by Ted Gioia
Since his death in 1995, Robertson Davies
has fallen off the radar screens of many
contemporary readers, even those with a
serious interest in modern literary fiction. I
can't help feeling that his oft-repeated
reputation as the preeminent Canadian
novelist of his generation is as much a way
of marginalizing as honoring his con-
tributions. Do we call Joni Mitchell a great
Canadian singer or Alexander Graham Bell
a great Canadian inventor?
Davies is too large a talent to
be pigeonholed as a regionalist,
and his name is not out of
place alongside those of his
contemporaries Saul Bellow,
Graham Greene, Albert Camus
and Walker Percy. And like
them, he crafted a deep,
thought-provoking brand of
fiction that wasn't afraid to
animate characters
and events with a degree
of a philosophical, psychological and
existential force that one rarely encounters
in the current crop of literary novels.
Fifth Business is an ambitious work by any
measure—except, perhaps, word count (it
clocks it at around 250 pages). How
ambitious is it? Davies stops short of
Milton’s goal of justifying the "ways of God
to men," but not by much. This quirky and
intelligent novel aims, at least, at
reconciling the real and the miraculous.
Certainly others have trod these same
steps, but rarely from the point of view of
fiction, and almost never with such little
deference for metaphysics.
"Why do people all over the world, and at
all times, want marvels that defy all
verifiable facts? And are the marvels
brought into being by their desire, or is
their desire an assurance rising from some
deep knowledge, not to be directly
experienced and questioned, that the
marvelous is indeed an aspect of the real?"
So asks Dunstan Ramsay, narrator of
Robertson Davies's Fifth Business. Ramsay
is a man of many achievements—he is a
war hero, a teacher, and a scholar. But
above all, he is a connoisseur of the
miraculous.
Ramsay feels that his own life has been
touched, at several junctures, by uncanny
forces. These miracles center on an
eccentric local woman, Mary Dempster, the
wife of the Baptist parson. When Ramsay's
brother Willie succumbs to kidney failure,
Dunstan runs to bring Mrs. Dempster to
the bedside, where he watches as she
revives the boy who, only a short while
before, had stopped breathing and shown
no pulse. Ramsay is ridiculed by his
parents and friends when he tells them he
has witnessed a miracle. "Obviously he was
not dead," counters the local doctor who
arrives on the scene a short while later; "if
he had been dead I would not have been
talking to him a few minutes ago."
Dunstan's awe in regard to Mary Dempster
is tainted by a shameful sense of guilt. Her
strange behavior dates back to a winter day
in 1908, when she was struck by a snowball
that a local bully had thrown at Ramsay.
When Dunstan ducked, the projectile
instead hit Dempster in the back of the
head. The shock caused the parson's wife,
then seven months pregnant, to go into
early labor. Both the mother and baby,
Paul Dempster, survived—thanks in large
part to the constant care of Ramsay's
mother—but Mary Dempster would act in a
wild and unpredictable manner in the
aftermath. So much so, that her husband
would be driven from the pulpit, and her
son eventually run away from home.
Ramsay is burdened by his indirect
responsibility for these unintended
consequences, although Boy Staunton, the
youngster who actually threw the snowball,
shows no remorse.
This incident, in which Ramsay is at the
center of peculiar events he neither causes
nor controls, is emblematic of the novel as
a whole. Indeed, the title itself makes clear
what kind of hero we will encounter in
Fifth Business. Davies presents a passage
from Danish scholar Tho. Overskou as the
epigraph to his novel—later shown to be a
literary hoax, since both Overskou and his
ostensible work proved to be a fabrication
of the novelist—that defines our terms of
engagement: "Those roles which, being
neither those of Hero nor Heroine,
Confidante nor Villain, but which were
nonetheless essential to bring about the
Recognition or the dénouement, were
called the Fifth Business in drama and
opera companies." Many have taken this at
face value, and anyone researching "fifth
business" on the Internet today, will be
reassured by dozens of web sites that it is
an old theatrical term. But Davies invented
it for his story—not an inappropriate
gesture for a work focused on the ways in
which myths are created and disseminated.
Ramsay encounters Mary Dempster's
miraculous intervention again, but in a
very unexpected setting. After Canada
enters World War I as a British ally in 1914,
Ramsay enlists and soon finds himself in
the midst of deadly trench warfare at the
front. At the battle of Passchendaele, one
of the bloodiest encounters in military
history, he earns the Victoria Cross for his
bravery in single-handedly taking out a
German machine gun nest. But Ramsay is
injured severely while trying to return to
his unit, and collapses in the mud with his
left leg bleeding and unresponsive. Night
has fallen, and he crawls to a collapsed
stone wall, where he realizes that he will
almost certainly bleed to death before help
arrives.
"It was then that one of the things
happened that make my life strange—one
of the experiences that other people have
not had or do not admit to," Ramsay
explains. An exploding flare allows him to
glimpse briefly his surroundings: a
demolished church. "As the hissing flame
dropped I saw there about ten or twelve
feet above me on the opposite wall, in a
niche, a statue of the Virgin and Child….
But what hit me worse than the blow of the
shrapnel was that the face was Mary
Dempster's face."
Ramsay passes out, and when he regains
consciousness, months later, he is in a
British hospital. Here he learns that he
lost his leg in the battle, but acquired a
medal, and is now a celebrated war hero.
