The Cunning Man
by Robertson Davies
List Price: $13.95
Pages: none
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0140248307
Publisher: Penguin USA
One of the joys of Robertson Davies' fiction is its easy commerce with
the full sweep of western culture from the ancient Greeks to the present.
Another is its vigorous, talky characters, whose challenges, exhilarations,
defeats, and ultimate destination are bodied forth in telling details.
And a third is an old-fashioned, attention-grabbing theatricality. The
Cunning Man is as broadly learned as its predecessors, as replete
with vividly realized characters, and as dramatic in its presentation.
The declared subject of the
novel (which shares several major figures and events with its immediate
predecessor, Murther & Walking Spirits) is the cultural life
of the city of Toronto in the years before and after World War II - or
rather, that of the small area around St. Aidan's Church. Here "The
Ladies" - the minor artist Miss Pansy Freake Todhunter and her friend
the sculptor Emily Hart-Raven - resided and entertained the artistic community
at their "Sundays." We learn about what happened through Miss
Todhunter's letters to the sculptor Barbara Hepworth back in England,
and through Dr. Jonathan Hullah, who is stirred to record his reminiscences
by a young journalist, Esme Barron, who is herself bent on writing a series
of articles about The Toronto That Used To Be. Miss Todhunter is especially
good at conveying the peculiar mixture of accomplishment and parochialism
that characterized the cultural life of the period.
Dr. Hullah, the story's chief
narrator, takes the view that to understand a city's cultural past it
is necessary to understand the people who created it. And so he tells
the life stories of a number of the key figures, and provides capsule
histories for many others. The life he explores most richly is his own.
His account makes it entirely plausible that he should introduce many
of the novel's learned references. He is comfortable with the thinking
of Paracelsus, Thomas Browne, Robert Burton, and Sir William Osler, and
refers easily to a wide range of novels and poetry. Without saying so
directly, he makes it obvious that he himself has been a major contributor
to The Toronto That Used To Be. So too was his old schoolfriend, Charlie
Iredale, priest of St. Aidan's, passionate high Anglican and lover of
its ritual and fine music. But Iredale's life had gone off the rails,
and he was exiled to a minor parish, slid into alcoholism, and, after
a brief period of reprieve, into death.
The Cunning Man is
Davies' eleventh novel. In it he has drawn once again on his seemingly
inexhaustible hoard of intuition, formidable memory, and astonishing erudition
to produce a truly entertaining story.
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1. The story of Dr. Hullah's life and times emerges in reaction to a series of interviews with the young journalist Esme Barron. What does she add to the story? What happens to shift Hullah from his initial mistrust of her to "love?"
2.The Cunning Man turns on Father Ninian Hobbes' death. The event is recounted at length three times, at the beginning by Dr. Hullah, in III:18 in a letter by Miss Todhunter, and in IV:21 by Charlie Iredale, and it is referred to more briefly again and again. Why is the old priest's death given such prominence?
3.Interspersed through the third section of the novel are letters written by Miss Pansy Freake Todhunter ("Chips") to the English sculptor Barbara Hepworth. Chips and her companion, Emily Raven-Hart, observe The Toronto That Used to Be using the standards they had absorbed in Britain. Consider what the letters add to the story.
4. Contrast Davies' view of Toronto's cultural life in the thirties, forties, and fifties with the cultural life of a mid-sized U.S. city during that period.
5. Dr. Hullah has Emily Hart-Raven sculpt a four-foot tall version of the caduceus, the symbol of medicine, for the wall at the entrance to his clinic. This, we are told, is "Hermes' walking-stick with two snakes curling around it." Why does Hullah specify a pair of Massassauga rattlers? Why does Davies link this Greek mythic symbol to Canadian Indian lore?
6.The first section of the novel describes a discussion at the Curfew Club at Colborne College, where the supporters of religion (Dunstan Ramsay and Charlie Iredale) confront the advocates of science (Evans). Why does Davies include this scene? Where do you think Hullah stands?
7.At the end of this scene Dunstan Ramsay argues that "The truly historical view was not a tale of man's progress from barbarism or superstition to modern enlightenment, but a recognition that enlightenment had shown itself in the long story of man in a variety of guises, and that barbarism and superstition were undying elements in the human story." How is this observation evinced by the novel?
8. As readers of Murther & Walking Spirits know, that novel begins with the murder of Esme Barron's husband, Connor Gilmartin. There, the man who killed Gilmartin eventually confesses to Hugh McWearie, just as, in The Cunning Man, Charlie Iredale eventually confesses to Jonathan Hullah. In a scene near the end of The Cunning Man McWearie and Hullah exchange secrets, each confirming what the other suspected. What makes us accept their insights? Why is this scene so satisfying?
9. In the last section of The Cunning Man, Dr. Hullah, now sixty-five, decides to give his life fresh interest by engaging in a new form of literary criticism. He will "apply modern medical theory to the notable characters of literature" and call the resulting book The Anatomy of Fiction. This project produces a series of "Notes for ANAT." each one a literary excursion inspired by something in the main story. What effect do these literary asides have on you as the reader? Do they distract you from the main story? Are they in some sense part of the story? Does Davies want a slower pace and if he does, why? and does he carry you with him?
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" This is a wise, humane and consistently entertaining novel. Robertson Davies's skill and curiosity are as agile as ever, and his store of incidental knowledge is a constant pleasure. Long may he continue to divert us. "
— The New York Times Book Review
"One of his most entertaining and satisfying books. . . . Davies composes a kind of fictionalized grand opera, replete with emblematic characters, archetypal plotting, soulful arias and much sparkling repartee. "
— The Washington Post Book World
"The Cunning Man is a delight, a novel that travels 70 years of history on its own swift feet, a book of love and wisdom, loss and irony. "
— The Boston Sunday Globe
"Urbanity, wit, and high seriousness, mixed by a master chef. "
— The Cleveland Plain Dealer
"Wonderfully funny, poignant and never less than totally engrossing. . . . Davies' clear-sighted humanism, irony and grasp of character are on vivid display. "
— Publishers Weekly
"Davies' embracing energy and his eye for the telling detail drive this . . . crafty, wayward and engrossing tale. "
— San Francisco Chronicle
"One comes to the end of The Cunning Man reflecting on the sheer pleasure of reading a novel by a writer who has lived a full life . . . and one who has read and thought about everything from Jung and male bonding to medicine and art. What delight to be again in the hands of a master storyteller. "
— Detroit Free Press
"Davies deftly combines metaphysics, magic, and modern medicine to tell a contemporary story with ancient roots . . . a splendid intellectual romp as well as an absorbingly literate novel. Davies at his best. "
— Kirkus Reviews
