{"id":12702,"date":"2010-01-15T14:55:16","date_gmt":"2010-01-15T19:55:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2010\/01\/15\/12702.html"},"modified":"2018-03-13T18:54:02","modified_gmt":"2018-03-13T23:54:02","slug":"book-report-fifth-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2010\/01\/15\/book-report-fifth-business\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: Fifth Business"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I wish I could now remember the order in which I first read the novels of Robertson Davies. I can’t. I think I might have read Fifth Business<\/a> first, but I couldn’t swear to it. It’s perhaps more likely that I read the Cornish Trilogy first, or even that I read What’s Bred in the Bone<\/a> first. Although, you know, Fifth Business<\/i> is probably the one a fellow is most likely to read first, I suppose. I didn’t read the Salterton ones until later, I know that.\n

I mention it because I’m curious about my own fondness for his books. I am fond of them, very fond of them, but I find it difficult to say exactly why. Furthermore, I clearly read these books at a vulnerable point—whether that was my teenage years or my twenties or whatever—because it turns out upon rereading that I have repeated many of his observations as if they were my own. Observations with which I don’t agree, fairly often, when I see them again.\n

If I hadn’t read Fifth Business<\/i> at some point, and enjoyed it, and if I hadn’t read a bunch of other Robertson Davies novels and enjoyed them, too, and I were to pick this book up now and read it (which I might very well not do, of course), would I enjoy it? Would I go on to his others?\n

I’m not talking about the thing that happens, not terribly often but I’m sure I could name a dozen titles, where I reread a book that I remember having enjoyed and I don’t enjoy it at all. Whether a second look exposes the flaws and Sources of Reader Irritation, or whether it’s that I am a different reader than I used to be (and I am, I am), a book that I had a fondness for is a book I now dislike. But as I say, that isn’t what has happened here—I enjoyed rereading Fifth Business<\/i>; the Sources of Reader Pleasure have been joined by new Sources of Reader Irritation, but they have also been joined by new Sources of Reader Pleasure. I liked the book, I like the book, I hope to continue liking the book. But as one SRP is familiarity, and comfort of a sort, I wonder where the balance would fall without that, and with (very likely) the SRIs of disagreement and rejection of political\/social\/sexual\/medical views would be greater if I first hit them now, when I am set in my mental ways.\n

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Which Your Humble Blogger also wonders about his reaction had he the advance knowledge that the whole quote about the title was completely made up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12702"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18976,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12702\/revisions\/18976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}