When he returns to Canada, he tracks
down Mary Dempster, whose mental
derangement has grown more severe in the
intervening years. Ramsay is torn between
pitying her as a mad woman or honoring
her as a saint. He even consults a Catholic
priest—a humbling step since Dunstan is a
Presbyterian, and an ambivalent one at
that, but forced to take that step, since only
the Church of Rome takes seriously the
concept of modern-day sainthood. He
wants to find some way of proving, if only
to himself, that the woman, who magically
appeared to him on a battlefield half a
world away, is worthy of canonization. But
the priest discourages Ramsay's obsession.
"Look Mr. Ramsay, I'll tell it to you plain as
it comes: there's a lot of very good people
in the world, and a lot of queer things
happen that we don't see the explanation
of, but there's only one Church that
undertakes to cut right down to the bone
and say what's a miracle and what isn't and
who's a saint and who isn't, and you, and
this poor soul you speak of, are outside it.
You can't set up some kind of a bootleg
saint, so take my advice and cut it out. Be
content with the facts you have, or think
you have, and don't push anything too far—
or you might get a little bit strange
yourself."
Ramsay abandons his quest for official
recognition of Mary Dempster's miracles,
but he persists in his own obsession with
the miraculous. He develops an expertise
in saints and shrines and writes several
scholarly and popular books on the
subject. Yet Ramsay is no credulous
believer, and his delight in miracles is
hardly undermined even when they are
shown to be contrived illusions. In time,
he nurtures a second, related passion for
carnivals and the stage shows of conjurers,
and learns behind-the-scenes secrets about
the dodges and sleights of hand employed
by professional magicians.
This interest leads him into chance
encounters with Paul Dempster, Mary's
son who had run away with a carnival
group years before and has now developed
into a polished magician. Ramsay also
maintains an uneasy friendship with Boy
Staunton, the childhood bully who has now
grown to be a very crass and successful
businessman. The uneasy relationship
between this odd trio will eventually set in
motion the strange events that will
conclude Davies’s novel—an ending that, in
fitting form, presents another miracle. The
reader can decide whether it is a real one or
merely another Houdini-like conjuring
trick.
You might think that a novel so fixated on
hagiography could hardly have relevance
for our skeptical modern lives. Without a
doubt, we find ourselves in an age that
prides itself on practicalities and hard-
headed realism. But our era also defines
its deepest hopes and aspirations in terms
of myths and creeds, perhaps no less
than did previous generations. This
tendency is not exclusively—or even
primarily—a matter of religion nowadays,
but rather a core part of our shared culture,
realized in movies, books, games, music,
even politics and business. Many
contemporary novelists have played along
with this obsession, seeing their own
vocation as akin to freelance myth-
making—embracing a rather Nietzschean
concept of the place of fiction in the
modern day.
In the midst of all this, Davies takes on the
more difficult role of iconoclast, a word
that in its original meaning signifies the
bold person who dares to handle and
sometimes even shatter a prevailing myth.
In truth, a few myths actually seem to
survive the rough handling here, but not
for lack of scrutiny and examination on
Davies's part. This is a rare kind of fiction,
and Fifth Business exemplifies an
uncharacteristic approach to the modern
novel, but one perhaps all the more
therapeutic the less we initially grasp its
applicability to our own situation.
Ted Gioia writes on music, literature, and
popular culture. His newest book is The Jazz
Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire.
Since his death in 1995, Robertson Davies
has fallen off the radar screens of many
contemporary readers, even those with a
serious interest in modern literary fiction. I
can't help feeling that his oft-repeated
reputation as the preeminent Canadian
novelist of his generation is as much a way
of marginalizing as honoring his con-
tributions. Do we call Joni Mitchell a great
Canadian singer or Alexander Graham Bell
a great Canadian inventor?
Davies is too large a talent to
be pigeonholed as a regionalist,
and his name is not out of
place alongside those of his
contemporaries Saul Bellow,
Graham Greene, Albert Camus
and Walker Percy. And like
them, he crafted a deep,
thought-provoking brand of
fiction that wasn't afraid to
animate characters
and events with a degree
of a philosophical, psychological and
existential force that one rarely encounters
in the current crop of literary novels.
Fifth Business is an ambitious work by any
measure—except, perhaps, word count (it
clocks it at around 250 pages). How
ambitious is it? Davies stops short of
Milton’s goal of justifying the "ways of God
to men," but not by much. This quirky and
intelligent novel aims, at least, at
reconciling the real and the miraculous.
Certainly others have trod these same
steps, but rarely from the point of view of
fiction, and almost never with such little
deference for metaphysics.
"Why do people all over the world, and at
all times, want marvels that defy all
verifiable facts? And are the marvels
brought into being by their desire, or is
their desire an assurance rising from some
deep knowledge, not to be directly
experienced and questioned, that the
marvelous is indeed an aspect of the real?"
So asks Dunstan Ramsay, narrator of
Robertson Davies's Fifth Business. Ramsay
is a man of many achievements—he is a
war hero, a teacher, and a scholar. But
above all, he is a connoisseur of the
miraculous.
Ramsay feels that his own life has been
touched, at several junctures, by uncanny
forces. These miracles center on an
eccentric local woman, Mary Dempster, the
wife of the Baptist parson. When Ramsay's
brother Willie succumbs to kidney failure,
Dunstan runs to bring Mrs. Dempster to
the bedside, where he watches as she
revives the boy who, only a short while
before, had stopped breathing and shown
no pulse. Ramsay is ridiculed by his
parents and friends when he tells them he
has witnessed a miracle. "Obviously he was
not dead," counters the local doctor who
arrives on the scene a short while later; "if
he had been dead I would not have been
talking to him a few minutes ago."
