Secondly, of course, are my usual feelings of inadequacy in the art of reviewing artists. It’s particularly difficult to write about the written work, and especially about works that you consider masterpieces. Certainly, I probably wouldn’t suffer much in the way of self conscious recrimination from a review of the latest Star Trek novella, nor would I feel particularly challenged explaining my feelings about Stephen King’s last couple of ‘horror’ works, but when it comes to a writer like Robertson Davies, someone who in some ways embodies the very notion of ‘author’ to me, the pure, messianic absolute, not merely a good writer, but the peak (for me) of the fictional written word, the best I could ever be and not a creature to compare myself to objectively, but rather as an absolute that I can’t really hope to attain, but could possibly draw a parabolic graph demonstrating, over time, the manner in which I approach such greatness.

This is, of course, overly glorifying Davies, but at the same time it illustrates quite well my opinions of his value as an artist, and my own in comparison, and as a result the viability of my review. My own words in attempting to explain his works seem so shallow and pointless next to the words of the works themselves that the review seems like a waste of time.

I have no doubt that some will read this with a greater grasp of the fundamentals of literature as well as deeper knowledge of Davies, who might agree with the above paragraphs and suggest that I have no business passing on my opinion. Others might get sick of my apologizing every time I start writing reviews. To both, I can do nothing more than point out that I’m going to write these reviews, and I’m going to write them my way, and as to their merit, only time and the reader can judge, and no matter the judgment, I will still write them. And that’s all there is to say about that.

Now on to Robertson Davies and The Deptford Trilogy. I am prone, as heinous as the act is, to categorize things, and to categorize them into simple, essentially false, extremely broad and inclusive categories. There is fallacy in such categorizing, especially if you actually start to believe it, but there is also often truth in it as well, and if you entirely ignore categories, you can lose as much relevant information as you would if you actually believed them entirely. Many of my categories are made to attempt to understand more subtle and elusive ideas, like art, and artists.

One thing I’ve come to believe about artists is that truly exceptional artists are often also exceptionally wise, in one regard or another. They have a keen insight into the world around them, or at least some aspect of it, and the quality of their art reflects this insight, allows them to pass that insight to us in a manner we can recognize. In the communication, they display their wisdom equally. How many times have you had an idea, or emotion, or reaction, that you could never find a way to express until you saw that one painting, or read that one novel, or heard that one musical passage, and realized, "That was the feeling! That was a the idea!"

So I have often proposed that, in a sense, an artist might be judged by the aspect of life they are capable of indulging in, artistically. An example might be to compare the movies ‘Aliens’ and ‘Deconstructing Harry’. Aliens is a fun movie. It’s a good movie. It’s well directed, and fairly well written, as modern Hollywood goes. The subject matter, however, is extreme. James Cameron is a good story teller, but a certain lack of insight into the world leaves him searching the bounds of his imagination for something to entertain with. Lacking the ability to delve into our usual world for anything we haven’t already found ourselves, he instead creates new things, things not of our lives, to apply his art to. In this, he makes his insight easier, since it applies to a world of his own creation. However, in Woody Allen’s ‘Deconstructing Harry’, we see Allen delving into the mind of a writer, an artist. While the plot device, the structure of the story telling is fantastic, the subject matter is not. He is touching off of our daily lives, our daily concerns and questions, and offering insight, not right or wrong, but new and focused, an idea that we might have all contemplated vaguely, but never been able to express so concretely until we saw the film, and then we point and say, "Yes, that’s it, that’s meaningful to me because it’s a deeper notion of my reality. I understand that film on some level I couldn’t express properly before I saw it."

Or compare Dali to Picasso. Dali, once again, delved in the fantastic. His explorations took him outside of the bounds of our human condition to new and fantastic places which he then displayed for us. So when we enjoy Dali, we’re enjoying things because of their newness, their wildness. However, Picasso, once again, merely delved into the nature of the here and now, taking very simple, mundane subjects and trying to depict them in a way that allowed us to emotionally interact with our own reality on a new level, on a level that had reached a point of communicational clarity for the first time for the viewer through Picasso’s work, allowing them an insight into their environment, even into themselves that had been, at best murky and blurred before.

Is what I just wrote actually a relevant way to judge an artist? No, not really. It’s not even really true, but I don’t think it’s entirely false, either. I’m not actually trying to say that Picasso is a better artist than Dali, or that Allen is ultimately a wiser man than Cameron (regardless of how I, personally, might feel about it). But I do actually believe that certain artists, Picasso and Allen to name two examples, were gifted with a certain insight into the typical, a type of wisdom that doesn’t seek out truth so much as it seeks out possibility, insight that doesn’t explain the world so much as it tries to communicates it. Imagine a man explaining an idea to you in some language you don’t speak, like perhaps Yiddish, and then that person switching their explanation to your natural language, say, perhaps, English. It’s not that what they’re saying it ‘correct’. It’s just that now that it has become clear and pure. Suddenly, where nothing made any sense or amounted to anything more than random vague impressions, distinct and valid meaning flows between you. I think one of the roles of art is to attempt to bridge this same barrier between our conscious thought and our reality, and the mark of a truly fine artist is the ability to succeed exceptionally at this goal.

To my mind, Robertson Davies is a master of this, taking the entirely typical and discovering and communicating the fantastic that must exist within it. When you finish reading his works, you often step away thinking, at least for a time, that all life, including its flaws, is glorious and filled with wonder and excellence. It’s as close as I can come to being one of those sad un-thinkers who conclude, on the spot, that, because they’ve encountered something beautiful in their life, ‘Jehovah’ must have made it. Robertson Davies can convince us that everything is fantastic, no matter how seemingly commonplace.

The Deptford Trilogy is often lauded as the pinnacle of Davies’ writings. I generally believe that this is because the first book, the Fifth Business, so well manages this stated goal. Indeed, early in the book, the protagonist and narrator is revealed to be telling the tale of his life in direct response to being reduced to nothing more than a figurehead at a university in a write up regarding his retirement. I don’t have the book right on hand, so I can’t quote it exactly (hopefully I’ll get it soon and replace this passage), but essentially he complains that he’s being depicted as someone whose life was nothing more than several decades worth of teaching history to young men, with no personal passion, or drive, or relevance. The story is, then, partly an attempt, literally, to indulge the concept I’ve spoken of, to express the nuances of the mundane in such a manner as to explain the wonder hidden within, to overcome the barrier that causes so many to gloss over the usual, and communicate the incredible existence that must inherently result from a being of such complex thinking and emotional structure as is any given human being. Even the title, The Fifth Business, refers to the character as mundane yet essential, a side character who is none-the-less critical to the drama.

There is more to the book, by far, than merely a description of the aspects of Dunstable Ramsay that have been lost on the dulled senses of his contemporaries, but often times even the reader will forget this. Indeed, on a first reading through I noticed no theme or thread to the story line beyond ‘the life of Dunny’ until the very end, and yet I never complained, for that was the mastery, the artistry, of the work, that the life of this fairly straightforward character had become so important, so glorious to me.

Of course, Davies does this by peppering the mundane with hints of the fascinating, and I have yet to see a work of his in which a keen understanding of human history and mythology hasn’t been used to sneak in a variety of references to the more interesting, if obscure deviations of our species, and The Deptford Trilogy often takes advantage of this, with constant references to a variety of fascinating tidbits, presented in manners accurate yet poetic, as, for an example, the detailed delving in to obscure Saints in The Fifth Business. Saints are, throughout the book, an odd obsession of Dunstable’s, and reoccur as a theme in a variety of forms, from his own quest for a personal saint to repeated events in his own life mimicking the various, obscure mythologies of the sainthood.

Not to belittle, but The Fifth Business really, in my mind, made the trilogy. The second work, the Manticore, explores the life of one of the, I guess you’d call them, victims of the characters of The Fifth Business, the son of Dunstable’s lifelong friend/enemy Paul Staunton. The son, David Staunton, lives not so much in his father’s shadow as emotionally exiled from his own past and history altogether, and the second novel is a rather more loosely structured exploration of his coming to terms with his own being. Once again we delve into the character of a perfectly reasonable creation, although this time the creation attacks his own existence with something less than the direct and sure manner of Ramsay, indeed, in The Manticore we watch someone forced to confront their own regression, a man on the verge of self destruction who has to, in a sense, recreate his own being to avoid it.

In the final book of the trilogy, World of Wonders, we finally have the tale of the ‘hero’ of the books told, and in this instance Davies does finally delve into the fantastic, allowing us to encounter the mundane from the viewpoint of the truly exceptional, through perhaps the ‘central character’, but never the protagonist until now, Paul Dempsey. Dempsey perhaps completes the trio of introspection, an exceptional, even supernatural character who has chosen to exist as a mysterious, almost mythical character, slowly, cautiously, feeding tidbits of his life out, juxtaposing Dunstable’s passionate forwardness and David’s innocent confusion with his own guarded, even tainted look at his life and the events that surrounded it. In this instance, we see the extraordinary contemplate its own being, rather than the common finding the fantastic within itself. But in this contemplation, we see how the fantastic fosters itself, the master magician unwilling to even give away the mystery of his own past, guarding even the simplest, most reasonable points until every trace of that typical nature most humans are regulated to has been eliminated, so that instead of finding the fantastic already inherent within the average, he converts it, the master alchemist, the magus, until there is nothing common left, only secrets and strangeness.

Davies writings have always given me a curious sense of isolation. The world is my own, and yet different, some part of history that I can visit, but never be truly part of. No matter the situation, I tend to feel as if his stories take place during the winter months, barren, sparse with few people around. His focus on primary characters and tendency to have few background or irrelevant characters introduced or even mentioned by name helps cater to this experience, although I don’t consider this a flaw in the writing, quite the contrary I am of the belief that this is intentional, especially given that many of his characters often display a sense of feeling not entirely connected to their fellow man. The focus is the character, and generally it is introspective, reevaluating, searching backwards. There is no time or place for indulgence in insignificant names or roles.

Of course, character is key to me. The best tale in the world falls flat without good characters, and truly entertaining or fascinating personalities can quite literally carry a work lacking all other merit for me, although in the case of Davies, one need not worry. Davies is one of my absolute favorite authors for the very clear reason that his writing style is so precise and yet developed, straight forward and yet able to engage you on an emotional level you never suspected could occur. It is thus with this review that I encourage anyone with a taste in fictional literature who hasn’t already to grab The Deptford Trilogy at their earliest convenience. With any luck, this rambling, rather chaotic review none-the-less managed to convey my passion with a clarity beyond my ability to express through mere language, in which case I might have, as one who attempts to use criticism as a minor form of art, succeeded in producing an artistic piece of some small merit.