The Enthusiasms of Robertson Davies

From the early 1940s on, Canada's greatest living novelist wrote weekly newspaper and magazine articles and book reviews. Of the 93 reprinted here, 33 are about ``characters,'' 34 about books and 26 about himself--his interests (Shakespeare), pleasures (book collecting and scrapbook keeping) and public image (``an exacerbated curmudgeon''). Each piece is entertaining and enlightening. Regardless of the subject matter--ranging from the novels of Ivy Compton-Burnett, Joyce Cary and John Cowper Powys to appreciations of Casanova, Chaucer, Freud, Jung, O'Casey, Whitman and Wodehouse, Nellie Melba, Mme. Pompadour and Lolita --Davies has something amusing and original to say. What he states about A Book of Characters by Daniel George applies equally to this one: ``It does not lend itself to gobbling, greedy reading, but it is a wonderful bedside book . . . not a mere compilation; it is in the variety of people included, and the way in which their oddities are played off against one another, that the author shows his quality.'' (Mar.)