Dunstan's awe in regard to Mary Dempster
is tainted by a shameful sense of guilt. Her
strange behavior dates back to a winter day
in 1908, when she was struck by a snowball
that a local bully had thrown at Ramsay.
When Dunstan ducked, the projectile
instead hit Dempster in the back of the
head. The shock caused the parson's wife,
then seven months pregnant, to go into
early labor. Both the mother and baby,
Paul Dempster, survived—thanks in large
part to the constant care of Ramsay's
mother—but Mary Dempster would act in a
wild and unpredictable manner in the
aftermath. So much so, that her husband
would be driven from the pulpit, and her
son eventually run away from home.
Ramsay is burdened by his indirect
responsibility for these unintended
consequences, although Boy Staunton, the
youngster who actually threw the snowball,
shows no remorse.
This incident, in which Ramsay is at the
center of peculiar events he neither causes
nor controls, is emblematic of the novel as
a whole. Indeed, the title itself makes clear
what kind of hero we will encounter in
Fifth Business. Davies presents a passage
from Danish scholar Tho. Overskou as the
epigraph to his novel—later shown to be a
literary hoax, since both Overskou and his
ostensible work proved to be a fabrication
of the novelist—that defines our terms of
engagement: "Those roles which, being
neither those of Hero nor Heroine,
Confidante nor Villain, but which were
nonetheless essential to bring about the
Recognition or the dénouement, were
called the Fifth Business in drama and
opera companies." Many have taken this at
face value, and anyone researching "fifth
business" on the Internet today, will be
reassured by dozens of web sites that it is
an old theatrical term. But Davies invented
it for his story—not an inappropriate
gesture for a work focused on the ways in
which myths are created and disseminated.
Ramsay encounters Mary Dempster's
miraculous intervention again, but in a
very unexpected setting. After Canada
enters World War I as a British ally in 1914,
Ramsay enlists and soon finds himself in
the midst of deadly trench warfare at the
front. At the battle of Passchendaele, one
of the bloodiest encounters in military
history, he earns the Victoria Cross for his
bravery in single-handedly taking out a
German machine gun nest. But Ramsay is
injured severely while trying to return to
his unit, and collapses in the mud with his
left leg bleeding and unresponsive. Night
has fallen, and he crawls to a collapsed
stone wall, where he realizes that he will
almost certainly bleed to death before help
arrives.
"It was then that one of the things
happened that make my life strange—one
of the experiences that other people have
not had or do not admit to," Ramsay
explains. An exploding flare allows him to
glimpse briefly his surroundings: a
demolished church. "As the hissing flame
dropped I saw there about ten or twelve
feet above me on the opposite wall, in a
niche, a statue of the Virgin and Child….
But what hit me worse than the blow of the
shrapnel was that the face was Mary
Dempster's face."
Ramsay passes out, and when he regains
consciousness, months later, he is in a
British hospital. Here he learns that he
lost his leg in the battle, but acquired a
medal, and is now a celebrated war hero.
When he returns to Canada, he tracks
down Mary Dempster, whose mental
derangement has grown more severe in the
intervening years. Ramsay is torn between
pitying her as a mad woman or honoring
her as a saint. He even consults a Catholic
priest—a humbling step since Dunstan is a
Presbyterian, and an ambivalent one at
that, but forced to take that step, since only
the Church of Rome takes seriously the
concept of modern-day sainthood. He
wants to find some way of proving, if only
to himself, that the woman, who magically
appeared to him on a battlefield half a
world away, is worthy of canonization. But
the priest discourages Ramsay's obsession.
"Look Mr. Ramsay, I'll tell it to you plain as
it comes: there's a lot of very good people
in the world, and a lot of queer things
happen that we don't see the explanation
of, but there's only one Church that
undertakes to cut right down to the bone
and say what's a miracle and what isn't and
who's a saint and who isn't, and you, and
this poor soul you speak of, are outside it.
You can't set up some kind of a bootleg
saint, so take my advice and cut it out. Be
content with the facts you have, or think
you have, and don't push anything too far—
or you might get a little bit strange
yourself."
Ramsay abandons his quest for official
recognition of Mary Dempster's miracles,
but he persists in his own obsession with
the miraculous. He develops an expertise
in saints and shrines and writes several
scholarly and popular books on the
subject. Yet Ramsay is no credulous
believer, and his delight in miracles is
hardly undermined even when they are
shown to be contrived illusions. In time,
he nurtures a second, related passion for
carnivals and the stage shows of conjurers,
and learns behind-the-scenes secrets about
the dodges and sleights of hand employed
by professional magicians.
This interest leads him into chance
encounters with Paul Dempster, Mary's
son who had run away with a carnival
group years before and has now developed
into a polished magician. Ramsay also
maintains an uneasy friendship with Boy
Staunton, the childhood bully who has now
grown to be a very crass and successful
businessman. The uneasy relationship
between this odd trio will eventually set in
motion the strange events that will
conclude Davies’s novel—an ending that, in
fitting form, presents another miracle. The
reader can decide whether it is a real one or
merely another Houdini-like conjuring
trick.
