Robertson Davies. Fifth Business.

Dear Mr. Frunk,

So, I put down Against the Day with less than two hundred pages left. Partly because I needed a break and partly because my girlfriend’s mother had lent me it, I started Robertson Davies’ Fifth Business (she signed up for booksfree.com, which is similar to netflix, only with books, obviously).

I didn’t have any expectations for it. The book jacket says it centers on a boyhood incident – the throwing of a single snowball – that affects the course of several characters throughout their entire lives. A bit of research told me the book is based off Jungian psychology, of which I’m only causally familiar with. I was even turned off by the phrase “fifth business,” which is a character in opera who’s not the protagonist, antagonist, etc., but is essential to the action if only in a peripheral way – something I never heard of until picking up the book. With a depressed, weighty sigh I picked it up more to read it as a courtesy to Mrs. R’s generosity than to any expected enjoyment.

The novel itself is a written letter from Dunstan Ramsay – in response to a brief article about his retirement – to his Headmaster. Usually, I avoid epistolary novels since they invoke memories of Stoker’s Dracula. But I trudged on. The book is roughly divided into six sections that more or less translate into six different stages of Ramsay’s growth.

Despite everything against it, the first section won me over. Ramsay lives in a small town in Canada called Deptford, which Davies paints in exquisite detail and reminds me of a wintry version of Carson McCullers’ small towns. Right away, that ominous snowball is thrown and events are set in motion. I won’t describe what exactly happens with the snowball, as Davies’ construction of the scene and its far-reaching ripples is ingenious and needs to be experienced. It was then I realized the powers Davies had at his command.

Yet the book at times can be slow-going. World events, such as World War I and the Great Depression, are depicted vaguely at best and used more as a time frame reference than anything else. However the events do impacted the characters’ lives, but the sections are tedious and dull. Later, you’ll realize the importance of the sections and recognize more fully the themes Davies was laying, but it was a chore.

I know so far what I’ve described probably sounds dull. And you’re thinking, God, why should I read this? Believe me, I thought so too at times. An accurate description of my own journey and thoughts is just being fair, I think. Because what I’m trying to do is describe the journey without spoiling the strangeness, the enigmatic events and ideas within it. And all of it was not entirely clear until the very last pages. That end scene changed everything that came before – through no trickery, mind you – but through natural actions of its characters. That’s not to say they’re unreliable, especially Ramsay, but the final revelation made me weak at the knees.

If I told you what the story hinges on, you’d probably never pick it up. It’s so deceptively simple. But Davies had crafted a masterpiece. One that works on so many different levels due to its construction and even more so because we don’t fully realize it until we reach its conclusion.

So, Frunk, I urge you to read it. It is not one of those depressing, existential modernistic texts or, as Mir described, something by those miserable German authors. But I think you’d appreciate the Jungian archetypes, the guilt of its protagonist, the hagiology, the fool-saints, and just the story itself. As a gift from one booklover to the other, I offer this recommendation.

Sincerely,
Cave Hinds