opera in a permanent company of the kind we keep up in Europe you must have a prima donna--always a soprano, always the heroine, often a fool; and a tenor who always plays the lover to her; and then you must have a contralto, who is a rival to the soprano, or a sorceress or something; and a basso, who is the villain or the rival or whatever threatens the tenor.So far, so good. But you cannot make a plot work without another man, and he is usually a baritone, and he is called in the profession Fifth Business, because he is the odd man out, the person who has no opposite of the other sex. And you must have Fifth Business because he is the one who knows the secret of the hero's birth, or comes to the assistance of the heroine when she thinks all is lost, or keeps the hermitess in her cell, or may even be the cause of somebody's death if that is part of the plot.

If you're going to read any one of these books, you should do what I did and read all three of them at once. The Fifth Business is a clever biography of a man who lives in the shadow of the supposed main plot ("Who Killed Boy Staunton"). I think Davies at his best is when he is writing a biography like this one. The Manticore is very interesting, an abrupt departure into the world of Jungian analysis. Its narrator shows the previous narrator in a different light. World of Wonders lives up to its name, a richly textured tale with mystery and twists at every turn. In reading all three together, each narrative illuminates the other two. What I liked the most about these novels is that they are written in a very literary way, but full of humor and jest. The characters are sometimes likeable, sometimes challenging, but at the end you feel like you have progressed an intellectual and/or spiritual distance and really learned something. I would recommend this to anyone who wants to sit down and read something very well-written and fascinating.

The only bad thing about Robertson Davies' Deptford Trilogy (FIFTH BUSINESS, THE MANTICORE, WORLD OF WONDERS) is that it had to end! Sparklingly clever, bawdy, poignant, erudite, and laugh-out-loud funny, Davies entertains in a wonderfully rich, old-world style.A friend of mine (who recommended the books, and to whom I will be forever grateful) put it this way: "Reading Robertson Davies is like sitting in a plush, wood-paneled library--in a large leather chair with a glass of excellent brandy and a crackling fire--and being captivated with a fabulous tale spun by a wonderful raconteur."