You might think that a novel so fixated on
hagiography could hardly have relevance
for our skeptical modern lives. Without a
doubt, we find ourselves in an age that
prides itself on practicalities and hard-
headed realism. But our era also defines
its deepest hopes and aspirations in terms
of myths and creeds, perhaps no less
than did previous generations. This
tendency is not exclusively—or even
primarily—a matter of religion nowadays,
but rather a core part of our shared culture,
realized in movies, books, games, music,
even politics and business. Many
contemporary novelists have played along
with this obsession, seeing their own
vocation as akin to freelance myth-
making—embracing a rather Nietzschean
concept of the place of fiction in the
modern day.
In the midst of all this, Davies takes on the
more difficult role of iconoclast, a word
that in its original meaning signifies the
bold person who dares to handle and
sometimes even shatter a prevailing myth.
In truth, a few myths actually seem to
survive the rough handling here, but not
for lack of scrutiny and examination on
Davies's part. This is a rare kind of fiction,
and Fifth Business exemplifies an
uncharacteristic approach to the modern
novel, but one perhaps all the more
therapeutic the less we initially grasp its
applicability to our own situation.
Ted Gioia writes on music, literature, and
popular culture. His newest book is The Jazz
Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire.
| THE YEAR OF MAGICAL READING Fifth Business by Robertson Davies |
| Click on image to purchase |
The Year
of
Magical
Reading
(click here)
of
Magical
Reading
(click here)
| conceptual fiction Exploring the Non-Realist Tradition in Fiction |
Welcome to my year of magical
reading. Each week during the course
of 2012, I will explore an important
work of fiction that incorporates
elements of magic, fantasy or the
surreal. My choices will cross
conventional boundary lines of genre,
style and historical period—indeed,
one of my intentions in this project is
to show how the conventional labels
applied to these works have become
constraining, deadening and
misleading.
In its earliest days, storytelling almost
always partook of the magical. Only in
recent years have we segregated
works arising from this venerable
tradition into publishing industry
categories such as "magical realism"
or "paranormal" or "fantasy" or some
other 'genre' pigeonhole. These labels
are not without their value, but too
often they have blinded us to the rich
and multidimensional heritage
beyond category that these works
share.
This larger heritage is mimicked in
our individual lives: most of us first
experienced the joys of narrative
fiction through stories of myth and
magic, the fanciful and
phantasmagorical; but only a very few
retain into adulthood this sense of the
kind of enchantment possible only
through storytelling. As such,
revisiting this stream of fiction from a
mature, literate perspective both
broadens our horizons and allows us
to recapture some of that magic in our
imaginative lives.
The Year of Magical Reading:
Week 1: Midnight's Children by
Salman Rushdie
Week 2: The House of the Spirits by
Isabel Allende
Week 3: The Witches of Eastwick
by John Updike
Week 4: Magic for Beginners by
Kelly Link
Week 5: The Tin Drum by Günter
Grass
Week 6: The Golden Ass by Apuleius
Week 7: The Tiger's Wife by Téa
Obreht
Week 8: One Hundred Years of
Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
Week 9: The Book of Laughter and
Forgetting by Milan Kundera
Week 10: Gargantua and
Pantagruel by François Rabelais
Week 11: The Famished Road by
Ben Okri
Week 12: Like Water for Chocolate
by Laura Esquivel
Week 13: Winter's Tale by Mark
Helprin
Week 14: Dhalgren by Samuel R.
Delany
Week 15: Johnathan Strange & Mr.
Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Week 16: The Master and
Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Week 17: Dangerous Laughter by
Steven Millhauser
Week 18: Conjure Wife by Fritz
Leiber
Week 19: 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
Week 20: The Hobbit by J.R.R.
Tolkien
Week 21: Aura by Carlos Fuentes
Week 22: Dr. Faustus by Thomas
Mann
Week 23: Orlando by Virginia
Woolf
Week 24: Little, Big by John
Crowley
Week 25: The White Hotel by D.M.
Thomas
Week 26: Neverwhere by Neil
Gaiman
Week 27: Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Week 28: Fifth Business by
Robertson Davies
Week 29: The Kingdom of This
World by Alejo Carpentier
Week 30: The Bear Comes Home
by Rafi Zabor
Week 31: The Color of Magic by
Terry Pratchett
Week 32: Ficciones by Jorge Luis
Borges
Week 33: Beloved by Toni
Morrison
Week 34: Dona Flor and Her Two
Husbands by Jorge Amado
Week 35: Hard-Boiled Wonderland
and the End of the World by Haruki
Murakami
Week 36: What Dreams May Come
by Richard Matheson
Week 37: Practical Magic by Alice
Hoffman
Week 38: Blindess by José
Saramago
Week 39: The Fortress of Solitude
by Jonathan Lethem
Week 40: The Magicians by Lev
Grossman
Week 41: Suddenly, A Knock at the
Door by Etgar Keret
Week 42: Cloudstreet by Tim
Winton
Week 43: The Obscene Bird of
NIght by José Donoso
Week 44: The Fifty Year Sword by
Mark Z. Danielewski
Week 45: Gulliver's Travels by
Jonathan Swift
Week 46: Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Week 47: The End of the Affair by
Graham Greene
Week 48: The Chronicles of Narnia
by C.S. Lewis
Week 49: Hieroglyphic Tales by
Horace Walpole
Week 50: The View from the
Seventh Layer by Kevin Brockmeier
Week 51: Gods Without Men by
Hari Kunzru
Week 52: At Swim-Two-Birds by
Flann O'Brien
reading. Each week during the course
of 2012, I will explore an important
work of fiction that incorporates
elements of magic, fantasy or the
surreal. My choices will cross
conventional boundary lines of genre,
style and historical period—indeed,
one of my intentions in this project is
to show how the conventional labels
applied to these works have become
constraining, deadening and
misleading.
