Fifth Business

Highly weird (though it starts off in a mundane enough way) but BRILLIANT prose and unforgettable characters.
The narrator- a history master/ author on the brink of retirement - relates his life story. As the son of a fairly average family in a small Canadian town at the turn of the century, things change forever when an accident brings him into contact with the pregnant girl bride of the dour local vicar..
Myth, magic, religion...I loved it.

Dunstable Ramsay, in looking back upon his life, determines that his has been the role of 'fifth business'. It is a dramatic term to describe non-central characters who are nonetheless required in order to steer the drama of others' lives forward, always positioned at the right place and time to do so. He does, as it turns out, occupy some of the other positions in the eyes of society and his friends - a hero of the war, for example, though he feels it a false title. Is all the world a stage, and does life only have import if you are its hero, or are the auxiliary roles just as important? Is it all merely a matter of perception? If Dunstan Ramsey is only fifth business who's role is the hero in the life that he knows? Is it Percy? It is show more Mrs. Dempster? In spite of his perception and his broad view of life, he remains the hero of his own story, as do we all. At the same time, this being only a novel and Dunstan only its narrator, its other pieces must come together if he is not to be its central figure.

Dunstan becomes intrigued by hagiography, the study of saints and miracles. He's extremely rationale in his philosophy but cannot and will not doubt or deny the miraculous acts he witnesses. Unable to explain them, he still integrates them as facts into his world view and devotes his life to exploring this mystery without ever crossing the line into embracing irrationalism. To my mind this is the perfect melding and integration of a sense of wonder. The wonder of this book was how it became increasingly more intriguing and interesting as it went on, without ever becoming too complex or difficult to understand. In large part this is due to the characterizations that bring such incredible life to some most unusual people. I wished I might know them in reality, their wisdom, their repartee. I had only intended to read this first book, but there's no question I'll be reading the other two Deptford novels to explore the full picture. show less

Magnus Eisengrim: “We all forget many of the things we do, especially when they do not fit into the character we have chosen for ourselves” (248).

I suppose that this is a coming of age story, but it is an odd one. Dunstable Ramsey (later Dunstan) is retelling the story of his life that he traces from the moment he dodged a snowball that struck a pregnant woman (Mary Dempster), causing her to fall, which trigged premature labor, which triggered one life event after another.

Main characters like Percy Stauton (later Boy Stauton), and Paul Dempster (later Magnus Eisengrim) are people within whom Dunstan seems to reflect part of his own sense of self. He figures himself out as a person through these other people in the ways that they show more reflect aspects of his self that he admires and detests. And at the center of it all is Mary Dempster, the common link and the focal point through which these main characters relate to each other. In this central role, Dunstan imagines Mary to be a saint, the intercessional figure who provides him not with a means of appealing to God but of accessing aspects of himself that are easier to understand when seen as embodied in Percy and Paul (when Dunstan was still Dunstable) and in Boy and Magnus (after Dunstable became Dunstan).

But more than being a story about a person’s lifelong focus on a woman who he imagines to be a saint, I think this novel is pointing to a modernized function of the “saint” figure. As I read it, saints represent interests and concerns that are specific to certain groups of people in their trades and at particular moments in life. In a way, they are templates of action and comportment. But it is perhaps also the case that we recognize saintly duties, more broadly and less divinely cast, in people who are not officially recognized as saints but are instead public figures or mere people in our lives who, whether by virtue of the good things they do, the burdens they bear, the afflictions they suffer, or other things they do, become meaningful ways for us to understand ourselves and to relate to others.

Dunstan himself seems to reflect on his own role as an intercessional figure. I doubt that he would think himself a saint, but as a teacher at a boys college he does have a role that at least aspires to motivate young minds to aid reflection and introspection. Except that Dunstan feels that he flounders a bit, reflecting at one time that “[y]ou are now thirty-four, without a wife or child, and no better plan than your own whim; you teach boys who, very properly, regard you as a signpost on the road they are to follow, and like a signpost they pass you by without a thought” (156). In fact, the title of the book comes from a realization that he reaches about this role.

The narrative style of the book is introspective and searching. Dunstan tells a story with the investigative rigor of an academic and none of the guarded or muted or other deflective ways of telling a life story that guards one’s ego. There is a charming sincerity about the narration. Dunstan is frank about his successes and failures, his virtues and his vices. And Davies’ writing style amplifies the story by giving Dunstan a voice that is a charismatic mix of curiosity, wisdom, a bit of stuffy pomposity, and subtle humor. It is a voice that perfectly fits the Dunstan who is the narrator of the letter/memoir through which the book is delivered.

This book is easily one of my new favorites. show less

Over the years, I have thought a lot about the difference between fiction and literature. Every devoted reader undoubtedly has his or her own definition of that demarcation, but here is mine: Fiction—good fiction, at least—can be nothing more than an entertaining and satisfying story, but a work of literature rises well above that. Indeed, literature teaches you something that you did not know about yourself or the world at large; it is like a mirror that you hold up to reveal things that are both enlightening and, often, a little surprising. Of course, the best literature also tells a really good story. Like everything I have ever read by Robertson Davies, Fifth Business is good literature.

The novel records the history of Dunstan show more Ramsay, a man destined to be a supporting player in the lives of others. (In operatic terms, “fifth business” refers to a character considered necessary to the plot, but not central to it.) The first volume of the author’s celebrated Deptford Trilogy, it is written as a memoir released after Ramsay’s retirement from his position as a master at a private boy’s school in Toronto. Covering much of the last century, the story begins when 10-year old Ramsay dodges a snowball thrown by his friend and rival Percy Boy Staunton, which hits Mary Dempster, the pregnant wife of the local minister. The force of the blow has severe consequences as it brings about the premature birth of Paul Dempster and causes Mary to lose her grip on reality. Much of the ensuing narrative revolves around Ramsay’s life-long remorse over his role in this singular event.

