Wow - I believe that might be my first post ever on ILX up there. I read the Cornish Trilogy in Nov/Dec last year for the first time, thoroughly and completely lost myself in it.
― Jaq, Friday, 29 February 2008 21:57 (sixteen years ago) link
What's with some of these clip art covers? I guess it is a picture of RD himself, but still kind of cheesy.
― Working in the POLL Mine (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 21 May 2021 16:21 (two years ago) link
I acted in a production of Hunting Stuart about 20 years ago; it was surprising how lively his dialogue was onstage, even with amateur actors, when it seems so baroque on the page.
― Halfway there but for you, Friday, 21 May 2021 16:24 (two years ago) link
robertson davies trilogies
― Working in the POLL Mine (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 21 May 2021 16:41 (two years ago) link
The whiff of 'the stage' and what the Greeks called 'the smell of the lamp' does pervade his books. My early life as a high school theater nerd and subsequent rejection of that niche probably accounts for my general lack of delight in his otherwise very well devised novels. When I read him, I can see what a good writer and storyteller he is, but what ought to excite me about him fails to connect on any visceral level and on the intellectual level I resist him.
I like his essays much better.
― What's It All About, Althea? (Aimless), Friday, 21 May 2021 17:41 (two years ago) link
Not to mention the roar of the greasepaint.
― Working in the POLL Mine (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 21 May 2021 19:17 (two years ago) link
Hah! V pleased w/ this revive - just yesterday I was literally blowing the dust off a pile of books and on top, requiring a wet wipe, was my (unread) copy of the The Cornish Trilogy and I was thinking, "Am I ever going to read this fucking thing? Does anybody in the world give a shit about Robertson Davies now?'
I think I have it because Burgess included it in his mad 99 Novels list, where he concludes that RD is 'prime Nobel Prize material'! But now I want to read him after looking through this thread
― Ward Fowler, Friday, 21 May 2021 19:41 (two years ago) link
I loved the Cornish and Deptford trilogies. I came to Davies through 99 Novels as well, was led to a lot of good reading by that book.
― In my house are many Manchins (WmC), Friday, 21 May 2021 19:46 (two years ago) link
Yeah, that is a lot of fun, 99 Novels.
― Working in the POLL Mine (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 21 May 2021 20:11 (two years ago) link