In its earliest days, storytelling almost
always partook of the magical. Only in
recent years have we segregated
works arising from this venerable
tradition into publishing industry
categories such as "magical realism"
or "paranormal" or "fantasy" or some
other 'genre' pigeonhole. These labels
are not without their value, but too
often they have blinded us to the rich
and multidimensional heritage
beyond category that these works
share.
This larger heritage is mimicked in
our individual lives: most of us first
experienced the joys of narrative
fiction through stories of myth and
magic, the fanciful and
phantasmagorical; but only a very few
retain into adulthood this sense of the
kind of enchantment possible only
through storytelling. As such,
revisiting this stream of fiction from a
mature, literate perspective both
broadens our horizons and allows us
to recapture some of that magic in our
imaginative lives.
The Year of Magical Reading:
Week 1: Midnight's Children by
Salman Rushdie
Week 2: The House of the Spirits by
Isabel Allende
Week 3: The Witches of Eastwick
by John Updike
Week 4: Magic for Beginners by
Kelly Link
Week 5: The Tin Drum by Günter
Grass
Week 6: The Golden Ass by Apuleius
Week 7: The Tiger's Wife by Téa
Obreht
Week 8: One Hundred Years of
Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
Week 9: The Book of Laughter and
Forgetting by Milan Kundera
Week 10: Gargantua and
Pantagruel by François Rabelais
Week 11: The Famished Road by
Ben Okri
Week 12: Like Water for Chocolate
by Laura Esquivel
Week 13: Winter's Tale by Mark
Helprin
Week 14: Dhalgren by Samuel R.
Delany
Week 15: Johnathan Strange & Mr.
Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Week 16: The Master and
Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Week 17: Dangerous Laughter by
Steven Millhauser
Week 18: Conjure Wife by Fritz
Leiber
Week 19: 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
Week 20: The Hobbit by J.R.R.
Tolkien
Week 21: Aura by Carlos Fuentes
Week 22: Dr. Faustus by Thomas
Mann
Week 23: Orlando by Virginia
Woolf
Week 24: Little, Big by John
Crowley
Week 25: The White Hotel by D.M.
Thomas
Week 26: Neverwhere by Neil
Gaiman
Week 27: Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Week 28: Fifth Business by
Robertson Davies
Week 29: The Kingdom of This
World by Alejo Carpentier
Week 30: The Bear Comes Home
by Rafi Zabor
Week 31: The Color of Magic by
Terry Pratchett
Week 32: Ficciones by Jorge Luis
Borges
Week 33: Beloved by Toni
Morrison
Week 34: Dona Flor and Her Two
Husbands by Jorge Amado
Week 35: Hard-Boiled Wonderland
and the End of the World by Haruki
Murakami
Week 36: What Dreams May Come
by Richard Matheson
Week 37: Practical Magic by Alice
Hoffman
Week 38: Blindess by José
Saramago
Week 39: The Fortress of Solitude
by Jonathan Lethem
Week 40: The Magicians by Lev
Grossman
Week 41: Suddenly, A Knock at the
Door by Etgar Keret
Week 42: Cloudstreet by Tim
Winton
Week 43: The Obscene Bird of
NIght by José Donoso
Week 44: The Fifty Year Sword by
Mark Z. Danielewski
Week 45: Gulliver's Travels by
Jonathan Swift
Week 46: Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Week 47: The End of the Affair by
Graham Greene
Week 48: The Chronicles of Narnia
by C.S. Lewis
Week 49: Hieroglyphic Tales by
Horace Walpole
Week 50: The View from the
Seventh Layer by Kevin Brockmeier
Week 51: Gods Without Men by
Hari Kunzru
Week 52: At Swim-Two-Birds by
Flann O'Brien
Follow Ted Gioia on Twitter at
www.twitter.com/tedgioia
Conceptual Fiction:
A Reading List
(with links to essays on each work)
Home Page
Abbott, Edwin A.
Flatland
Adams, Douglas
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Aldiss, Brian
Barefoot in the Head
Aldiss, Brian
Hothouse
Aldiss, Brian
Report on Probability A
Allende, Isabel
The House of the Spirits
Amado, Jorge
Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands
Amis, Martin
Time's Arrow
Apuleius
The Golden Ass
Asimov, Isaac
The Foundation Trilogy
Asimov, Isaac
I, Robot
Atwood, Margaret
The Handmaid's Tale
Banks, Iain M.
The State of the Art
Ballard, J.G.
The Atrocity Exhibition
Ballard, J.G.
Crash
Ballard, J.G.
The Crystal World
Ballard, J.G.
The Drowned World
Barth, John
Giles Goat-Boy
Bester, Alfred
The Demolished Man
Blish, James
A Case of Conscience
Borges, Jorge Luis
Ficciones
Bradbury, Ray
Dandelion Wine
Bradbury, Ray
Fahrenheit 451
Bradbury, Ray
The Illustrated Man
Bradbury, Ray
The Martian Chronicles
Bradbury, Ray
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Brockmeier, Kevin
The View from the Seventh Layer
Bulgakov, Mikhail
The Master and Margarita
Bunch, David R.
Moderan
Burgess, Anthony
A Clockwork Orange
Card, Orson Scott
Ender's Game
Carpentier, Alejo
The Kingdom of This World
Carroll, Lewis
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Chabon, Michael
The Yiddish Policemen's Union
Chiang, Ted
Stories of Your Life and Others
Clarke, Arthur C.
Childhood's End
Clarke, Arthur C.
A Fall of Moondust
Clarke, Arthur C.
2001: A Space Odyssey
Clarke, Susanna
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Crowley, John
Little, Big
Danielewski, Mark Z.
The Fifty Year Sword
Danielewski, Mark Z.
House of Leaves
Davies, Robertson
Fifth Business
Delany, Samuel R.
Babel-17
Delany, Samuel R.
Dhalgren
Delany, Samuel R.
The Einstein Intersection
Delany, Samuel R.
Nova
Dick, Philip K.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Dick, Philip K.
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
Dick, Philip K.
The Man in the High Castle
Dick, Philip K.
Ubik
Dick, Philip K.
VALIS
Disch, Thomas M.
Camp Concentration
Disch, Thomas M.
The Genocides
Doctorow, Cory
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
Donoso, José
The Obscene Bird of Night
Ellison, Harlan (editor)
Dangerous Visions
Ellison, Harlan
I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream
Esquivel, Laura
Like Water for Chocolate
Farmer, Philip José
To Your Scattered Bodies Go
Fuentes, Carlos
Aura
Gaiman, Neil
American Gods
Gaiman, Neil
Neverwhere
Gibson, William
Burning Chrome
Gibson, William
Neuromancer
Grass, Günter
The Tin Drum
Greene, Graham
The End of the Affair
Grossman, Lev
The Magicians
Haldeman, Joe
The Forever War
Hall, Steven
The Raw Shark Texts
Harrison, M. John
The Centauri Device
Harrison, M. John
Light
Heinlein, Robert
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Heinlein, Robert:
Stranger in a Strange Land
Heinlein, Robert
Time Enough for Love
Helprin, Mark
Winter's Tale
Herbert, Frank
Dune
Hoffman, Alice
Practical Magic
Huxley, Aldous
Brave New World
Keret, Etgar
Suddenly, A Knock at the Door
Keyes, Daniel
Flowers for Algernon
Kundera, Milan
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Kunzru, Hari
Gods Without Men
Lafferty, R.A.
Nine Hundred Grandmothers
Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Dispossessed
Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Lathe of Heaven
Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Left Hand of Darkness
Leiber, Fritz
The Big Time
Leiber, Fritz
Conjure Wife
Leiber, Fritz
Swords & Deviltry
Leiber, Fritz
The Wanderer
Lem, Stanislaw
His Master's Voice
Lem, Stanislaw
Solaris
Lethem, Jonathan
The Fortress of Solitude
Lewis, C. S.
The Chronicles of Narnia
Link, Kelly
Magic for Beginners
Malzberg, Barry N.
Herovit's World
Mann, Thomas
Doctor Faustus
Márquez, Gabriel García
100 Years of Solitude
Markson, David
Wittgenstein's Mistress
Matheson, Richard
Hell House
Matheson, Richard
What Dreams May Come
McCarthy, Cormac
The Road
Miéville, China
Perdido Street Station
Miller, Jr., Walter M.
A Canticle for Leibowitz
Millhauser, Steven
Dangerous Laughter
Mitchell, David
Cloud Atlas
Moorcock, Michael
Behold the Man
Moorcock, Michael
The Final Programme
Morrison, Toni
Beloved
Murakami, Haruki
1Q84
Murakami, Haruki
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the
End of the World
Nabokov, Vladimir
Ada, or Ardor
Niffenegger, Audrey
The Time Traveler's Wife
Niven, Larry
Ringworld
Noon, Jeff
Vurt
Obreht, Téa
The Tiger's Wife
O'Brien, Flann
At Swim-Two-Birds
Okri, Ben
The Famished Road
Percy, Walker
Love in the Ruins
Pohl, Frederik
Gateway
Pratchett, Terry
The Color of Magic
Pynchon, Thomas
Gravity's Rainbow
Rabelais, François
Gargantua and Pantagruel
Robinson, Kim Stanley
Red Mars
Rowling, J.K.
Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone
Rushdie, Salman
Midnight's Children
Russ, Joanna
The Female Man
Saramago, José
Blindness
Sheckley, Robert
Dimension of Miracles
Sheckley, Robert
Mindswap
Sheckley, Robert
Store of the Worlds
Shelley, Mary
Frankenstein
Silverberg, Robert
Dying Inside
Silverberg, Robert
Nightwings
Silverberg, Robert
The World Inside
Simak, Clifford
City
Simak, Clifford
The Trouble with Tycho
Smith, Cordwainer
Norstrilia
Smith, Cordwainer
The Rediscovery of Man
Stephenson, Neal
Snow Crash
Spinrad, Norman
Bug Jack Barron
Stross, Charles
Glasshouse
Sturgeon, Theodore
More Than Human
Sturgeon, Theodore
Some of Your Blood
Swift, Jonathan
Gulliver's Travels
Thomas, D.M.
The White Hotel
Tiptree, Jr., James
Warm Worlds and Otherwise
Tolkien, J.R.R.
The Hobbit
Updike, John
The Witches of Eastwick
Van Vogt, A.E.
The Mixed Men
Van Vogt, A.E.
Slan
Van Vogt, A.E.
The Voyage of the Space Beagle
Van Vogt, A.E.
