Birthday Books: Robertson Davies and Friends

There is an interesting overlap with "America At Last" and this book; they are both diaries, with White's book covering 1963 and Davies spanning 1959 to 1963. I love Davies somewhat crusty persona, and it comes out in spades in his more personal writing, such as the volumes of his letters already published. This appears to be what is planned as the first of a series. I haven't read it yet, but looking at its dense, rich contents (like a a Christmas fruitcake) seems to promise a prolonged feast, not to be polished off in haste, but savored over time. For more details on the book, search elsewhere in this blog.

Davies always enjoyed the works of Stephen Leacock and looked upon him as his literary forebear as a Canadian humorist. In a time when Leacock was fading from view, Davies was happy to bring him out of storage, dust him off, and display his antique beauties to the modern world of the time. Will I enjoy it myself? Only time will tell. But when a friend introduces me to another friend, I'll always give him a chance. I at least have Davies introductory essay.

I have been wanting to read this book since reading about it in Davies' "The Lyre of Orpheus", where one of the points of view is that of "E. T. A. Hoffmann in the Underworld" watching the main characters try to bring his unfinished opera into stageable form. Tomcat Murr is mentioned often as a sort shadow-side of Hoffmann's character.

Hoffmann was something of a cat-fancier, and he actually had a pet he called Tomcat Murr that he based the book on, so much so that when it died Hoffmann announced the death of the fictional feline and ended the work. 

"Tomcat Murr is a loveable, self-taught animal who has written his own autobiography. But a printer's error causes his story to be accidentally mixed and spliced with a book about the composer Johannes Kreisler. As the two versions break off and alternate at dramatic moments, two wildly different characters emerge from the confusion - Murr, the confident scholar, lover, carouser and brawler, and the moody, hypochondriac genius Kreisler. In his exuberant and bizarre novel, Hoffmann brilliantly evokes the fantastic, the ridiculous and the sublime within the humdrum bustle of daily life, making The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr (1820-22) one of the funniest and strangest novels of the nineteenth century." - Amazon.