What follows amounts to an account of what becomes of Mary, Boy, and Paul (who transforms himself into Magnus Eisengrim, a world-famous magician), as seen through Ramsay’s eyes. Along the way, we also learn a considerable amount about the narrator, including his reclusive nature, his service as a war hero, his passion for chronicling the lives of saints, and his role as Staunton’s confessor and confidant as the latter rises to a position of wealth and political prominence. Ramsay’s relationship with Mary is particularly poignant; he considers her to be a saint for three “miracles” he associates her with, but is greatly conflicted as he observes her slow, heart-breaking descent into madness. He also serves as the catalyzing force that brings Boy and Eisengrim together as the book reaches its dramatic conclusion.

Davies wrote such wonderfully compelling stories that it is easy to overlook how much his prose has to teach us. Beyond its rich details on topics such as hagiography, mythology, illusionism, and Jungian psychology, what I found most striking about Fifth Business was its great insight into the nature of responsibility and guilt. In fact, so much of what transpires in the novel can be viewed in terms of Ramsay’s struggle to resolve the issue of the point at which responsibility for one’s actions begins, a lesson he appeared to learn very late in life. This book is an almost perfect marriage of great story-telling with a rich set of insights into what it means to be human; it is exactly what literature should be and one to be savored again and again. show less

The writing in "Fifth Business" is impressive, a skillful mix of narrative, tongue in cheek humor, ironical phrasings and exquisitely developed prose. The story is continued for two more volumes in the series, but is full and sufficient in and of itself in this first volume of the trilogy.
The character and secrets of boys shapes and forms their lives and destinies across decades until the secrets finally catch up with them. The secrets themselves may have been fairly benign in that the event they concern, a pregnant woman being hit by a rock filled snowball and going into early labor and delivery, was probably accidental. No matter how benign the secrets may have been, the character and personalities of the children involved in the show more incident magnify their beliefs about their roles in the tragedy. Both boys spend their lives trying to assuage their imagined guilt in ways characteristic of their childhoods: one through denial and the other in ill-founded guilt.
As a work of literature the book is wonderful. Seldom does an author so fully develop the characteristics of his characters so beautifully that they persist and show themselves throughout the lives of the boys.
Since this novel was written almost 50 years ago, the demand to read it these days will not be great, yet, that is unfortunate, because a novel this well written and this well structured simply does not come along very often. show less

I think I would rate this book lower if I hadn't known going in that it's the first book in a trilogy, and would view the weak ending differently - unsatisfactory - after an engaging, well-told story. I find it worrisome that Fifth Business is on the 1,001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list but the successive volumes are not, because it deserves to be and I want the next novels to be just as good.

Fifth Business is the story of Dunstable Ramsey and his friend and nemesis Percy Boyd Staunton, who we witness grow from mischievous boys in small-town 1908 Canada to old men. Across their fifty year journey, they harbor a secret which altered the lives of the Dempsters by causing the premature birth of their only son. Dunstable will spend show more his life attempting to, if not rectify, at least pay penance for the consequences of his and Staunton's actions. He will lose a leg and be disfigured during the Great War (an extremely well-written section of the novel) and end up unmarried, teaching history at an all-boys school, where he goes by his shortened name Dunstan.

But Dunstan's life is not a lonely, academic existence. He is a hagiographist; he spends his vacations traveling the world researching the lives of saints, about whom he writes multiple best-selling books. Even though he professes to not be religious, he expends a great deal of thought and discussion on Christianity in an attempt to have Mrs Dempster canonized for the three miracles she performs. The book's most challenging concept is that a man can be lead to Christ through his sinful interaction with her.

In his travels, Dunstan also encounters the now-grown Dempster son, a world-class illusionist who still bears the emotional scars of his childhood. I usually object to these types of fantastic coincidences, but in this story they fit perfectly within the narrative and enrich its complexity.

You will not drown in Fifth Business's details but keep google handy so that you'll understand several of the historical and mythological references (e.g. Cauldron of Ceridwen). They add depth to an entertaining, thought-provoking work worth reading. show less

There's something distinctly lacking in a lot of modern literature that this somewhat more antiquated piece of literature has in spades: enthusiasm. In fact, not since the better prose of Saul Bellow have I experienced a literature so determinedly skillful and driven to a single point, that point being adventurous literary exploration and analysis of themes and ideas fettered smoothly to the act of storytelling; that the depth of theme never overshadows the exigencies of storytelling puts Robertson Davies somewhat on par with a Bellow though lacking just a bit in what Bellow had, that is, a singular and distinctive voice.

Now, don't get me wrong, Davies writes with a consummate skill. But unlike a Bellow who so self-consciously (at show more times to the point of bursting) set out to manicure and cultivate a dialectical voice that was equal parts 'American', 'European', and overall 'Jewish' (though the protean nature of the final term is such that, surprise, Bellow is hardly the final word on the subject, thankfully), Davies adheres just a bit too much to the occidental, to the old and classically European school of literary expression. This isn't a bad thing, far from it. Rather it just more directly shows Davies influences and authorial precedents...but I would be lying if I said that Davies definitively and insolubly declared himself in the face of all these influences, rather he writes 'his turn'.

But overall this is a reader's novel and should be enjoyed (very much so) as such. If you're looking for the kind of literature that is unfortunately just this side of scarce in our modern, cynical, and ironic era, then give yourself leave to read this earnest and very compelling story of a man 'twice born'. show less