The World of Null A
Vance, Jack
Emphyrio
Verne, Jules
Around the Moon
Verne, Jules
From the Earth to the Moon
Verne, Jules:
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Vonnegut, Kurt
Cat's Cradle
Vonnegut, Kurt
The Sirens of Titan
Vonnegut, Kurt
Slaughterhouse-Five
Wallace, David Foster
Infinite Jest
Walpole, Horace
Hieroglyphic Tales
Wells, H.G.
The First Men in the Moon
Wells, H.G.
The Island of Dr. Moreau
Wells, H.G.
The Time Machine
Wilson, Robert Anton & Robert Shea
The Illuminatus! Trilogy
Winton, Tim
Cloudstreet
Woolf, Virginia
Orlando
Zabor, Rafi
The Bear Comes Home
Zelazny, Roger
Lord of Light
Zelazny, Roger
This Immortal
Special Features
Notes on Conceptual Fiction
When Science Fiction Grew Up
Ray Bradbury: A Tribute
The Year of Magical Reading
Remembering Fritz Leiber
A Tribute to Richard Matheson
Samuel Delany's 70th birthday
The Sci-Fi of Kurt Vonnegut
Curse You, Neil Armstrong!
Robert Heinlein at 100
A.E, van Vogt Tribute
The Puzzling Case of Robert Sheckley
The Avant-Garde Sci-Fi of Brian Aldiss
Science Fiction 1958-1975: A Reading List
Links to related sites
The New Canon
Great Books Guide
Postmodern Mystery
Fractious Fiction
Ted Gioia's web site
Ted Gioia on Twitter
_____
SF Site
io9
Graeme's Fantasy Book Review
Los Angeles Review of Books
The Millions
Big Dumb Object
SF Novelists
More Words, Deeper Hole
The Misread City
Reviews and Responses
SF Signal
True Science Fiction
Tor blog
Disclosure: Conceptual Fiction
and its sister sites may receive review
copies and promotional materials
from publishers, authors, publicists
or other parties.
All rights reserved.
www.twitter.com/tedgioia
Conceptual Fiction:
A Reading List
(with links to essays on each work)
Home Page
Abbott, Edwin A.
Flatland
Adams, Douglas
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Aldiss, Brian
Barefoot in the Head
Aldiss, Brian
Hothouse
Aldiss, Brian
Report on Probability A
Allende, Isabel
The House of the Spirits
Amado, Jorge
Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands
Amis, Martin
Time's Arrow
Apuleius
The Golden Ass
Asimov, Isaac
The Foundation Trilogy
Asimov, Isaac
I, Robot
Atwood, Margaret
The Handmaid's Tale
Banks, Iain M.
The State of the Art
Ballard, J.G.
The Atrocity Exhibition
Ballard, J.G.
Crash
Ballard, J.G.
The Crystal World
Ballard, J.G.
The Drowned World
Barth, John
Giles Goat-Boy
Bester, Alfred
The Demolished Man
Blish, James
A Case of Conscience
Borges, Jorge Luis
Ficciones
Bradbury, Ray
Dandelion Wine
Bradbury, Ray
Fahrenheit 451
Bradbury, Ray
The Illustrated Man
Bradbury, Ray
The Martian Chronicles
Bradbury, Ray
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Brockmeier, Kevin
The View from the Seventh Layer
Bulgakov, Mikhail
The Master and Margarita
Bunch, David R.
Moderan
Burgess, Anthony
A Clockwork Orange
Card, Orson Scott
Ender's Game
Carpentier, Alejo
The Kingdom of This World
Carroll, Lewis
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Chabon, Michael
The Yiddish Policemen's Union
Chiang, Ted
Stories of Your Life and Others
Clarke, Arthur C.
Childhood's End
Clarke, Arthur C.
A Fall of Moondust
Clarke, Arthur C.
2001: A Space Odyssey
Clarke, Susanna
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Crowley, John
Little, Big
Danielewski, Mark Z.
The Fifty Year Sword
Danielewski, Mark Z.
House of Leaves
Davies, Robertson
Fifth Business
Delany, Samuel R.
Babel-17
Delany, Samuel R.
Dhalgren
Delany, Samuel R.
The Einstein Intersection
Delany, Samuel R.
Nova
Dick, Philip K.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Dick, Philip K.
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
Dick, Philip K.
The Man in the High Castle
Dick, Philip K.
Ubik
Dick, Philip K.
VALIS
Disch, Thomas M.
Camp Concentration
Disch, Thomas M.
The Genocides
Doctorow, Cory
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
Donoso, José
The Obscene Bird of Night
Ellison, Harlan (editor)
Dangerous Visions
Ellison, Harlan
I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream
Esquivel, Laura
Like Water for Chocolate
Farmer, Philip José
To Your Scattered Bodies Go
Fuentes, Carlos
Aura
Gaiman, Neil
American Gods
Gaiman, Neil
Neverwhere
Gibson, William
Burning Chrome
Gibson, William
Neuromancer
Grass, Günter
The Tin Drum
Greene, Graham
The End of the Affair
Grossman, Lev
The Magicians
Haldeman, Joe
The Forever War
Hall, Steven
The Raw Shark Texts
Harrison, M. John
The Centauri Device
Harrison, M. John
Light
Heinlein, Robert
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Heinlein, Robert:
Stranger in a Strange Land
Heinlein, Robert
Time Enough for Love
Helprin, Mark
Winter's Tale
Herbert, Frank
Dune
Hoffman, Alice
Practical Magic
Huxley, Aldous
Brave New World
Keret, Etgar
Suddenly, A Knock at the Door
Keyes, Daniel
Flowers for Algernon
Kundera, Milan
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Kunzru, Hari
Gods Without Men
Lafferty, R.A.
