Robertson Davies: 9man of Myth

The first illustration in this sprawling study of the life of the 82-year-old Canadian writer is an enema bag favored by the Davies family in the 1910s. Although the tone is informal, even chatty-perhaps reflecting the style of dozens of Davies's friends and colleagues interviewed by Grant, a Toronto-based author of a 1978 study of Davies's work-this is the kind of minutely detailed biography that is most interested in rooting out the historical basis for characters, incidents and themes in its subject's books. Davies himself cooperated, allowing Grant to interview him ``almost seventy'' times between 1981 and 1993, giving her access to letters and journals. Grant doggedly documents Davies's lifelong fascination with the theater, as a student in Ontario and at Oxford, as a journalist, as master of Massey College (Toronto) and as a failed playwright. He did not take up the novel until age 37. The heart of the biography is the evolution of the trilogy that began with The Fifth Business, although all of Davies's novels are similarly chronicled; its low point is a numbing history of Massey College. The tone throughout is admiring. Photos. (Dec.)