Friday, August 28, 2009

ROBERTSON DAVIES b AUG 28 1913


“Every man is wise when attacked by a mad dog; fewer when pursued by a mad woman; only the wisest survive when attacked by a mad notion.”

"when did you decide that you should come to zurich, mr. staunton?
when i heard myself shouting in the theater."

those last two are the opening lines to davies' the manticore. it was the first novel of a trilogy. have you noticed none of the serious "literary" writers do trilogies anymore? it's all the mystery & sci-fi writers doing that kind of thing.

i picked up the manticore in a walden bookstore in p'cola & read those first lines & was smitten. i suspected i was always capable of shouting in a theater(i ended up doing a whole lot worse than that). i thought that maybe this guy could give me a clue how to avoid that kind of thing. he didn't but the book was great, a real true exploration of what jungian analysis was back in the day. nowadays, jung is as quaint as gestalt. has anyone noticed that about the time everyone buried the idea of psychoanalysis the world went to hell in a handbasket? i guess that if we're all crazy, it doesn't make that much difference as long as we stay out of the bullet's path.

No comments: