The Rebel Angels

Rating:
Summary: Good Characters and a Good Foundation for the Trilogy
Review: The Rebel Angels starts off Robertson Davies's Cornish Trilogy by introducing us to a cast of characters and a mood that are the raw material of the collection of related stories. Davies is an author who utilizes a palette of archetypes, applying them again and again in successive snippets and passages. This first book of the trilogy serves as a kind of under-painting for the books that follow. It sets the stage and lays a foundation. But, like all under-painting, it is incomplete in itself. It needs the detail that comes from what follows. In a sense, then, this book is not truly complete apart from the other components of the trilogy. But, that said, in no way should the reader be dissuaded from reading this novel, for the rewards are deeper than the limitations.

Davies gives the reader a rich feast of characters and experiences, heightened and exaggerated, but never untrue. His pages welcome us into reflection upon the common chords of life found mirrored back to us by somewhat uncommon people in somewhat unusual places. A few of the characters stand out. Parlabane, for instance, gives us an annoying villain who is both disturbing and likable. Sometimes the tidy fence between goodness and evil seems to melt away in this story, leaving the reader a bit unsettled by the dark shadows within him or herself. This is, however, merely a minor - not too jarring - revelation of what we attempt to hide from ourselves. Robertson Davies gives us, in The Rebel Angels, an uncommon window upon the common human experience. If you are like me, you will find that you remember less of the details of this book than you feel that you have been reminded of the characters and experiences of your own life that sometimes too easily pass from notice.

I highly recommend this book; but only for those who are willing to commit to reading the whole of the trilogy. Without the other volumes, you will feel cheated. But with them, you will find yourself greatly enriched by having read The Rebel Angels.

Rating:
Summary: The pleasures of scholarship revealed
Review: There are too, too many novels about the comedy of academic life, but this is the single best novel that reveals not only how ridiculous academics are but why anyone would want to be one in the first place. Robertson Davies can get more mileage out of the intellectual fascination of actual human excrement (which is the life's study of one of his characters!) than you might believe possible, showing once and for all the sheer pleasure of academic scholarship.

This might be the very best of Davies's novels; it is certainly the most rollicking, and the fastest-paced. The characters are crazy and delightful (especially the impossible John Parlabane), and the narrative surprise about the heroine is a mighty one indeed. I practically gulped this novel down in one night because of its enjoyability.

Rating:
Summary: Hilarious, touching and profane.
Review: There is a sort of sub-genre of literature that might be called the Academic Black Comedy. Kingsly Amis' "Lucky Jim" certainly falls into this category, as do many of David Lodge's books- "Trading Places" and "Small World", to name two. Back in my high-stress grad school days I devoured these books. They portrayed academia as I saw it; that is, a strange, irrational world, not subject to the ordinary rules and mores of life.

It was during this time that a friend- a philosophy student widely regarded as the worst teaching assistant on campus- gave me a copy of "The Rebel Angels". I started reading it that night and carried it with me all the next day, and the day after, reading it when I should have been doing other things.

"The Rebels Angels" is part mystery, part bawdy medieval tale and part academic satire. There's a mysterious and beautiful gypsy woman, a missing manuscript of Rablais (that may or may not actual exist), a gang of gypsie violin theives, and a cast of venal and backstabbing academics- some fighting for the manuscript, some for the girl, and some for both, perhaps.

Wonderful entertainment- especially for anyone planning on going into academia. There's more truth in it than many academics would like to admit.

Rating:
Summary: Academia in an alternate universe
Review: _The Rebel Angels_ is one of Davies' absolute finest novels, and a personal favorite. Davies, who at the time of writing was headmaster of Massey College at the University of Toronto, chose for the setting of the book that very campus (though all names have been changed to protect the innocent). The book is a lively romp through a sort of surreal parallel world of academia : defrocked monks, gypsy spells, corpulent priests, seductive graduate students, feces research, bawdy medieval humor, and an enormous dose of Davies' wit and wisdom. The book is a real treat.