Nine Hundred Grandmothers
Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Dispossessed
Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Lathe of Heaven
Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Left Hand of Darkness
Leiber, Fritz
The Big Time
Leiber, Fritz
Conjure Wife
Leiber, Fritz
Swords & Deviltry
Leiber, Fritz
The Wanderer
Lem, Stanislaw
His Master's Voice
Lem, Stanislaw
Solaris
Lethem, Jonathan
The Fortress of Solitude
Lewis, C. S.
The Chronicles of Narnia
Link, Kelly
Magic for Beginners
Malzberg, Barry N.
Herovit's World
Mann, Thomas
Doctor Faustus
Márquez, Gabriel García
100 Years of Solitude
Markson, David
Wittgenstein's Mistress
Matheson, Richard
Hell House
Matheson, Richard
What Dreams May Come
McCarthy, Cormac
The Road
Miéville, China
Perdido Street Station
Miller, Jr., Walter M.
A Canticle for Leibowitz
Millhauser, Steven
Dangerous Laughter
Mitchell, David
Cloud Atlas
Moorcock, Michael
Behold the Man
Moorcock, Michael
The Final Programme
Morrison, Toni
Beloved
Murakami, Haruki
1Q84
Murakami, Haruki
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the
End of the World
Nabokov, Vladimir
Ada, or Ardor
Niffenegger, Audrey
The Time Traveler's Wife
Niven, Larry
Ringworld
Noon, Jeff
Vurt
Obreht, Téa
The Tiger's Wife
O'Brien, Flann
At Swim-Two-Birds
Okri, Ben
The Famished Road
Percy, Walker
Love in the Ruins
Pohl, Frederik
Gateway
Pratchett, Terry
The Color of Magic
Pynchon, Thomas
Gravity's Rainbow
Rabelais, François
Gargantua and Pantagruel
Robinson, Kim Stanley
Red Mars
Rowling, J.K.
Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone
Rushdie, Salman
Midnight's Children
Russ, Joanna
The Female Man
Saramago, José
Blindness
Sheckley, Robert
Dimension of Miracles
Sheckley, Robert
Mindswap
Sheckley, Robert
Store of the Worlds
Shelley, Mary
Frankenstein
Silverberg, Robert
Dying Inside
Silverberg, Robert
Nightwings
Silverberg, Robert
The World Inside
Simak, Clifford
City
Simak, Clifford
The Trouble with Tycho
Smith, Cordwainer
Norstrilia
Smith, Cordwainer
The Rediscovery of Man
Stephenson, Neal
Snow Crash
Spinrad, Norman
Bug Jack Barron
Stross, Charles
Glasshouse
Sturgeon, Theodore
More Than Human
Sturgeon, Theodore
Some of Your Blood
Swift, Jonathan
Gulliver's Travels
Thomas, D.M.
The White Hotel
Tiptree, Jr., James
Warm Worlds and Otherwise
Tolkien, J.R.R.
The Hobbit
Updike, John
The Witches of Eastwick
Van Vogt, A.E.
The Mixed Men
Van Vogt, A.E.
Slan
Van Vogt, A.E.
The Voyage of the Space Beagle
Van Vogt, A.E.
The World of Null A
Vance, Jack
Emphyrio
Verne, Jules
Around the Moon
Verne, Jules
From the Earth to the Moon
Verne, Jules:
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Vonnegut, Kurt
Cat's Cradle
Vonnegut, Kurt
The Sirens of Titan
Vonnegut, Kurt
Slaughterhouse-Five
Wallace, David Foster
Infinite Jest
Walpole, Horace
Hieroglyphic Tales
Wells, H.G.
The First Men in the Moon
Wells, H.G.
The Island of Dr. Moreau
Wells, H.G.
The Time Machine
Wilson, Robert Anton & Robert Shea
The Illuminatus! Trilogy
Winton, Tim
Cloudstreet
Woolf, Virginia
Orlando
Zabor, Rafi
The Bear Comes Home
Zelazny, Roger
Lord of Light
Zelazny, Roger
This Immortal
Special Features
Notes on Conceptual Fiction
When Science Fiction Grew Up
Ray Bradbury: A Tribute
The Year of Magical Reading
Remembering Fritz Leiber
A Tribute to Richard Matheson
Samuel Delany's 70th birthday
The Sci-Fi of Kurt Vonnegut
Curse You, Neil Armstrong!
Robert Heinlein at 100
A.E, van Vogt Tribute
The Puzzling Case of Robert Sheckley
The Avant-Garde Sci-Fi of Brian Aldiss
Science Fiction 1958-1975: A Reading List
Links to related sites
The New Canon
Great Books Guide
Postmodern Mystery
Fractious Fiction
Ted Gioia's web site
Ted Gioia on Twitter
_____
SF Site
io9
Graeme's Fantasy Book Review
Los Angeles Review of Books
The Millions
Big Dumb Object
SF Novelists
More Words, Deeper Hole
The Misread City
Reviews and Responses
SF Signal
True Science Fiction
Tor blog
Disclosure: Conceptual Fiction
and its sister sites may receive review
copies and promotional materials
from publishers, authors, publicists
or other parties.
All rights reserved.