My life with Robertson Davies

Robertson Davies is my favourite author. I first read him him the year he died, 1995. I was in a Grade 10 course on Canadian Literature, which still stands out in my mind as the Best Class Ever. There were highs and lows. I read Robertson Davies and Nino Ricci, but also struggled through Margaret Laurence (whom I later fell in love with). My teacher, like most English teachers in my school, was a real person, funny and honest and loved books.

What I liked about Davies was how he solidified my own romantic visions of Ontario, where I was born and raised. Brick houses, old trees. But he wasn’t rural about it, a style I wasn’t into at the time. At 15 I wanted the wide world and new experiences. And Davies, coming from a well-to-do journalism and theatre background, gave me all those things while still feeling accessible to me. I was not from a well-to-do family, I had no interest in being a journalist and I was too shy for the theatre, but Davies’ books really appealed to me.

The book we read in that class was Fifth Business, still one of my favourites. I hadn’t discovered AS Byatt yet, so the thought that an author could write literary fiction (a term I personally dislike) while injecting elements of myth and the fantastical was new and just thrilling to me. Davies was the first author I read who did that. It gave me so much confidence in my own work. I don’t necessarily believe in the things I was raised to believe anymore, but I am still drawn to the absurd, the fable, even a bit of the magical in small doses. I am interested in the way these collide with their opposites in our everyday lives, and how this collision informs our lives. Though it’s not a terribly major theme in the book, Fifth Business was my small introduction to all that.

Recently I found out that there was a collection of Davies’ letters published, from 1977 to his death in 1995 (I later learned that there was an earlier volume, which I’m reading right now). I was excited to read it, since he is one of my literary idols. But it was such an interesting experience to discover that there were parts of him I just didn’t like. In some of his letters, there are a few low-level sexist and racist comments. And, don’t get me wrong, I am not condoning it, but it just so solidly proved how much of an Old Boy he was. It was just how the world was in his time (I know he died in the ’90s but by then he was quite old and set in his ways). It took me a while to get past it. It was an interesting lesson in humanizing my heroes.

I got past it, with a stern finger shake to him in my head, and I’m quite enjoying the earlier book of letters. I didn’t know that he was constantly plagued by self-doubt about his work. It’s comforting to know.

Oh, and he looks like my godmother’s husband, who had this great farm I used to visit when I was young.

Click this image to watch a 1973 CBC interview.

I love the interviewer in this. He’s so strange! “Do you do what I would call ‘research’?”

Video Credit:

Impressions of Robertson Davies.
The CBC Digital Archives Website.
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Tags: books & writers

Category: Fiction Writing/Books, General