I reached this by way of Hoffmann, of course, he being a minor but constant obsession of mine, with additional interest-weight added by way of Orpheus and Davies. I meant to read it back in my first or second year of undergrad and even took it out of the library. In fact I think I got pretty far into it because I remembered the "pastiche/pistache" conversation before exams hit or school ended and I had to return the book to the library. Despite that, I talked about this book a lot. Really, it was very disproportional for a book that I hadn't read and that no one else was talking about, meaning I deliberately brought it up in the conversation. Given that I read [b:The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr|594852|The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr|E.T.A. Hoffmann|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1375745289s/594852.jpg|581567] earlier this year and only heightened my Hoffmania it really seemed high time to take it out again. Another university library, but the exact same edition, conveniently.

I've got to note, before I go on though, that I once had a professor of Arthurian literature who was also a Canadian Lit prof (which, I mean, perfect marriage for this book, right?). He's since been awarded both the Order of Ontario and the Order of Canada. And someone in my class, I don't think it was me, asked him during a break about Roberston Davies, and I just clearly remember him saying that he didn't find Davies that interesting. He asked, why would he care to read about upper-middle class white people?

That got me, and that haunted me, and especially when I started reading this book again I couldn't stop thinking of his remark. It made me dislike everybody to start with, and given that I haven't read [b:The Rebel Angels|74405|The Rebel Angels (Cornish Trilogy, #1)|Robertson Davies|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1387741372s/74405.jpg|1336027] or [b:What's Bred in the Bone|265767|What's Bred in the Bone (Cornish Trilogy, #2)|Robertson Davies|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328019283s/265767.jpg|2994820] (Davies trilogies aren't hard-sequential trilogies) I didn't have much in the way of back-story that might've potentially made me fonder. For the first half I was thinking mostly about how I wasn't in love with the voice of Hoffmann's ghost the way I wanted to be (not nearly frenetic enough for the Hoff, but I suppose limbo will do that) and how these characters were, in actuality, not that interesting. And yes, in quite a lot of way they're really not. But then by the second half of the book I was craving more, and luxuriating in the book, really sinking in and looking forward to whatever time I could find to keep reading, and there's a part of me that's really sad that I won't have more of it to look forward to reading before bed tonight. (I bought a copy of The Rebel Angels at a bookstore just the other day though I've got a few library books to read before I can get to it, and part of me thinks I should savour.) I don't know how that happened. I don't know what Davies did. All I know is that suddenly even though Al Crane's appearance is in the style of this very-Canadian American caricature, it hollowed me out inside when he talked about Mabel, "a twenty-two year old woman," wanting her mother. Christ, Davies, hold nothing back.